Oct
Enterprise thriving in Birmingham, insist council and AWM is the headline of Anna Blackaby’s follow-up article to Bennie Gray’s call to arms on Wednesday. The general gist I’m picking up is while the city council and Advantage West Midlands agree with Bennie’s general thrust we don’t need to worry as everything is in hand. Which is good to hear.
It’s not my place to respond to that here - hopefully Bennie will do that himself - but we’d welcome your reactions to this. Bennie’s issued a challenge and outlined some possible solutions. The city leaders have outlined what they’re doing to deal with it (though D’log has some issues with the visibility of these projects). But a manifesto traditionally has a list of demands, some realistic, some idealistic.
What would you demand?
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So response boils down to ” ’sok, we’ve got it covered, kthnksbai”
Demand 1 - every senior figure in the wm actively uses the social web daily.
In the current climate, “business as usual” is a dangerous option. Not just in the face of economic woes, but in the ongoing changes arising from the radical and difficult shift to a networked ‘wired’ world. Focus and energy has already noticeably switched away from creative industries support in the last 18 months, both that the national and regional levels, and for a complex variety of reasons.
If there are suddenly further problems with production at Longbridge, as there may well be, there may be a further shift in the already low level of attention and energy given by city councillors to the creative industries. If that happens then the Creative Republic would have to become a far more challenging and dynamic organisation than it has so far seemed to be, in order to fight its corner and make a difference.
To a great extent the council’s current hype about being a ‘digital city’ is simply piggybacking on what is already being rolled out by private firms and individuals locally - Midlands videogame development, mobile broadband wi-fi, your own loose network of social media producers etc. 4IP and the Warwick Digital Lab can also be seen as quasi-private initiatives, and again the Council is being opportunistic to associate itself with things such as that. What the Council does bring to the table in terms of digital (Birmingham Island in ‘Second Life’, BizFiz, Birmingham Industry and Genius Marketplace, etc) just looks plain “wrong” to a great many people who stand outside of the Council fence.
And then, as Dlog pointed out, the funding has simply run out for several existing Council schemes that councillors point to as proof that they’ve ‘got it covered’. Bennie is correct in saying that the city needs some very fresh thinking and fresh faces in business support. Ideally, it needs it before next Spring.