Yesterday I attended a meeting to discuss the findings of the What if Leeds consultation. I left the event with a strange feeling: On the one hand I agreed wholeheartedly with some of the things put forward but on the other felt like I did not connect with the new proposals, some of the people who spoke and most of those who attended. I thought it maybe be useful to give my honest feedback on What if Leeds and then some suggestions of how we can help.
A Little Background
To give a little background to Hebe Media for those of you who do not know: We are an ideas factory. A collection of young professionals with one simple mission: to create interesting, cool, fun projects. We do this primarily in the creative industries. We produce projects, create brands, put on events and lots more. Over the past year we have worked with some of the world's biggest brands, cool cities and interesting people. We report on trends, create international communication strategies and lots of other things it would take far to long to explain. So our angle on Leeds is exactly that: our angle, our view on the city and what it is like for a young (the average age of our team is 27) creative business. We also have a Leeds network online which is close to 50,000 members including the 42,000 strong Leeds Facebook page.
To give a little background on a personal level: I am Leeds through and through. Born in Seacroft, raised in Whinmoor. My father is one of 13 children and my mother is one of 8, and virtually all the family and the zillions of cousins and second cousins I have, still live in Leeds. I have seen the best and worst of the city both professionally and personally so feel I am well positioned to give a balanced view.
What if Leeds... Key Issues
I really liked the points being made about the transport system. Both Tom Riordan and Kieran Bradford (the 15 year old star of the show) emphasised the need for a dramatic improvement in this area, this is something we agree with strongly. The need for more green space in the centre and environmental issues is another issue we fully support. The 'community spirit' issue is of course important but is a complicated one. Leeds does have a great platform to start from - people are passionate about the city and their community, the challenge will be to harness that into something productive and sustainable.
Obviously as with any meeting like this, everyone goes with their own 'agenda' and a desire to hear something relevant to them. The last two points on the 'key issues' list were particularly interesting to us on a personal level. These points were - "Jobs and work for young people" and "greater recognition of culture and arts in Leeds". Again from a personal point of view I would have loved more discussion of the creative industries and how Leeds can develop it's own businesses and talent in this area. I firmly believe that in the future, Leeds (and frankly the whole of Europe and America) will become more of a creative economy. We can name this differently, 'Knowledge economy' or the 'Cultural industries' etc, but they all float around the same basis: ideas, intellectual property, brands will be our economic future. The UK Dept for Culture and Sport lists the creative sectors as:
- Advertising
- Architecture
- Arts and antique markets
- Crafts
- Design
- Designer Fashion
- Film, video and photography
- Software, computer games and electronic publishing
- Music and the visual and performing arts
- Publishing
- Television
- Radio
We are currently directly involved in projects that cover at least 8 of those areas, so going back to the original point: this is something I wanted to hear something about at the What if Leeds event. We are a new business growing very quickly and we made our home in Leeds. However in the future, what will stop us moving our company elsewhere? What can the city do to support businesses like ours to grow here? What benefit is there to staying in Leeds? It seems initially that this is not a priority moving forward for Leeds. I see all kinds of bodies/ groups /organisations that claim to represent people like us (either because of our age, 'industry' or location) but speaking honestly, they really don't represent us as individuals or as a company at all.
What we would love to see
There was a video at the event which you can see here. One of the comments that really stood out to me was "What if Leeds could be the next Berlin?" ...we would love it if Leeds was even considered in the same creative league as Berlin! We are currently planning a project there and it is definitely one of the coolest cities in the world right now. Four members of our team have at some point lived in Barcelona and this is another city we should look to take inspiration from. Of course those cities have a different political and social history from which they can draw inspiration, but we can definitely adopt and embrace some of their attitudes and inspirations.
We need to have more of an open mind in Leeds and not try and measure something immediately. Some of the best projects I have seen in the last few years in cities like Berlin and Barcelona start small, they appeal to niches and they inspire either something that can take the concept to new markets or in some cases inspire a 2.0 version that is even better then the original. Usually in those cities, the first thing you hear is "how can we help?" rather then "you can not do that because..." and this makes a massive difference.
"Jobs and work for young people"
There was a lot of talk at the meeting about the level of unemployment among young people in Leeds. Councillor Wakefield in particular spoke about his despair at the current situation and his and the council's desire to change this. This issue is a massive one for the UK in general not just Leeds and is something we talk about regularly in the Hebe office. We have a really firm viewpoint on this which is based in both small scale research and our own personal experiences. For a lot of people university fees and student loans etc are not the thing that stop them entering further education, it is the fact that some people just don't want to.
Some young people do not grow up dreaming of studying economics or becoming a lawyer, they want to be a footballer, a singer or a entrepreneur / mogul like Jay-Z! How can we channel those ambitions and passions into something? We firmly believe getting young people involved in real-life projects about the things they are passionate about can help develop other skills. Some do not want to listen to a 60 year old guy in a suit, they want to talk to the people who's names are on flyers, people who appear in music videos, fashion magazines... people they want to be like!
What can we do?
In every single project we create we try to implement some kind of learning and development for both our team members and also offer opportunities to young professionals and freelancers. In some of the projects we have coming up this year we are taking it further and including talented young people from high schools in Leeds. This will give these young people first hand experience of talking to, learning from and being around the people they look up to and respect and will hopefully fuel further creativity and lead to them developing some amazing projects of their own over the coming years.
We will also be submitting plans soon for something that could be major advancement for the city in this area. We have learned a lot working with forward thinking people in 'education' like Hyper Island and have consulted with some of Leeds' best creative talent and everyone involved is passionate about helping the next generation and 'giving something something back'. More on this project soon...
Conclusion
What if Leeds produced a number of issues that we agree are very important to the city. The massive challenge now is developing a plan that addresses those issues, and not just a plan for the next year... a plan for the next 20 years. Getting the right people onside will be key in the early days. There is some wonderful talent in the city which is under-utilised, either by choice or because of lack of awareness but that needs to change.
We at Hebe are more then willing to help where we can and contribute to this city's future. In 2030 I will be 48 and want to be able to look back at this period as the time when our input was heard and we helped shape the future of what could be one of the best cities around. The thing stopping us moving to another city right now is the potential in Leeds and the room to create something special that we can be proud of in the future. I am sure there are more like us, we just have to create a strategy that people can identify with and get behind. Not one overall strategy has to 'fit all' we can all develop lots of new things and hopefully the sum of those parts will produce something exciting and sustainable.