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!