Saturday

Both the manager and the assistant manager are all solicitude and
concern. Interesting. Last night, I thought all I needed was a bit of
care, a metaphorical hug, some non-dispassionate, non medical
expression of support - from anyone. And, God knows, these guys are
giving it this morning. But it doesn't work. Peversely, I'm the one
who feels dispassionate as I watch and listen to them. They tell me
how they're new here, still learning the buildings, how the drainage
at the far end of the building (where my room is) is pretty bad, how
they are going to recommend non slip flooring. Idly, I wonder if this
broken wrist is going to fund my retirement; then I look at the pair
of them and know it's not. Nevertheless, I do wonder at the
disingenuous nature of this discussion!

Michael comes over. He's the wonderful taxi driver who took me to
hospital and waited for 4 hours to bring me back. Almost a friend!
Ridiculously, his coming over to say hello is hugely cheering -it's
a beautiful Caribbean day - wish I could go swimming!

Later

A most welcome plate of fresh fruit - watermelon, guava and pineapple
- awaited my return to the hotel. And a bottle of champagne - though what we were celebrating wasn't quite clear! I managed a glass but the drugs kicked in and I slept. Woke this morning to what sounded like huge winds and muffled thunderclaps. I felt grateful. At least it wouldn't matter that I couldn't go swimming! Eventually I got up and drew the curtains to watch the storm. The golden sunlight streamed in. Across the balcony, the cloudless, gleaming blue sky stretched to the horizon, meeting the sparkling, dancing Caribbean sea. The sand shone golden, newly burnished. Storm? What storm? Unbelievably, the sound I'd heard was the crashing of the sea as it drew itself up into last minute waves and threw itself with unrelenting passion upon the waiting shore. Then, sated, 'all calm of mind, all passion spent', the sea wiithdraws and breathes in, preparing for its next onslaught.

friday night

Well, it's official - the wrist is broken. The right one, too, which is
going to mess up my life for the next few weeks! A very cross x-ray
technician finally tipped up and took the photos. Interesting lack of
protection from radiation but maybe not necessary for just a wrist.
The nurse with the syringe turned out to have worked in Batley(!) And
the doc came from Nigeria and had worked in UK and US- using his
medical qualifications to see the world! So much to say about the
hospital but will have to wait. But am hugely grateful for their
expertise.

After the ball was over...........

Left the ship yesterday midday and moved to hotel to have a couple of
days on my own. It always sounds so idyllic and opportunity doesn't
normally arise. So thought I'd experiment with a couple of days on
my own partly to see if I could hack it. Nice hotel, near shops and
restaurants, lovely big airy room, well appointed. Spent all afternoon and
evening writing bid and budget for friday deadline. Finished at one am
and then slept fitfully. Woke early and decided to take everyone's
advice and get ferry to Tobago. Arrived at around 1pm and taken to
hotel. Brilliant sunshine , beautiful beach, not wonderful hotel but
apparently only one on island with a room! - everyone either
celebrating thanksgiving or fleeing the conf! Spent afternoon in the
sea, surrounded by pelicans fishing, divebombing the sea with unerring
accuracy frequently about 12' from me! Food pretty ghastly at hotel
so thought I'd try Tobago's finest for dinner. Whilst I'd been
showering and getting ready, there had been a huge storm and downpour
and everywhere was soaked, especially the outside corridors and
marbley steps. And four steps from the bottom, my flipflops just planed
across the watery surface and I fell. Landed at the bottom and hit
the back of my head on the step behind me. I lay there in the pool of
rain that had gathered in the corridor. It was pitch black by now,
darkness falling fast and intense by 6pm in this part of
the world. Slowly I began to realise I couldn't just stay there. I
forced myself up and then looked at my wrist in astonishment. My hand
was at a most peculiar angle to my arm and the pain was intensifying
exponentially. I gingerly made my way to hotel reception, nearly but
not quite slipping again on the treacherous floor. The hotel manager
was solicitous but could do nothing. Eventually, all other avenues
having been exhausted, he called a cab and had me taken to hospital.
It's now 930pm and I've been here in A and E since 7pm. They've
examined it, given me a sling to relieve the pressure and an injection
to relieve the pain. The x-ray person has gone home and we all have
to wait till she has supper and is willing to come out again. In this
weather, I don't blame her for taking her time! The worst thing is the
overwhelming sense of isolation. It was 11pm UK time when I rang home
- he's obviously in bed and deeply asleep which irrationally makes me
want to scream. Reason reasserts itself and I realise how pointless
the call is - what did I expect? That he'd pop in the car and come and
rescue me? Well yes, dammit - never mind reason - come and rescue me,
take away the loneliness! The kids are each doing their Friday night
things and friends all busy with their own lives - this experiment in
being alone ain't going so well!

Thursday - by way of explanation

All the three previous blogs just published today - I know this isn't in the spirit of blogging but I just couldn't get access to the internet on the ship where I could also use a thumb drive - so have been writing and saving to thumb drive and then hoping to copy over to the blog when I finally got access -

anyway, have now left Serenade of the Seas - HM The Queen arrives tonight - big banquet - so thought I wouldn't get in the way! Seriously, my bit now done so have now moved to hotel on dry land - with some relief i think - don't think staying on cruise ships is quite my thing! -

Off to compose new tender, deadline 12 noon tomorrow UK time so must go and concentrate -

And the sun is shining!

Wednesday, Day of Creative Industries Panel

5.30pm – the mayhem is over and am just taking a couple of minutes out before the next event. Our session went well. At ten past ten, there were 20 people in a room set for 100 and it suddenly seemed a long way to come for 20 people – but then it transpired that an earlier session was over-running and Andrew, chairing the panel, decided to wait. Good call – within 10 minutes we were packed, with people bringing in extra chairs or standing at the back, with a sublime disregard for H&SAW! Pablo had put everyone’s presentation on to his Apple because the provided PC laptop wouldn’t support his slides – and of course, with a predictability that leaves you dumbfounded, and despite the half dozen dummy runs before the audience arrived, the bloody thing crashed as soon as the first presentation started. With weary patience, the shipboard tech support got it running on the ship’s laptop, and we were off. Hardesh Singh is a Malaysian music entrepreneur doing some very interesting work opening up the market in his home country, working with telecommunications companies on the new distribution of music – he won the British Council Young Music Entrepreneur of the Year this year. He was serious, unshowy and let the audience gasps come in response to what he did rather than how he presented it. Then Dr Abha from Simla in India – working with women weavers, using crafts and creative practice to help empower women to achieve some independence – the project has been so successful that they are talking about rolling it out across India and the world. She really is an academic specialising in women’s issues, and this is just one project she runs – again, a gentle speaker, whose images of the cloths the women were weaving drew spontaneous applause from the audience.
Then the fireworks began. Kiran, a Trinidadian now living in Miami, works with Disney and Warners and all the big media names imaginable. His work, as he described it, is at the very edge of ‘cutting edge’ – ranging from films to events to major stage shows – he is currently developing a peripatetic ‘Museum’ project, which will tour the world, and will use astonishing 3-D and augmented reality technology but whose core purpose is to ‘clone’ all the greatest artworks in the world and make them available to audiences who might never otherwise have the opportunity of experiencing the real thing – even the Louvre (whose management described Kiran as their worst nightmare – if people can have the work come to them, what need to go to the Louvre!) but they agreed to the cloning of the Mona Lisa on condition that, at the end of the tour, the cloning software becomes their property entirely!
The presentation was lightly and charmingly made, with Kiran never once making the mistake of drowning the audience in tech-speak and openly enjoying and sharing their wonderment at what he was showing. His own delight in the work was infectious.
And then Pablo arose. Looking like the embodiment of an El Greco-esque character, long and very thin, with a small narrow beard outlining his jaw line and his longish black hair cascading on to his shoulders, he was dressed completely in black save for an outsize diamante skull head as a belt buckle. His fierce black eyes shone piercingly through the black framed square spectacles he wore, enhancing the intensity of his heavily accented but completely intelligible, racing Colombian English. He gave the audience no breathing space, showering them with images and references, and unforgiving of them in their media illiteracy. In fact, he started with literacy – asked this audience of sophisticated government and business delegates how many of them could use a Playstation, knew what an X-box was, could upload apps on their phones – inevitably, he was met with embarrassed silence – he then said ‘if you don’t know how to use this stuff and what it can do, how can you possibly tell your children what they can and can’t do with it?” He then took the audience on a journey from when he first started programming computers aged 8, through the history of images invoking Gutenberg, Tesla, Gabriel Garcia Marques and many others, taking the audience way beyond anything they had imagined, making you question what you knew and wonder at what you didn’t – it was noisy, dramatic, political, passionate, provocative, funny and totally magical – one of the best I’ve ever seen. He ended with two coups de grace – he produced a T-shirt, just a common or garden T-shirt – one you wear and wash in the normal way, but one that has technology built into it – through augmented reality, he held the Tshirt against himself with the webcam focused on it and, as we watched on the large screen, butterflies appeared endlessly from the material, as it were, and fluttered around. And then he turned off the computer and showed the audience a book – it’s a book he’s just written for the schools in Colombia, teaching the kids about using technology. And technology is built into the book itself – in order to access parts of the book, kids will have use their mobiles; ‘bar codes’ of information are part of the text - and so on – as he says, the kids will get it immediately – it’s the teachers that will have the problems! Of course, there was a roar when he finished – everyone was knocked sideways and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who wanted more!
So then it was left to me to finish it – as Andrew commented under his breath to me as I go up to speak, “Follow that!” – and it was a bit like that – not for the first time, I cursed myself for not getting more advanced Powerpoint skills! – but mine was so different, I think the change of approach helped move things on – by the time I got going, despite the inevitable technology difficulties that, ironically, Pablo was tearing his hair out trying to resolve behind me, the audience had been thoroughly warmed up. They were therefore immediately responsive to anything that even remotely resembled a joke! That obviously affected me too so rapport was pretty immediate and I felt good as it went on. I quoted my brief conversation with the Minister the night before and i think it suddenly brought the whole discussion back into accessible reality – ‘monetising the Carnival’ was something everyone understood so, as I used it to take them on an unanticipated journey into CIDA’s Innovation process, our work with our Silicon Valley partners, the impact on clients and collaborators and the story of the Creative Town, I could feel (and hear) them responding.
As I have been writing this, Alison, the organiser of the programme, just came up to me to tell me that the word amongst delegates is that ours was the best session of the conference – very satisfying – if creatives can’t enthrall an audience, what hope the rest?!
I’m off to the pool deck to go dancing with Pablo!

Tuesday

Official start of the Conference: miraculously, made it to breakfast and the Opening Session in time – it’s raining outside – has been raining since I arrived –as bad as Manchester but at least it stays warm!
Went to Opening Ceremony out of a sense of duty rather than anything else but actually it was worth the effort. Charming address by the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago (TT, as it’s known) presenting Trinidad as a highly successful and ambitious industrialised nation, benchmarking itself positively against economies such as Canada, exploiting natural resources but also – and oh, I wanted to cheer! – talking not about the importance of the’ creative industries’ but , rather, about key sectors that included music, print and performing arts! Then a stirring speech by Kamalesh Sharma, the Commonwealth Secretary General. He talked movingly of ‘Partnerships’ not being about economics but about people – a three legged stool (‘and some of the legs are a little steadier than others!’) of public, private and civil society sectors – and a reminder, frequently repeated by other speakers, that the primary cause and objective of the Commonwealth is the elimination of poverty, without which everything else is, at best, compromised.
The next session brought probably the best speaker, certainly in terms of content: Professor Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize winner for Economics. A wry but confident speaker, he gave what must be the best exposition of how the financial collapse happened. He commented that, in organising the bail out for companies, governments never stopped to ask ‘What kind of financial system do we want post crisis?’ So now there is much talk of the sign of green shoots of recovery but it is only the companies (banks) that are really experiencing it – for ordinary people like you and me, things are still tough – in the US, 1 in 6 people willing to work are unable to find jobs. Money is still scarce. The bailout to banks was to enable them to continue lending to SMEs but, as we know and despite best efforts of Governments, they aren’t, even now. What they are doing, however, is looking for the best return on the money they have, irrespective of risk because they now know they are ‘too big to fail’, so they are investing in emerging economies, generating the same potential for false confidence and unsubstantiated risk taking, and where the necessary regulatory frameworks may not be in place, as they were not in the US pre-crash. This runs the risk of creating an investment bubble in those countries which, in time, they will be forced to face and deal with on their own as the Western bankers will simply slouch away. So once again it will be poor people that pay the price of Western indulgence. Stiglitz went on to comment on the need for fairness and trust – how interesting to hear an internationally recognised economist use those terms! What price emotional intelligence now! He talked about the mistrust between the banks themselves as being one of the key causes for the eventual crisis but he comments that nothing has changed – for example, in the States, the private sector makes loans to students; Govt guarantees those loans, making them good if the borrower defaults; yet the banks still charge for the loans as though they themselves were liable for the risk of bad loans – everyone knows it is happening but no one does anything about it. There was more.... but it’s too much for a blog – read his book !
In the evening, a reception on poolside with a fantastic steel band – impossible for anyone not to start moving, dancing – all the women dressed up to the nines, all the men in suits without ties – so that’s what ‘smart casual’ means!
At dinner, the Trinidad and Tobago Minister of Information came over and was introduced – ‘So, tell me, Anamaria – you're talking about the creative industries? how do we monetise our Carnival?’..............it was the inspiration I needed – have decided to make it the core of my speech tomorrow – thank heaven for Ministers!

Arriving in Trinidad

Arriving in Trinidad
Should have written this on Monday night but, by the time everything was sorted, it was late and I was tired – still, recent enough to recall so have decided to record it anyway –
Woke up early, had breakfast and then went for walk to see where I was. The whole area dominated by the colossal vision of two Royal Caribbean cruise liners moored in the port. The scale is extraordinary – seems greater than standing beside a Boeing 747 – you are completely dwarfed as a mere mortal! The harbour area is some way from the centre of Port of Spain so it’s not especially attractive to walkers, except that there is a CHOGM Village – specially set up, I think, and comprising a range of white tents (there must be a more elegant word for these amazing white canvas ‘pavilions’) which feature stalls by artists and designer makers as well as more traditional touristy stuff – it was all closed (too early in the morning!) when I was there but will aim to get there again –
The cab dropped me off later at the ship’s entrance – Serenade of the Seas - a complicated procedure for checking in but, because I was much earlier than other people, I met no queues. Then, led by a friendly but mostly silent young porter, I made my way through the halls and corridors, finally emerging on the dockside, wide and long, and with the enormity of this huge ship right beside me. Suddenly, the whole event overtook me. Very uncharacteristically, I had a moment of panic! I suddenly understood how people, who have never previously travelled on aeroplanes, must feel on their first arrival at an airport, an environment that has always been so familiar to me – this time, it was me who was totally out of my comfort zone, no idea of what was expected and what the rules of the game were, dwarfed by the physical size of everything, intimidated by the uniformed formality of everything, and overwhelmed by the sudden sense of complete isolation in negotiating bridges, lifts, corridors and – for god’s sake – staterooms!!
The ship was pretty deserted when I arrived – all 13 stories of it! How odd to talk of ‘stories’ – of course, I mean ‘decks’! Everything is uncompromisingly in ship language – heaven help you if you don’t know your port from your starboard! Lovely ( if small) ‘stateroom’ – bedroom to you and me! But I do have a balcony – imagine it would be very nice if we were actually sailing with an accompanying breeze and view of the wide silver sea – however, we are moored and my best view is of the ships’ huge packing crates that dominate most ports these days – actually, I enjoy it – it feels real, reminds me of Singapore and feels friendly. In the distance I can see the new Trinidadian Performing Arts Centre so that’s comforting too!
The 13 ‘decks’ make this place feel more like a hotel than like a ship – there is absolutely no movement that one would normally expect of a ship so it’s a bit hard to remember we’re on board! The decks vary from bedrooms to bars and restaurants to casinos and shops – on the 11th floor is the pool and solarium – and there is an ‘atrium’ in the centre so that, from every level, you can see down to the main centre bar lounge on the 4th deck. Nothing is open – and virtually no one except laconic staff is around – apparently, the shop owners couldn’t come to a satisfactory deal with the organisers so they will not open at all during our stay on board – tantalising, since they sell at duty and tax free prices and are full of gold which, CNN says authoritatively, is the thing to buy right now!
At 7pm people appear and there is a reception – Andrew Senior from the British Council, who is chairing my panel, arrives accompanied by Hardesh, the BC Music Young Entrepreneur 2009. Pablo Francisco Arrieta, another panel member, appears – he was the chatty one on the coach from the airport and turns out to be from Colombia. Within minutes, we discover that one of my favourite people in Bogota when we worked there is actually one of his mother’s closest friends – after that, there is no separating us! Of course, he’s a genius – Colombia is full of them! But Pablo is genuinely exciting and I will talk about him later –

Arriving in Trinidad

Ever since we started CIDA, I have always had a deeply personal ambition to do work in the Caribbean - there have been a couple of false dawns but now finally it feels like a foot on this particular ladder. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) is taking place in Trinidad this year and I have been invited to address the Commonwealth Business Forum (CBF) - this is one of the main activities that takes place during the week, and attracts Presidents, Ministers and leading businesses so it's a pretty spectacular forum - when I came through Immigration tonight at Port of Spain airport, the officer asked if I was with the conference and what was I going to be doing - when I told her, she clucked sympathetically and said 'Are you nervous?' - I said no automatically but suddenly thought to myself that that would probably change on the day! - then she asked what my topic was and I said Creative Industries - to my surprise (and pleasure!) she just nodded and said 'great!'

Very good flight - it was absolutely packed and full of diplomats and musicians in particular; Claudio Kron do Brazil, the really wonderful drummer from Brazil based in Dewsbury but who works all over the world, was sitting just behind me and he seeemed to know everyone so by the time we got to Port of Spain, there was a distinctly party atmosphere brewing! Claudio is apparently performing with a range of African and Caribbean musicians during the week but he seemed wonderfully uninformed about exactly what, where and when! At least we know we are all on the ship together (the CBF is taking place on board the Caribbean cruise liner Serenade of the Seas - they've taken over the whole ship for the four days and we're even staying on board.......this is the way to work!) -

The real joy of the flight, however, was when we landed briefly in St Lucia - I hadn't looked at my itinerary properly so it came as a bit of a surprise but, heavens above, what an amazing looking island - huge dark green mountains, like sugar loaf mountains in green, rising out of the sea guarding the harbours and beaches; very little development as far as I could see as we flew in ; spectacular white beaches in some areas but mostly high cliff coastline with the green growing right to the edge; why on earth would anyone live anywhere else?! I have been to, and for years have been in love with, Jamaica, Barbados and Antigua but I have to say I was knocked out by what I saw today - have to come back properly!

Found myself sitting next to a banker from Central Bank of Nigeria - only recently moved there from the City in London - fascinating discussion - we talked about the different personalities of the different countries in Africa - big generalisations of course but still with some truth - the sheer energy in Nigeria is almost palpable - he reckons they are the most naturally entrepreneurial country in the world, including the US - they don't have the appropriate infrastructure, physically as well as in terms of services and people, but it will come - they benchmark themselves against South Africa, apparently - but the feeling is that South Africa is heading into stormclouds whereas Nigeria is already under stormclouds so their future is to move into the sunshine!

So first night here - in a hotel tonight but can see the ship all lit up from my bedroom window - move in there tomorrow - just want to say thank you to the Arts Council and Kirklees Council for making it possible for me to be here - the CBF doesn't pay - but the biggest surprise all day has been the huge numbers of young people who are descending on this island for this event - not just performers but what I take to be social activists of one kind and another - the mix of accents is extraordinary - from every part of the world - apparently they are expecting 5000 visitors for the conference - how do you make impact on that?!

Mandelson and Murdoch and downloading

Spent last weekend in Brussels with colleagues - with Jo (Wilkinson) and Lee (Corner), we were there for the first of our two new Leonardo projects; I took advantage of being there to introduce Pernille Askerud, terific woman from UNESCO Bangkok and just back from working on cultural industries mapping in Bhutan, to Philippe Kern and Jan Runge of KEA, the Brussels-based EU consultancy. We ended up having quite a good chat and, in a rush of enthusiasm, I expounded my theory about free downloading being here to stay. There was an exchange of glances between Philippe and Jan and then they gently told me that they don't agree with me - they think the world is changing and that Governments are increasingly moving towards imposing penalties on those who dare. In fact, they commented that the UK, which has been so ahead of the field on all this and championed free access in the early days, is now being seen, thanks to Mandelson's recent moves, as moving in the opposite direction..."and Anamaria, if the UK is doing it, then what hope for the rest of us......!" Pernille, Lee and I spent the afternoon discussing it and its consequences - whether or not it is worth taking action.......who knows? - and then another nail in the coffin - Murdoch confirming that he is going to charge for downloading any of News International material - not if but when: he apparently is having some technical difficulties at the moment - and he is seriously considering blocking Google and suing the BBC for apparently using some of his material in their news sites................this just gets worse!

For those of us who are signed up members (metaphorically!!) of the Google School of Research, things sound as though they are going to get really tedious!

Awards

So CIDA won the Examiner's 2009 Creative Business Award - what a terrific pleasure that is as we come to the end of our first ten years! (Well, the birthday is actually on 18 January but it's as near as makes no difference!)

I don't want to write about those ten years just yet - but I do want to record our instinctive reaction to this event.

We thought of the hundreds of people who have worked with us in a wide range of capacities over the ten years and acknowledge our debt to them - we've always tried to keep the core of CIDA small so that we are able to commission a wide range of creative practitioners to go out and share their knowledge and skills with others. Some have worked with us from the beginning, some are only just starting with us, but all bring a talent, a commitment, an intellectual curiosity that prompts engagement and innovation, and a joy in their work that infuses their relationship with our clients.

They are as much part of who and what CIDA is as the rest of us - and we are profoundly grateful to them all!

File sharers are big spenders too!

Huh! Interesting! BBC News today reveals research by Demos that people who download music illegally also spend almost twice (£77 per month) compared with £44 per mth spent averagely by those who don't download - the Govt give a mealy mouthed response and manage to face both ways in typical political double speak - but critically they pronounce that "The scale of unlawful file-sharing poses a real threat to the long-term sustainability of our creative industries". This is simply not true. What it does do is reinforce the need for the creative industries (well, the big music producer boys, at any rate!) to get more creative, more imaginative about their business models. File sharing, downloading, is here to stay. When Mandelson (rather uncharacteristically I thought - he's usually more in touch than this - must be the company he's keeping!) threatened his draconian response to free downloading, most of the young people I know and work with just laughed - and continued downloading. And the interesting thing about that is that most of those young people are musicians and music makers...........

Govt has got to realise that they cannot put the lid back on this particular box. But they will insist on
listening to the wrong people - from Govt's own statistics, the creative industries is characterised by 94% of companies who employ less than 10 people - in fact the vast majority employ between 1 and 5 people. These are small businesses - and Govt has no mechanisms for hearing the voice of small creative businesses!

So instead they listen to the voice of the 6% minority who qualify as large companies, and who, turn out to be the very people who have grown large and rich by exploiting (through publishing and distributing etc) the creativity and IP of the small businesses - so the major music businesses, for example, whose market is rapidly disappearing as independent musicians learn how to publish and distribute their work themselves over the internet, now go wailing to government about how the creative industries are in danger from this unregulated behaviour and, idiotically, Government listen!! Instead of celebrating this new world where potentially artists take more control of their work, their market and their earnings!

What do we have to do to get Govt to realise that the world has changed? We now have an economy that is knowledge based, where the ecology is moving away from large monolithic companies to the vibrancy and fast moving culture of small and micro businesses for whom rules of practice are changing every day - all the old criteria that Government still use to identify '"success" are largely irrelevant - if a creative company doesn't "last for more than three years", that doesn't necessarily mean failure; it just means that they have chosen to move on to something else; if they don't "employ more than 5 people" , that doesn't mean that they don't know how to grow; it means that they choose to stay small - often so that their capacity for collaboration across a range of activities remains an essential part of their business practice! We don't have to behave - and indeed we don't behave - the way the companies behaved in the old manufacturing economy days - with huge investments in capital and labour that made fast moving agendas impossible to handle. We are fleet of foot, we change our perspectives and our business practice as we go, we are global in outlook and practice, we collaborate and then break up again, we offer no job security but we offer adventure, challenge, risk and reward - and we are much more fun - come on, Government, wake up and hear the music!

"You can't build a company that's fit for the future unless it's one that's fit for human beings." Gary Hamel



I was commenting yesterday on how standard management thinking was a thing of the past and this morning I came across this blog by Hutch Carpenter, talking about a session he went to where Gary Hamel was talking about management innovation and enterprise - essentially, Hamel was commenting on how, over the last century, the pace of economic change has increased exponentially whilst business nevertheless still operates on the same old management principles (Taylor, Sloan, McGregor and Deming). You can read the whole thing on http://www.business-strategy-innovation.com/2009/08/gary-hamel-on-management-innovation-and.html

Gary Hamel prescribes two strategies for companies in this 'post establishment' age:

• Increased organisational adaptability
• Pushing innovation and decision making out to employees

It's interesting - in many of the creative sector businesses we work with, these two strategies are statements of the obvious - without them, you simply fail. certainly in CIDA, it's our organisational adaptability that has kept us going this far - although our core principles remain unchanged, the company is very different from what we set out as, and certainly miles from any intial concept I had - but it is true that we have adapted as the business context around us has changed. For those of us leading the company, spotting those changes coming, understanding their impact, bringing that knowledge back into the company and exploiting the opportunities that arise from the change, is one of the most important things we do. And we know for certain that the best work we do is when everyone in the company has had a chance to help design and deliver it.

In small creative companies, the normal culture tends to be maverick: people are driven by ideas and ride over anything to get the ideas implemented. Maybe it's because of the personal investment, both intellectual and emotional, that creative entrepreneurs put into every piece of their work that they are more attuned to a changing world. Their inspiration comes from that changing world and instinctively they are pushing the boundaries, always asking 'what if...?' Creativity, i.e. the generation of new ideas, is at the core of what they do and how they think, and usually they surround themselves with people who think similarly, who thrive in the chaos of an ideas driven world, and who respond to the challenges. Successfully exploiting those ideas, however, delivering the innovation that arises from them, is the iron discipline that rides through the whole of the creative sector, through every company that gets its work delivered on time , as promised, to its paying public.

CIDA International Update

It occurs to me that the refurb of our website (www.cida.org) is taking longer than I expected, so I thought it might be useful to let people know what we are working on at the moment - as ever, it is hectically busy but it's also fun and challenging, the kind of mix everyone likes -

As ever, the creativity and the innovation agendas march side by side and it's fascinating to be working on how we bring them together to complement each other - Keith and I are going to be working with up to 25 businesses (5 days consultancy each) in Barnsley between now and January - I have my first client, a brilliant photographer Gavin Joynt, (www.gavinjoynt.co.uk) in the next week or so, and just looking at his website makes me feel excited - but we'll be working with businesses across all sectors, taking them through our Innovation process and helping to embed it in the DNA of the companies, so I think the experience will contain riches for all of us! As some of you know, we have a team of Innovation Coaches, including Lee Corner (http://www.lac-ltd.com/), Steve Manthorp (http://www.manthorp.co.uk/) and Val Monti Holland (no website, Val?), who are all based in Yorkshire, and a team based elsewhere including London, US and Australia but who all work with us on different projects. We all went through the training led by Herman Gyr and Laszlo Gyorffy (http://www.enterprisedevelop.com/) from Silicon Valley and we each bring our creative practice experience together with innovation process to create an unusual but tried and tested approach to help companies capture the innovation within their own workforce, colleagues and even clients.

Of course, Innovation is proving to be the new mantra, just like creativity was before it. Creativity as a word seems to have almost lost its meaning and I guess Innovation is going the same way - but the debate is intense and the thing I love is how the discussion has moved from trying to make creativity and innovation the latest tool in standard management thinking to the dawning realisation that standard management thinking itself is of the past. How funny it is for those of us who've spent most of our working lives in the creative sector, and lived with what that means (i.e. no job security, portfolio working, non hierarchical micro businesses, emphasis on collaboration, 'operating in hope of success instead of fear of failure'!) now to see how most industry sectors are slowly having to adapt to working the way we do - and to see how management theory is having to adapt to that!

Anyway, it makes life fun and we are enjoying it - we started a Raise the Bar course last week - this time especially for 20 established dancer/choreographers who want to develop their practice/business. Funded by the Arts Council, Yorkshire Dance Centre (led by the ineffable Wieke Ericke), has established a new CPD programme of which our course is part. It's 8 sessions between now and December. The first day was on Vision and Values and, at the end, one of them commented to Lee and Chantelle (our Course Directors) that she just wanted the day to go on and on - they all loved it and it made them think about themselves and their practice in a way they hadn't done before. That kind of reaction makes everyone feel good!

I kicked the day off with my presentation on Attributes of a Creative Entrepreneur. I've done it all over the world over the last few years and every time I do it, it gets a massively strong response. Once I was doing it in Saudi Arabia whilst Keith was doing it in Leeds and Lee was doing it in Utrecht - we were phoning each other as we finished just to hear each other's audiences' reactions! But the presentation has been given extra weight recently as we have just finished doing some interviews with UK creative entrepreneurs for the West Yorkshire Lifelong Learning Network (WYLLN). It reinforced a lot of our thinking but we also added in some of the more practical skills, like Marketing, Finance, IP etc, and it's made for an interesting pamphlet, I think - I am presenting next week to a WYLLN seminar and then will explore developing it into a book with Lee (Corner) collaborating to write the case studies. Since we have worked with creative entrepreneurs all over the world, there are some fabulous stories to tell so I think the problem might be choosing which ones we actually use! But we are also thinking of putting case studies on the CIDA website and portal (www.creativeportal.org) as a regular item, so I'm sure they'll all get used, one way or another!

Talking of books, Ana Carla Fonseca, a fabulous Creative Industries specialist in Sao Paulo, and Peter Kageyama of Creative Cities Summits, based in Tampa, Florida, both of whom work with us on various projects, are putting together a book due out before the end of the year. Called Creative City Perspectives, it features articles by about 18 different commentators (including me!) and has an Introduction by Charles Landry. After all the work involved in coordinating such a book, it's getting exciting seeing it coming to fruition -

Am happy to tell you we recently won a contract with the West Midlands Business Link to provide Innovation Advisory Services for SME businesses - that hasn't started yet but should be stimulating when it does. And of course we continue working with our partners in Doncaster Council - we are working with their LEGI programme, Success Doncaster, and meeting some extraordinary creative businesses; and the Council is also a partner in our Interreg ECCE Innovation transnational programme which is a fascinating project. As part of it, we've commissioned Graham Devlin to undertake a piece of research for us, looking at how HE supports R&D in the arts sector - he's taken an unexpected approach to it and I think it will prove fairly provocative in the end. Hopefully, it will be ready by the end of the year, and we'll be running a conference early next year to launch it.

Talking of European projects, we've won two Leonardo contracts, one to do with creativity and the other to do with innovation - working with Finland, Flanders and Barcelona on the latter - I'm particularly happy that at last we have a partner from the sunny South! - and Denmark joins us on the other. They both demand interesting work that complements what we are doing elsewhere so the synchronicity has been useful. The whole creativity and innovation agenda is a real hot topic in the EU just now - Keith has been invited to be founding member of a new EU network, EICI, that focuses just on this, so we are in at the heart of it all!

Finally, for now, we continue to work with the British Council Creative Economy Unit on their Creative Enterprise programme in Sub Saharan Africa. I'm probably going out to Kenya and Nigeria next month to work with tutors out there to help in the delivery of the course - meanwhile, the artists we worked with in Zimbabwe a few months ago are even now going from major city to major city in that country, delivering the course we did with them - apparently, it's going beautifully and Virginia ( Pirie, writer, www.nai.uu.se , and all round fabulous woman!) dropped me a note to say how responsive all the participants were - how fantastic that they can continue to develop their creative businesses and practice despite all that is going on out there -

There are a number of other possibilities on the horizon and exciting negotiations going on, from Middlesborough to Singapore - but I'd better wait for confirmations before I talk about them - !

Ah, well - there is one more thing you might be interested in! - I've been invited to address the Commonwealth Business Conference in Trinidad this November. It's all hugely formal, with Presidents, Prime Ministers and Ministers as well as leading international business leaders attending - I've been invited because of 'CIDA's strong global presence and experience in the creative industries' so all that travelling has paid off! Seriously, it's a thrill and I'm delighted - and, by the way, there is already a queue of people offering to carry my bags.................................!!

That's it for now - but there have been some really interesting pieces posted on the LinkedIn groups I belong to so will add them later on - does one say good bye at the end of a blog? Seems odd - I wonder what the etiquette is?

Been having fascinating discussion with Herman (Gyr) about incremental v radical innovation, customer led or customer focused.........will put it on our Innovation Advantage ning - in the meantime, have a look at this blog - from World Business Conference - genuinely thought provoking stuff and important to realise this is the context we all work in - and new insights from Gary Hamel which colour the way we work with clients -

http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=77876620&gid=1851951&articleURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebusiness-strategy-innovation%2Ecom%2F2009%2F10%2Fworld-business-forum-pulling-it-all%2Ehtml&urlhash=yM2Y&trk=news_discuss

I'm about to do some Innovation work with a sole trader (photographer) , with a local authority and with a group of dance organisations - this is stretching stuff!

Nurturing the innovation capabilities of your own staff

One of the key advantages of CIDA's Innovation process is that, in doing this work with you, we also show you how to do it yourselves and leave you with the tools that get used in the process. We firmly believe that the innovation process should be a regularly used tool in the management toolkit, enabling leaders to engage and capture the capacity for creative thinking and innovation amongst their own workforce. We're happy to come back from time to time to help refresh the practice if you wish, but really our success is measured in your ability to sustain an innovation process within your own company.



When Greg Dyke instituted this process in the BBC in his shortlived but acclaimed period of running the institution, he made a clear point of dispensing with the myriad consultants that had invaded the place under his predecessor. As described by Caroline Van Den Brul, the former Creativity Change Leader at the BBC, "The BBC in 2000 was using hundreds of consultants to bring creativity into the organization. At the same time a lot of top-down change programmes happened but did not succeed. The organization had become change fatigued.  Greg Dyke therefore wanted to awaken the untapped creative potential within the BBC. Dyke concluded that further radical change was needed: improve creativity, get closer to audiences and serve them better, make staff feel more valued, build trust and collaboration to the organisation and improve leadership and internal communications."  Andy Parfitt, Controller of Radio One, was sent on the 5-day Innovation Process workshop with CIDA's partners Herman Gyr and Laszlo Gyorffy.  On his return, he revolutionised the station's fortunes by implementing with his own staff some of the practice and new thinking he had learned.  (There is an excellent and inspirational short video showing the impact that this had on Radio One, leading to its current success.)


Then today comes news that the new CEO of AIG, the beleagured insurance company, has come in and sent consultants McKinsey packing............Bloomberg News says new AIG CEO Benmosche has given consultant McKinsey & Co. its marching orders. Benmosche says AIG already has “too many advisers” and “forgot to look in our own backyard for skills". Benmosche’s fighting words about revamping and reviving AIG by using its own staff means a lot to those who’ve been slaving under death threats and Congressional carping because of bonuses they never even received. (http://industry.bnet.com)


As management guru Tom Peters never tires of pointing out, if you want to know what your customer is thinking, ask your front line staff - no one knows better than them!

CIDA's Innovation Day

Well, we've run our first Innovation Watering Hole and what an amazing day!

About 25 people responded positively to an invitation to come and spend three hours on a Friday afternoon with CIDA to help us shape the way we offer our Innovation programme to our different constituencies - we used three tools from our own Innovation process to develop the ideas and the offers, and everyone contributed enthusiastically, honestly and generously. It was a terrific afternoon AND hugely productive!

The people who came were a mixed bunch - people who had worked for CIDA or who had been clients of CIDA; people who knew about us and wanted to get involved in our Innovation work particularly; and people who had vaguely heard about us and were curious to know more. They ranged across many different disciplines - from painters and musicians to corporate lawyers and local authority officers ; marketing specialists and police detectives to personal stylists and economists; and including strategists and funders - most didn't know each other at the start but the mixed groups gelled very quickly around common interests - the post-event buzz at our Cafe Ollo reception was intense and noisy and people stayed for at least an hour after it had finished!

In fact, the whole event had been pretty intense. We only had three hours in which to cover a lot of ground but we managed it. Each group focused on a particular segment of CIDA's customer base, and brought their own knowledge, experience, intellect and imagination to identify key issues and potential responses to those issues. Each mapped the external environment as it affected their customer base, and then they applied CIDA's COSTAR process. This is a structure, created by our Silicon Valley innovation partners Herman Gyr and Laszlo Gryorffy and developed with CIDA, which provides a methodology for making innovation 'do-able', making sure that you are addressing all the different aspects that are essential if you are to move from merely having good ideas to actually making them happen, and critically to do it in a way that benefits both your customer and your company.

When they had done this, after about an hour, each group then presented their proposals to the others, galvanising reactions and thoughtful feedback from that audience. Whilst the mood was certainly supportive, no one shrunk from home truths - realism was the order of the day and we in CIDA came away with a pretty clear sense of what was and what wasn't achievable! There was a lot of laughter as people shared experiences in their groups and as people discovered common cause. For CIDA, there was real awe at the generosity of people giving up their afternoon to help us - and I think for everyone there was a sense of discovery and then achievement as we pulled together innovative ideas for implementation.

We now have a lot of work in front of us, but each group has an in house CIDA Project Champion who will take responsibility for seeing it to fruition. We will run a few more Rapid Improvement sessions on each, as we rehearse and rehearse, polishing the offer until we have it pitch-perfect! And whilst the in house groups are doing that, a group of our specialist Innovation Coaches, including Keith and me, will be out there, working with a wide range of customers, from micro businesses to local authorities, actually helping them, where appropriate, to generate ideas and then to successfully exploit those ideas for the benefit of themselves and their customers. We'll keep feeding our experiences and findings into the CIDA groups' work so that it is constantly honed and kept relevant. And effective!

Holidays and Creative Entrepreneurs!

End of the holiday - tropical storm results in 2 inches of rain, making the pool overflow......

 

Springsteen in great form last night - three hours, just him and the band, and 22,437 of us - fabulous!  Extraordinary moment last night as, mid concert, Katherine did the check in on line for her and Alastair's British Airways flight tonight - using her i-phone, she checked in, selected her seats and got the boarding pass sent to her phone - all the while watching and singing with Bruce! Mad world!

 

Been looking at the attributes of a creative entrepreneur - www.cida.org/wylln - commissioned by West Yorks Lifelong Learning Network and researched for CIDA by independent researcher Moira Sutton - now up on our website and welcoming (indeed, requiring!) input from all creative entrepreneurs, practitioners and artists - this is a Call to Action!!  For those of you who know my work on this topic, it is interesting to see how closely this intensely researched list of attributes matches my own list drawn from the experience of 30 years in the sector.......!!

 

The idea of this project is to help academics in the WYLLN group check the content of their current courses against the industry identified attributes and behaviours needed for success in this sector so it's an important piece of work and your input would be invaluable – also, of course, the thing that really interests us in CIDA is that it is a step towards helping to set quality, industry relevant standards for in house training (i.e. work based learning) – part of a wider agenda we are looking at, including establishing a regional CI group, working with a group of interested CI employers, and talking to the NSA, ACEY and the RDA about developing together an effective agenda for skills development for the sector -

 

We've had some interesting - and surprising – responses to the WYLLN work on line:  CIDA's Facebook pages certainly have a wide mix of people looking at it, to judge by this - some challenging and thoughtful responses and extremely courteously expressed - one in particular from a practitioner/academic from the States but working out of a West Midlands university has led to an exchange of emails and probably a meeting to see where and if we can find common interests.  I'm extremely interested and will no doubt write more about this as and when it develops –

 

Of course, West Midlands is particularly exciting for CIDA just now as we have just been selected as a provider for their Innovation Advisory Service - briefing meeting next week but it's one that feels full of promise! 

 

And we are about to have a CIDA Innovation Day - we are inviting friends of the company to come and act as a 'Watering Hole' group for us as we devise some new programmes for the future – and of course it's an opportunity for us to introduce people to some of the Innovation tools that we use, so hopefully it will be challenging, creative and fun! Even people who can't make this one have all asked to be invited to another session in the future so maybe this is something we will develop –

 

Sun has just come out again so am off to enjoy it – Katherine and Alastair off tonight and we travel back tomorrow – it's been lovely!

We need your help! And you could win a brand new MP3 if you take part!

CIDA, in partnership with West Yorkshire Lifelong Learning Network, has been talking to a range of artists, practitioners and creative employers to see if we can identify some of the key behaviours that are essential for success as a creative entrepreneur. We have come up with a wide range of different attributes, many of which seem common to you all, irrespective of which sector you work in and many of them apparently necessary for success, irrespective of how long you have been in business. In other words, the learning you have to do to set up and run your creative business successfully is both demanding and unending! Does this ring true for you?
We'd really appreciate your input, so please go to www.cida.org/wylln for your chance to win!

The Economist and the Maharani

Have just read the most extraordinary obituary in The Economist about the Maharani of Jaipur. Reads as though it was written in the 30s! Would love to know who The Economist commissioned to write it - apparently, when she was sent to prison by Indira Ghandi, she poured French perfume into the sewer in her cell; 'As it ran through the building, Asia's largest prison and one of its worst, other prisoners gathered to inhale the wafting vapours, the true scent of royalty.'
Makes me see The Economist in a whole new light!

It's a funny thing, this blogging business. I suppose it's true that one blogs to be read but not knowing whether anyone does read your stuff, and then, even more so, not knowing WHO is reading it can be both daunting and discouraging. Which is why I stopped for a while. But in the last couple of weeks I've been amazed to meet people in very different places, both geographically and in my life, who have seen it and read it so here I am again! I've been tweeting too, mostly inspired by Stephen Fry's tweets - following him to Bayreuth and sharing his joy at the performances there has been a delight - of course when he talks about cricket, I'm lost! But I was reminded of when I was at the NT and Peter Hall was doing the Ring at Bayreuth - the stories were legion but, given the recent legal ruling, probably better not told here! Peter was an amazing man to work for - physically very imposing, he almost always spoke gently and calmly, playing against the sheer charisma that you felt the minute he walked into a room - most of the HoDs had stories of going to see him while you were steaming about something and coming away 20mins later feeling on top of the world,the crisis quite forgotten! Looking back now, it was an extraordinary time in my life! But then, so is now - Jorge from Sao Paulo emails to ask if I'm going to the World Arts Summit in Jo'burg next month and could we meet up; Craig, currently writing the score for a Mark Ravenhill play at his request, rings to see if I can go to Nashville to see his new work there; Elena from Toronto writes to make contact because she's been reading about CIDA - Lee and I have spent last couple of weeks working up CIDA's aims for the next five years - and I find that the DCMS cabinet (no ampersand on phone) is following my tweets - such fun!

Excellent meeting with Keith Arrowsmith, our Company Secretary - he's moved to London (www.sghlaw.com) so we met at the Champagne Bar in St Pancras and had delightful pot of tea! Had lovely long and wide-ranging chat: about using blogs - he apparently gets phoned by journalists about various media stories because his blog makes him visible, as it were - fascinating stuff! The Diageo and Sainsbury story, Alton Towers and Speedos.....very funny and lightens up a more serious week! Also exchanged notes on theatre - he loved Streetcar and I loved The Mountaintop - we were both seeing Arcadia next - he told me of audience research pointing out that majority of concertgoers play instruments themselves so musicians should be less supercilious about amateurs! He tells me that the CEO of a company he's a Director of actually emails Board members every Friday...! Altogether a revitalising and happy chat at end of a not so good day!!

Can anyone Recommend Collaborative Document Working Software?

Can anyone help to point us in the direction of an effective and user friendly site for working simultaneously with colleagues on collaborative documents? Any ideas welcome!

CIDA International

In a flat panic to clear the decks before going on leave for a couple of days - Literally, in the last hour, I have signed an agreement with Young Entrepreneurs in Oporto Portugal to collaborate on a project for young people; sent a formal invitation to the wonderful Decio in Brazil for him to come over and shadow us at work for a month and then for one of my CIDA mentors to go there for a month and do the same with him in SEBRAE, Brazil's nearest equivalent to CIDA; brokered a meeting for Albert Nyathi from Zimbabwe with a fab UK promoter of world music; and introduced Screen Yorkshire to an amazing partnership opportunity with a company who is the main funder of a major Beijing film festival and who are now looking for international partners to set up an exchange training programme -

Well the above paragraph may not be pithy, but my God the work is exciting! -

And now off to rainsodden Devon..................but at least the company will be great!

Help please!

Working on several bids at the moment - great way to spend the summer! (yes yes - what summer?!) anyway, need some help - we all get so confused with the 'versioning' of documents that I am desperate to find some on line system of collaborating that really works and really takes the pain out of all this - thought I'd found the answer with Scribd but then discovered you can't edit on line - so it's not really collaborative at all - are there any other good and user friendly sites - does anyone know? is there anyone out there?

Just another lazy Sunday (19 July 2009)

Albert Nyathi is here - he is a highly acclaimed performance poet and musician from Harare - we worked with him when we were there recently and he has now come to the UK to perform. He is former Director of the Zimbabwe Arts Council and one of Culture Fund's group of artist assessors for their funding programme for new creative businesses. He is a huge personality whose creativity, seriousness of purpose and great sense of fun all burst through simultaneously - a natural leader and hugely popular in Zimbabwe - when we went out with him one evening, we kept being stopped by people coming up to him in real delight at the chance of meeting him. He's coming up to CIDA on Friday as he is keen to discuss the potential for setting up a version of CIDA in Harare - (be still, my beating heart!) - watch this space! And spent yesterday working with Adalet Garmiany, an Iraqi artist introduced to me by Lee C - he's actually from Kurdistan, his father was one of the leaders there, and he is trying to set up an amazing art event in Iraq in November called Post War Art and Cultural Festival - (could perhaps do with re-titling!) - potentially taking the artist Richard Wilson out to do an extraordinary installation (involving the use of oil, real oil!), as well as four other UK artists to work with 10 Iraqi artists, and involving local children, schools etc. Adalet is passionate, intense, utterly committed, well connected and very bright - he's secured a lot of support but needs more money - £150,000 would do the trick if anyone knows anyone! - we spent the day doing budgets - (I get all the good gigs!) - starting at 1030 but we'd (I'd!) had enough by 5pm and so we called it a day but we need to do another day still to get the company finance sorted - The passion and commitment that are characteristic of both Adalet and Albert just bring home to me a couple of thoughts - firstly, confirmation of my experience that artists all over the world are united by a common set of values stronger than anything that you normally see within individual nations; and secondly, how important the arts are in sustaining hope, inspiring the imagination and sustaining the 'spiritual' life of people even in the most appalling of life's circumstances - it's genuinely humbling to work with people like this -

Harare

All week I have been listening to the heart rending reports on the BBC Radio 4 Today show directly from Zimbabwe - of course, they reinforce that what I saw is not the whole story: I am completely aware of that - but, although I don't want to be Pollyanna-ish about this, the fact remains that the experience that we had on our extraordinary visit there was that, in the areas in which we worked and played (Harare city centre and Vic Falls, respectively) everyone talked about a sense of slowly growing optimism - that the National Unity Govt is making things different - the fear is receding, in the city centre at least - the BBC and others are right to foreground the terrible damage in every sense but it's not the only truth - and real change will only come with real investment and it seems real investment will only come when foreign governments are convinced that change is happening - and their refusal to help till then just means that more children die every day -

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago when I was full of the excitement of working in Harare but had no clues how to blog - so now I do know, I still think it worth posting, even if it is a bit late!
Sunday 24 May 2009: It is simply humbling to be here in Harare - despite everything that's happened, life goes on - in the city, and of course outside the city it will be v different, but here... People are walking around in couples and family groups (it's Sunday); sun is shining; there is evident poverty but not the folorn-ness that so often goes with it and there are clear signs of a still relatively comfy middle class; the hotel is right in the heart of the city and has clearly seen better days - but the staff are gorgeous and friendly - it's as though noone has told them that times have changed - so you still get a suite, not a room - the bathroom fittings are rusting, the springs in the sofa are gone (bit of a surprise when you sit!), the Hotel directory still offers wifi but they smile regretfully: am sorry madam, that service is currently unavailable. The ads in the lift promote the restaurant with photos of a profusion of food, most of which is 'currently unavailable' and the restaurant stands empty with more than 20 tables fully laid up for silver service whilst three restaurant staff stand together in desultory chat, dressed in old style English uniforms, madly inappropriate for this weather - no A/C of course; the pool sparkles in the photo but the reality is a sad, empty dried up space, showing real signs of neglect; I've been worrying because I left my hairdryer in UK but the Hotel Manager puts it into perspective when, as part of the welcome, he warns us there may not be enough water to shower in - but over and above all that, am overwhelmed with the sense of privilege of being here at this time - Ignatius, Dep Director British Council, is divine and I am deeply in love - he is also an award-winning poet and writer and it shows - intelligence, sensitivity and a deep caring concern for both artists and the future of his country is evident from the moment you meet him - he picked us up himself instead of sending the BC driver - am wondering how we convert this to real partnership instead of just flying in and delivering a contract - suddenly, a real rush of feeling that what we are starting here might really matter way beyond our normal raison d'etre; can we really help to make a difference?.....I suppose in the end it's a question of watch this space - but come on CIDA - let's do something special, something real.....

So, after all this time, my note still seems to convey the impact of actually being in Harare at this time in their history. Perhaps idiotically, I want to share this with CIDA friends and supporters to illustrate how the world wide family of creative entrepreneurs shares values irrespective of economic environment and cultural background. It is extraordinary, inspiring and informative - and I think potentially powerful – let’s see what this community can do -

A colleague in the States is thinking of inviting me to speak at a conference he is running later this year and wants to know what my theme would be - since they are particularly interested in the role of the arts in other sections of the economy and society, I thought I'd try out an elaboration of what we were discussing last week: it goes something like this:

CIDA exists to help creative people change the world –
We do this by giving them the knowledge, skills, confidence and opportunities to change the way people think.
Together, we enable governments, communities, businesses and individuals to do things differently.
We place creativity at the heart of all our futures.

I wonder if that works - I want us all to be clear that the reason we get out of bed in the morning is to help creative people earn their living from their creativity. But, inevitably, most of the time our fees come from governments, quangos and communities who want us to help them develop their own creative economies, sometimes by helping their artists and creative communities to become better at the entrepreneurial and business aspects of their work; sometimes by helping them to create the infrastructure for developing a strong creative community/economy, whether through skills development, business support or workforce development; and sometimes by introducing the skills of creative people to more traditional business or community environments - whether that be stimulating creative thinking in local communities for the Renaissance of their towns and cities, or inspiring and supporting businesses to introduce innovation into their company as a critical but do-able management process that helps them to survive and prosper.

Primary market - creative people; secondary market - governments, communities, businesses and individuals -

Does that make sense?

Just had fab week with CIDA Board and staff reviewing what we've done and where we want to go - revelatory, challenging and inspiring - we have a very strong team at the moment and a group of regular associates who know us well, share our values and who play an incredibly important part in helping us to achieve what we set out to do. Big debate over core purpose - I think it's 'CIDA exists to help creative people change the world' - a lot of argument from marketing oriented people who seemed to confuse our primary and secondary markets - our primary market is the creative community, giving them the knowledge, skills, confidence and opportunity 'to change the world' - but our secondary market, through whom our primary market wreaks its transformational impact, is the range of governments, institutions, quangos, foundations etc who commission us to help develop their creative economies in whichever way they wish to do it - but for which work we always involve our creative allies - so artists, creative practitioners and independent creative thinkers are all part of the CIDA team, mentoring, advising, inspiring, innovating, designing and facilitating individuals, businesses and communities of all kinds 'to change the world'!