Creative Durham

Earlier this week, durham_rambler received an invitation for yesterday afternoon, to an event being organised by Creative Durham; it sounded like a business / networky event, and we were curious, but with no clear idea of whether it had anything to offer us (or vice versa). When I turned over the letter of invitation to see if there were any further details on the back, the reverse of the page was solid bright pink, which is informative in its own way; and when I checked the web address given on the letter, I found an advertisement for the hosting service (since replaced by Creative Durham's own holding page) - likewise.

So we should have known better, but it was Friday afternoon, and we were curious, so we went along: a large room in a hotel, with four or five display stands, rows of chairs, coffee set up outside and a respectable number of people, none of whom I recognised, and who looked a little sparse in the large space available. We'd just began to talk to web developers WOW Solutions (one of the exhibitors, possibly because are designing Creative Durham's own web site), when a demonstration of Lindy Jazz took over: we were invited, quite insistently, to participate in a session of learning simple steps as a means of communicating - in pairs of whom one is the follower and one is the leader. No thanks. After this had gone on for some 20 minutes, we decided to leave, but met Jill Newey, one of the organisers, in the lobby, and were happy to spend five minutes with her, chatting about the organisation and what she was hoping it would do.

We then returned to the meeting room for a speech from Creative Durham's patron, Lord Mackenzie. I was a little distracted from what he was saying by the large screen behind him, on which the company's logo did its dance all the time he was speaking. He told us that he does a fair amount of after-dinner speaking, and much of his material (particularly the jokes) would have fitted into a generic after-dinner speech; but he did also say some things about the importance of the creative sector in the community which were genuinely interesting - and conducive to cynicism about why the business services people are now getting interested. He also urged us to go away and tell our friends about the afternoon; up to that point I had thought it would be unkind to do so, but if that's what he wants...

The other thing that persuaded me to blog about the afternoon was the dinner party we went to that evening. We were invited by an old friend to dine, to chat and enjoy good company, and to be entertained by her godson who is developing an act as a magician. So after dinner we arranged our chair round the table on which was arrayed a large collection of props - boxes, cards, cups, swathes of purple silk, all presided over by a flower fairy figurine. And while we drank our coffee, we were entertained by a variety of tricks - and there was discussion after about how did he do this - or that?, but I don't know, I was just enjoying the presentation.

In between times I was talking to our hostess's son and his partner, who had recently organised Bombay Mix, a film festival to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Indian independence. Here's Meena talking about it to BBC London, and here are Lionel's alternative street signs for Deptford.

Your point being? That I don't see any point where those two events connect (except that they both happened on the same day, and to me). That I am surrounded by a huge amount of genuine creativity (not least on the f-list of this journal), and perhaps it was present at the "creative business" event, but if it was, it was keeping a low profile. That Creative Durham as an organisation is not about being creative, or about providing services to people who are being creative, but about providing (and that means selling - it is a business, after all) services to people who provide services to people who are creative. Which is a little indirect. If someone sees this as a business opportunity, and wants to put their own money into following it up, well, good luck to them - and in fact they said they had received funding for their website, which I assume is new business funding, and I suppose they're as entitled to as any other new business (I suppose) - so long as they aren't displacing funding and support which might otherwise go direct to creative work.

And I apologise for the length of this rant: I feel much better now...