Best practice - Creative industries and responses to place and culture - Creative industries strategy and workspaces, Aberystwyth and Three Mills Island, Bromley By Bow, London, Mr David Clarke

1. Creative industries and responses to place and culture - Creative industries strategy and workspaces, Aberystwyth and Three Mills Island, Bromley By Bow, London, David Clarke

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19. A creative industries strategy for University of Wales Aberystwyth A project in which we set out a medium term plan to build a creative industries ‘layer’ on an existing cultural infrastructure Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

20. A creative industries strategy for University of Wales Aberystwyth University of Wales Aberystwyth is a campus university with a very substantial cultural centre serving much of mid-Wales The University has historically been a supplier of creative people for the Welsh economy but retains little of this talent locally How to mobilise the very substantial infrastructure for culture to deliver creative industries development and talent retention? Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

21. A creative industries strategy for University of Wales Aberystwyth A phased strategy of intervention to: Make better links between teaching, research and CI business Develop new workspaces as incubators, accelerators and for CI hub businesses Provision for new residency programmes to stimulate local talent Retro-fitting the University main hall as a digital studio Making new production spaces Refreshing the creativity brand of the site Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

22. Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

23. Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

24. Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

25. Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

26. Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

27. Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

28. Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

29. A creative industries strategy for University of Wales Aberystwyth Strengths Layers support for the creative industries in existing cultural infrastructure Investment costs are limited and marginal Costs are offset by income generated from the broader cultural economy of the site Provides access to facilities for the whole production chain: Creates an ecology where people and products permeate through the boundaries of the production economy Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke Laboratory Testbed Manufactory Showcase Distributor

30. A creative industries strategy for University of Wales Aberystwyth Weaknesses The Creative Industries facilities are necessarily limited This is not a powerhouse of production The objective is not to drive large quantified outputs Maybe it is more suitable to smaller places, town and urban satellites than to the metropolitan core? Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

31. Developing Bromley by Bow on the theme of a cultural ecology A project in which we are setting out to make a sustainable creative place at the heart of a city regeneration zone Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

32. Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

33. Developing Bromley by Bow on the theme of a cultural ecology Bromley by Bow – a classic post industrial city fringe in East London Less than half a mile from the 2012 Olympic stadium but essentially undeveloped Lots of interest in the creative industries But with a history of failure and transience of conventional CI interventions Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

34. Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

35. Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

36. Developing Bromley by Bow on the theme of a cultural ecology The context We are commissioned for the heritage project to renew and interpret the House Mill But the Mill exists at the pivot of several major regeneration and development schemes: A major urban park Huge residential and retail schemes New public spaces New transport infrastructures Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

37. Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

38. Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

39. Developing Bromley by Bow on the theme of a cultural ecology We are seeking to develop a broad cultural layer to the development of the area Historic interpretation of Mill, place and landscapes Extending this storytelling through the public realm, developments and streetscape Developing community resources to give local people control of some part of the place Doing simple things – cafes, toilets, markets And looking for integrated, local, appropriate CI interventions Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

40. Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

41. Developing Bromley by Bow on the theme of a cultural ecology Strengths By identifying heritage stories with enduring resonance, we make stronger sense of place and more integrated community, for those who live, work and visit here We open opportunities for non-specialist local people to edge into the CI sector A stronger sense of place/identity enriches practice and the products of the sector By building a locally anchored and ‘owned’ ecology of cultural content, opportunity and creativity, the CI interventions that follow might best take root And might best resist the common pattern of gentrification and displacement Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

42. Developing Bromley by Bow on the theme of a cultural ecology Weaknesses We struggle with the scale of the task in joined up working – e.g. making a workshop of 17 distinct design and consultant teams all working at once We have to generate and influence resources across many schemes and many agencies Perhaps this approach dilutes the creative industries cluster? And we have to understand that the more organic the ecology, the less we can determine and direct it strategically Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke

43. So – in conclusion - When we think of creative economies, maybe we should be thinking of creative ecologies: The ecology that grows from layering the creative industries interventions in other cultural infrastructures The ecology that clusters together not many similar things and businesses, but a diversity of differing and complementary things The ecology that weaves our Creative industries interventions into a fabric of heritage, identity, community and sense and meaning of place Creative industries and responses to place and culture. David Clarke