Swimmer out of water
General | Georgina Lock | 14.04.08
Comments (0)
New on The Broadsheet
Creativity is the organic brand of a city
by Jonathan Casciani
In October 2007 Nottingham will hold its first creative business awards to acknowledge the city’s thriving creative community.
In the late eighties and early nineties a load of baggy trousered musicians put Manchester back on the cultural map and effectively started the ‘rebranding’ of what was perceived to be a rough northern town. Since this seminal point in British history, city’s across the UK have been attempting in one form or another to ‘rebrand’ and reposition themselves in the mind of the public.
What was important was that Manchester, (or should we say Madchester!) was that it happened almost by accident. There was no new logo, pr guru, coordinated marketing campaign or flash new art gallery. There was just great creative people, breaking through and becoming successful.
This brings me onto Nottingham. Nottingham is not Barcelona, New York or London and never will be. Nottingham is a working city, with highly creative people and a lot of potential. It provides a great lifestyle and has a growing creative economy that is firmly embedded in the city’s culture.
What creative people do for a city that a branding exercise can never really achieve is to create a unique experience for people who live, work and visit the city. The Nottingham Creative Business Awards is an opportunity to celebrate creative success and put Nottingham on the map. More importantly, it’s an opportunity to demonstrate how music, film, design, art, architecture and all other kinds of creative business adds value to our daily experience of living in a city.
I feel that the Nottingham Creative Business Awards is a great opportunity to acknowledge how creativity benefits our lives. What is encouraging and unique about the awards is it not restricted to a single discipline such as architecture, design or art. The awards will acknowledge many forms of creativity and is intended to be representative of what is happening across the city.
I think this is a great way of demonstrating that creative practice exists in many forms and that it’s a combination of these ingredients that leads to a stable and prosperous society.
A diverse creative culture leads to cities with unique atmospheres and experiences. If we continue to encourage creative businesses to thrive our cities will form an organic ‘brand’ that is capable of continuous self-reinvention. This is something that cannot be achieved with a mission statement, logo, marketing strategy and big new art gallery. (Not that I’m suggesting that these things don’t have value.)
If the awards help to build the cities profile and help creative businesses succeed then that’s great. If the awards change the way we behave towards our cities, it will have achieved something exceptional.
Jonathan is a designer and director of design and brand consultancy Casciani Evans Wood.
Business | Jonathan Casciani | 16.05.07 Comments (0)
Agree? Disagree? Have an opinion? Join the debate and let us know below.
