Creative Cities - Leeds in Barcelona Conference

This video, posted on LeLook's website earlier this week, captures the energy and direction of a panel discussion between a group creative people, brought together on the first night of this year's Leeds in Barcelona, as part of a conference hosted by IED (Istituto Europeo di Design).

Chaired by our very own Lee Hicken, the conversation centred around the idea of a "creative scene", comparing the current situation in Leeds and in Barcelona, and reflecting on the conditions necessary to realise the potential of a city's creative people.

Despite popular myth I wasn't playing DrawRace on my phone throughout the discussion and was listening intently and making some notes... I just happened to be making them on my phone... long live Evernote! I've published them below, to give people an overall sense of what was said, but this is just an interim thing until the edited recording is ready to be published - this should be ready in the next few weeks.

Chair: Lee Hicken, Director of Hebe Media (Leeds)

Host: Jürgen Salenbacher • Academic Director at IED Barcelona

Panel:

• Imran Ali • New Technologies Expert, Consumption trends
• Juan Antonino Ávalos • Spanish Fashion Designer
• Chidy Wayne • Spanish Fashion Designer and Fashion Illustrator
• Dom, de Dom Dick & Harry • English Fashion Designer
• Giuseppe De Luca • Singer of ICS (iCallShotgun), visual artist

- Introductions

- Jurgen reflects on creative cities

- Creative economy needs creative education

- Reflecting on what has happened in the economy, the crisis is also a transformation of an economy driven by machines to one driven by ideas

- Creatives helping to develop new forms of economy

- Providing a platform for creatives to develop their ideas

- Technology supporting creativity

- Without the right circumstances it's impossible

- Imran talks 'bleeding edge' emerging technology, post-digital economy and the city is a platform for new technologies

- What some people think of as distractions are the real business of the city

- The city is a lab for creativity, enabling efficient prototyping of new ideas

- Through non-conferences cities are developing a digital cultures along side the creative ones

- Dom on life as a fashion designer in Leeds - Leeds is not London or Paris and this enables a level of safety with which to experiment

- Cross fertilisation of ideas between music, fashion, art that is underpinned by the social scene

- Diversity breeds creativity

- Tolerance is an important factor in collaboration

- The economic transformation - from industrial to knowledge economy

- The need for accountable creativity - in economic terms (emphasised by a drop in employment, in Barcelona)

- Technology as a way of spreading ideas

- Cities and their unrealised potential

- It is important that support comes from all external forces, not just education

- Talent moves where the opportunities are

Conversation moves on from creative cities to creative education:

- Lee asks some questions about training

- "You learn to learn - when you crack that you can teach yourself anything."

- Not about going to school - it's about motivation

- Positive thing about a design school is the infrastructure, the resources, the test-bed (safety, low risk space)

- Need to update and optimise education to meet skills needs in industry

- Imran talks about Orange and MIT Lab as a template for a new kind of education

- Imran talks about user designed 'bar camps' as a useful tool / catalyst

- Sustaining connection so when you want people to cohere you only need to make a phone call

A full recording of the conversation, along with other material from Leeds in Barcelona 2011 will be posted here soon.