The Hebe Week In Pics

We headed over to Manchester for the Hyper Island launch partyThe Hebe Team taking a stroll around the Northern QuarterShang Ting and Stacey the tourists!In Hyper Island, Can you guess who's shoes they are?Inside Printworks, ManchesterShang Ting goofing around in Papa G's, ManchesterShang Ting is snap happy in the train station; no more trains for us, train drivers suck!Shang Ting and one of our old friend's art in Manchester Papping the Papper!Back in Leeds, yesterday it was Mentos central! This was a Mentos train dancing in the street!And the streets were filled with musicians!Spotted: New Pizza Express on Albion Street, what do we think? A nice view of Round Foundry and Temple Works

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.

Manchester Street Style: 03/06/11

The Hebe team were in Manchester last Friday for the launch of Hyper Island, even though we had a tight schedule, I still managed to get some shots of Manchester's street style... Actually we went for a tiny bit of sight seeing, a very nice meal at Papa G's in the Printworks, and started drinking at 3:30 in the afternoon... so the schedule was very tight ;)

I really like the variety of style in Manchester and next time I promise I will stop and do some interviews!

Hyper Island Manchester Launch

Last Friday we attended the first official event at Hyper Island Manchester. As regular readers of our site will already know, we have been heavily involved with the project and Hyper Island globally, so we were excited to check in and meet some of the students from the first-ever class and catch up with some of our other Manchester friends.

Arriving at the Watts Brothers building on Lever Street we, along with the Hyper Island UK team, felt a bit like proud parents watching something that we have all worked so hard on, come to fruition. The first Hyper Island facility outside of Stockholm is a massive step for the brand, but one that we all believed would be a great success. The industry obviously agreed with the likes of Google, MTV, Channel 4, Wieden + Kennedy, Saatchi & Saatchi and loads more getting involved with the project.

It was really nice to spend a bit of time with the new students. They are a real interesting bunch! In just a couple of hours we had been involved in conversations about the city of Manchester, the fashion industry, the use of the word 'viral', the re-birth of speed garage, problems with restrictions when working in government and loads more random yet facinating subject! We are sure that some amazing people and projects will come out of Hyper Island Manchester in the coming months. You can see from their video above, they are already getting in the zone!

Check a couple of our previous posts related to Hyper Island here:

Hyper Island Arrives In Manchester

Creative Spaces Are Key To Creative Culture

We will keep you posted on progress of this first class on here over the summer months. In the meantime check out some of the pictures from Friday's event below:

The first class along with Hyper Island UK Director David McCall and Programme Assistant Amir LodgeShang Ting hanging with some of the studentsLee getting excited about something geeky no doubt!David McCall and some of the students along with representatives from Google, NESTA and Code Computerlove welcome everyone to the eventThe Hyper Island way already kicking inCollecting souvenir stickers of all the students :)

The Hebe Week In Pics

Always good to start a blog with cupcakes (by Sugar Rose)More shots from Lee's favourite place in LeedsGraffiti around LeedsMore scary decapitation GraffitiNice to open the paper to this. Leeds In Barcelona articleShang Ting's new supply from the Chinese SupermarketThe Hebe office photo wallLee has been playing this song all week! Prince rules!Finishing off with a pic of my new gym/Race For Life kicks!