24 hours in Stockholm

Stockholm is one of the coolest cities in the world, and is home to a number of our friends and collaborators. Lee and I headed over in August 2011 to start planning for a big creative clash between cool kids from the UK and Sweden.

We've added a new gallery charting our 24 hour trip.

We also took the opportunity to hook up with our buddies at Hyper Island, and to spend a few hours planning our next bit of work with them, which we will announce this week! They're in a temporary space at the minute, whilst their HQ is being updated, and it was a bit of a mission to find our way to the inner sanctum. It was well worth the effort though, and seriously inspiring to be immersed in the buzz of awesomeness emanating from crowds of digibods, all sharing ideas about ways to solve problems handed down to them by the likes of Google, Nokia and Oxfam. A talk was underway as we left and the last thing I saw were projected words, thrown onto the wall in front of 200 students: "disruption doesn't ask permission".

Team Léve did us the full tour of Stockholm city, and we did our own bit of disruptive thinking over a few beers. The agenda (once we'd got over Marcus's new face friend - beards seem to be having a major revival in Sweden right now) was all about our Creative Encounter between our networks from Stockholm, Leeds and Manchester. More to follow on this one very soon... we'll give you a moment of two to get strapped in first!

Whitechapel Residency update

The information as material residency at the Whitechapel Gallery is now well underway, with a number of events completed and two free-to-take poster poems by emerging poets and writers now out in the world (you can pick yours up from from the Gallery if you are in London - we're looking for somewhere in Leeds too).

The last event, The Summer School for Literary Perverts, took place at the end of July with a group of around 25 people participating in a programme of activity led by artists, Simon Morris and Nick Thurston, over the course of three days. Guests at the School included Paris-based writer and translator Kate Briggs and Canadian poet Christian Bok. The programme led up to a public event on the last night, with a crow packed into the Gallery to explore the "immersive textual environment" created by participants, and to hear Bok talk about his Xenotext Experiment, through which he is attempting to genetically engineer a living poem.

Upcoming events include:

• a Big Ideas discussion with poet / writer and UbuWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith (you can see his recent performance at the White House here) and writer / critic Craig Dworkin, about their recently published anthology of conceptual writing, Against Expression.
• a series of events and publication launches as part of the London Book Art Bookfair. iam's founding  editor, Simon Morris, has written an extraordinary forward to the fair's catalogue, entitled Do or DIY, and Nick Thurston has designed a limited edition bag.

Planning for the Autumnal School for Digital Perverts is underway, and will be led by Christine Morris and I. We'll be exploring how the Internet and digital and social media are challenging and opening up the possibilities for writing and publishing. Watch this space for more information.

In a word...

LAST WEEK'S FLYING TEXT ART PROJECT IN THE SKIES OVER LEEDS, GHOST CARGO, MARKED THE FINAL CHAPTER IN A PROJECT WE HAVE BEEN WORKING ON FOR MORE THAN 18 MONTHS. IN A WORD... BEGAN LIFE AS A CONVERSATION WITH ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND ABOUT HOW TO STIMULATE SUPPORT FOR ARTISTS WORKING IN THE YORKSHIRE REGION, WHO APPROACH WRITING AS AN "INTERDISCIPLINARY ACT", AND BECAME A PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AND EXHIBITIONS CREATED IN COLLABORATION WITH AN INTERNATIONAL NETWORK OF INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANISATIONS.

There have always been two sides to this project. On the one hand we hoped that, by creating space for new projects (or contributing to existing ones) and by bringing people together around the work, the project would be a catalyst for self-sustaining network of people approaching writing in an variety of way. On the other hand, we wanted to approach the project as 'living research', where events and exhibitions provided a social space, where we could meet with artists, arts organisations and their audiences, and learn. That learning would then be passed on to the arts council, and would help to inform decisions about how they contribute to the development of a thriving writing scene, beyond established forms of literature and script writing.

Here are some of the things we did:

• Produced a major exhibition of 'Conceptual Writing' at Shandy Hall, Coxwold (once the home of Laurence Sterne, author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman). The Perverse Library exhibition ran for a month and received coverage in the national press.
• Supported a series of publication launches by York-based artist publishing outfit information as material, including the launch of a new film about a former Northern Art Prize winner, Pavel Buchler.
• Helped information as material secure a yearlong residency at The Whitechapel Gallery, one of London's leading art galleries.
• Worked with The Other Room and Leeds Art Gallery to host POETRY NIGHT, and evening of readings and performances by four world renowned poets, including sound artist Steve McCaffery.
• Collaborated with internationally acclaimed artist Caroline Bergvall on Ghost Cargo, a flying text art project in the skies over Leeds, delivered as part of the 60th Refugee Week celebrations and in partnership with Leeds Art Gallery.
• Launched a new publication, RITE, showcasing work by 19 artists and writers, many of them from Yorkshire. The event was held in March 2010 at Project Space Leeds who, along with New Work Network and Open Dialogues, were invaluable partners on the project.
• Commissioned two new pieces of live performance work for the launch, by three RITE contributors. One of these pieces has gone on to have a life of it's own, and has been shown at several galleries around the UK.
• Initiated How is art writing?, a programme of artist hosted dinners curated by Bradford-based writer, Rachel Lois Clapham. 
• Agreed a partnership with Critical Writing Network and Alison Andrews, towards the publications of a Field Guide to writing in Yorkshire. This will be published in summer 2011, and will include a directory of regionally based writing artists. 

We've learned an enormous amount, and identified a number of challenges facing the development of writing. A series of recommendations for future action have been submitted to the arts council, and the project will now take on a life of it's own, as responsibility for future programming is distributed across the network it has been the catalyst for. We look forward to remaining involved, albeit from more of a distance, and to future collaborations with artists who like to work with words!

Yorkshire International Business Convention 2011 - some reflections

On Friday I was invited by Marketing Leeds (thanks guys!) to attend the Yorkshire International Business Convention (YIBC) in Harrogate. I have to be honest and say that, until Marketing Leeds extended the invite, I had never heard of YIBC.

I also have a second confession to make - despite the fact that my previous encounters with Marketing Leeds have involved interesting and interested people, and the opportunity to make new connections was a part of my decision to go along, the real draw was the key note speaker - Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the (British) inventor of the World Wide Web.

There are lots of things I could say about this event, many good and some not so good (like the fact that there is nothing remotely international about it). What I want to focus on here, however, are the opportunities missed by the way the event was, or wasn't curated, and to share some thoughts about what the organisers might do in future years to create something more... well, meaningful I suppose.

For information, and in addition to the aforementioned Berners-Lee, the 2011 YIBC speakers were Roy Walker (comedian); Terry Hill (Chairman, Arup Trust); Monty Hall (former Royal Marine turned tv presenter); Caroline Marsh (property developer); and Harry Grasham (Look North presenter) in conversation with Andrew Strauss (England Cricket Captain).

'Winners: Inspiring people, inspiring people' was the theme of this year's YIBC and looking over the list of speakers one thing seems clear, the event aims to inspire by programming speakers who can offer the business community a different perspective on things by talking about their achievements. This is what happened but, with the exception of Terry Hill's neat presentation about the impact of employee ownership, all speakers forgot something quite crucial - to form a link between their insights and the needs of business today. For me, this made for a rather uninspiring event.

A conversation about the immediate needs of Yorkshire businesses did take place just after lunch when a panel discussion was held between the Chairs of the three regional Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). Fielding questions from the audience, the Chairs reflected on how the region adapts to life after Yorkshire Forward; the role of LEPs; and how the high funding thresholds in the new regime translate into support for Small and Medium Enterprise (SME). Listening to this conversation I started to wonder, if these were the immediate concerns of the business community, what would the event be like if the speakers responded to them.

To illustrate what I mean, I want to offer an example using Sir Tim Berners-Lee's address. Let's say that, instead of retelling the story of the creation of the internet (which was fascinating to a technophile like me, but perhaps not critical to business - I overheared a handful of people expressing this sentiment) Berners-Lee talked about networks and 'network culture'. Let's imagine that he had been prompted by the organisers to reflect on how network culture can benefit an ecosystem like Yorkshire's business community. One of the things he might choose to talk about is 'resilience', a term always on the periphery of conversation in business today. He might talk about how resilience, as used in systems theory, is a term that describes how a system (a regional economy, for example) adapts to cope with a disturbance in the external environment (the closure of Yorkshire Forward, or the restricted access to funding for SME's, for example). He might point out that most systems (I'm taking a bit of poetic license here) adapt by cutting out 'redundancy' (capacity that is spare) which in turn cuts down 'requisite variety' (narrows a system's options - if you don't have spare capacity it might be harder to spot and exploit new opportunities, or to take risks, for example). He might go on to highlight that the ability to network computers has done something very interesting in this context - rather than one computer's processor reaching capacity and slowing down a process, it can borrow redundant processing power from another computer on the same network. As a whole, the network can cooperate to ensure that the system is fulfilling its maximum potential. To bring it back to business, and the physical world, Berners-Lee might challenge the regional community to think about how bigger businesses with spare capacity (financial or otherwise) can cooperate to speed up growth, perhaps by creating space for risk in the SME sector by increasing their 'requisite variety'. In this way the speaker would be inspiring action. Personally, I'd have found that more meaningful to the future development of our business than listening to Grasham and Strauss talk about the uncertain future of test cricket.

In his opening comments the convention's organiser, Mike Firth, had referred to the event "cutting its cloth". This was translated, by some of the people I met, to mean that they had not been able to afford an ex-president or mega star as the keynote speaker, as in previous years. I was left feeling that, if this event is to be scaled back in future, the organisers need to think less about the who, and place much more emphasis on what speakers have to say, that's of relevance to the convention's audience.

I think the fact that a third of the audience left before Berners-Lee took to the stage illustrates a disconnect between the industries of today and those of tomorrow. This was further emphasised by the arrival of two groups of college students and colleagues from a number of the region's key digital agencies precisely as Sir Tim took the stage. With this in mind, I also think something the organisers might want to consider is how they engage with people from emerging, knowledge-based industries, across the region. For our part we are here and always happy to help!

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.