The Village Underground in Shoreditch, the venue for CIDA’s third Cr8net conference – theme: ‘Digital Diversity’ – has bare brick walls, unvarnished concrete floors and toilets that don’t bother to distinguish between male and female. It has a makeshift pop-up feel which must have taken considerable effort to achieve.
It’s all meant to be achingly cool. But digital isn’t achingly cool now is it? Not any more and not for the last few years. If it isn’t yet really big business here – most UK creative digital companies are classed as SMEs or micro-businesses – it’s certainly big money. It’s had plenty of public money and attention thrown at it from the New Labour years onwards. Even in austerity, with Ed Vaizey championing the sector from both the DCMS and BIS (Department for Business Innovation and Skills), and other high-profile ‘digital utopians’ pushing the agenda forward, the digital media sector of the creative industries doesn’t have much to worry about – no more, at least, than any other industry sector, and considerably less than the arts.
Digital, then, dominates public discourse; when the creative industries are discussed, what is really being foregrounded is the digital media industries, with their potential for high-growth and scalability. The other sub-sectors are significantly overlooked, particularly those variously called ‘the cultural industries’ or more frequently ‘the creative arts’. In this creative industries context, their value has become adjunctive; their importance cited primarily for providing creative fodder and permeability for the strictly commercial parts of the sector.
Facts, figures and happy-clapping
The conference doesn’t start well. The usual financial facts and figures are trotted out, lifted straight from the Standard Creative Industries Manual, and then shoehorned into a tenuous argument about why a particular sub-sector is a massively important player. For example, Frances Brindle from the British Library stakes its claim to be part of the sector for its role in patents, IP and business support.
It’s an illustration of the confusion that surrounds the term ‘creative industries’, with its uncomfortable alliance of sectors that don’t belong together and its happy-clappy overuse of the term ‘creative’, which no-one, ever, dares to define at these types of events. As a veteran of this type of event, I’ve noticed a kind of group-think that doesn’t allow public questioning of the orthodoxy (outside of academia), driven by a perceived need to be part of the most fashionable and wealthy game in town.
But it turns out I am at least partially mistaken in my assumptions. Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA, chairs the day quite brilliantly, and is bold enough to question the British Library about their new IP and patents business centres: “Isn’t this mission creep?” he asks bluntly. Frances Brindle makes a good defensive pass in response: “We have an amazing collection of £5m worth of databases,” she says, “and our partner organisations deliver the business training and workshops. The funding doesn’t come from us although we effectively subsidise it through making our resources available. We’ve enabled the regional rollout through fundraising with the Arts Council.” (Which sounds like another example of mission creep – except that of course ACE has now taken on libraries, and it appears, business support).
I approach the day with scepticism, but I’m willing to be persuaded that the problem is mine; that I am resistant, an almost-too-late adopter. And I am pleasantly surprised. Delegates are largely from the university and arts worlds, with digital media and gaming companies thin on the ground. There are properly facilitated sessions, of a length that allows questioning and time for detailed answers. There is a sense of space within the programming that has become rare in conferences of this type.
As chair, Taylor makes strenuous and welcome attempts to involve the audience, and is excellent at humorously dismantling clichés and pricking the bubble of pretension. (“The most important thing is self-belief,” says one panellist. Another cites “self discipline”. “Quite right”, says Taylor, “not much use having self-belief if you can’t get up in the morning and your idea is a bit crap.”) And truthfully, it is a well-judged programme, without theoretical pontificating and barely a nod towards our shining digitally-led future.
Practical and informative
Why are you here? I ask Kathryn Simpson, Strategic Relations Manager at the Whitechapel Gallery. “I want to be inspired as to how digital can enable the creative industries to grow. I think the arts and digital can help each other to grow,” she replies. How? I ask. “That’s what I’m here to find out,” she says.
Sessions are designed to have practical application or at the least to be informative. A round-table on networks, their uses and models chaired by the Guardian’s Nancy Groves reinforced how essential they are. A breakout session on start-up finance, led by the Arts Council’s Mary-Alice Stack, Director of ArtCo Projects, had attendees listening carefully and scribbling furiously. Stack talked about ACE’s Creative Industries Finance Programme. “We need to understand the cross-cutting nature of business because we need to be broad based and we want to get broad sector buy-in,” she says (really).
The scheme is intended as £5-£25Kloan support across the artforms for businesses at critical stages, and success depends on demonstrating the ability to repay over three years. The interest rate is pitched at a high 10% APR “because it’s unsecured, it is a higher risk. There are also State Aid rules that mean we can’t undercut other lenders, and we are a lender of last resort. 10% is manageable and we think fair,” says Stack. Given the Bank of England interest rates are 0.5%, is this too high for most creative enterprises, let alone sole-trading artists? Will this scheme really make a difference? Figures broken down by artform and sub-sector won’t be available till June, but it seems unlikely that “creative arts” micro-businesses will benefit much.
Over lunch I speak to Jennifer Granville, Head of Enterprise, Film, Music and Performing Arts at Leeds Metropolitan University. She talks about the “employability agenda” that is now common to all universities. “There is a commitment to enterprise. Employability is a core part of every module across every single course, in a refocusing of the undergraduate curriculum.” What brought her to the event? “I wanted to build networks, and get a sense of what is going on across the sector. What is the new creative industries thinking? How can I take back some of the thoughts, ideas and initiatives for the benefit of our students?”
Granville is impressed with the conference. “I’m excited to hear about the British Library business centre in Leeds, and I will be asking if we can be a partner in this with them. Attention has been given to getting good quality speakers, and good quality delegates, and I’ve already made three excellent connections today.”
The main event
The afternoon begins with two performances by Monkey Poet and the ethereal and stunning Helen Parker-Jayne Isibor playing solo Hang Drum. Matthew Taylor asks the panel that follows to respond to Maria Miller’s speech given that morning – at which point we all realised we knew nothing about it, having been cloistered underground. Pauline Tambling, joint CEO of Creative & Cultural Skills, suggests that “the problem is we are so diverse and fragmented that the Government finds it very hard to talk to us at all, and we need to sort that out.” Given the creative industries is a government-constructed sector, it seems unfair to suggest that this is the sector’s fault.
But the main point of the afternoon is a flying visit from Ed Vaizey. “I’m here to talk about our support for the creative industries and digital,” he declares. “To build the digital infrastructure we need, we’re rolling out 4G superfast broadband. Mobile phone companies are two years ahead of their plans. In skills and education, we have worked with the Department of Education and changed the IT curriculum. Instead of learning how to use applications, pupils will now learn how to build the applications. We are supporting Tech City. It’s a signal to show that government is interested in this sector. We are giving tax breaks.”
Taking a couple of questions, he makes some good points: “It’s important we support the arts for their own sake but also because they market the UK. If you take away funding to the arts, you hurt something that is intrinsically valuable but that has an impact on our economy.” He sounds equally convincing and well-rehearsed. “We’ve ratcheted up creative apprenticeships which I regard as a very important part of the education ecology and as a way for people to get into work that is fulfilling and rewarding. They’re not internships by any other name, but a genuine learning experience.”
A final question is about the difficulty of measuring the number of sole traders who are below the VAT threshold, which is now leading to the proposal that Crafts are removed from a new government definition of the creative industries. “It’s a genuine consultation. Please do respond – I don’t want to lose what is a genuine part of the arts sector,” he says. (You can find out more about it here.)
The final word of the day goes to Matthew Taylor: “Good luck with the Spending Review!” he shoots out at a departing Vaizey. It’s a sentiment heartily endorsed by everyone present.
The annual Cr8net conference took place on 24 April, 2013 at Village Underground, Tech City, Shoreditch, London. cida.co.uk/cr8net
