That being said, these awards from Birmingham City Council exist for businesses, and nearly all awards in the creative sector are created for companies to nominate themselves.

In the current climate, for businesses to compete with London agencies, and to build strong teams that consistently put out excellent work should be recognised even more so.

The creative sector contributes 9% to the Midlands economy and many designers learn their trade working for and with businesses in this sector.

Birmingham City Council have provided much support to this sector and people have benefitied and grown their business using this support, myself included.

The awards this year were a smooth operation, and will no doubt help show companies who are providing work to companies outside the region, exactly what Birmingham has to offer.

Just found this post. I have to agree entirely.

You can enter by self-nomination or by being nominated. We had several people receommend to us that we enter in 2007 so we did. We didn’t feel right doing it because our personal view on these things is that nominating yourself for an award surely is really arrogant?!

So anyway, we did enter, we were shortlisted as finalists, got interviewed by a small film crew at ITV (during which the final question was something akin to “how do you feel about all the help from the City Council particularly with the funding made availalbe etc?” and were told that naturally we have to answer because they’ve sponsored the whole affair, so we came up with some nonsense whilst thinking “funding? funding? what funding? We’ve not had any of that…”

After this we had to make a presentation to a panel who we believed, prior to the meeting, were interested in our creativity. But sure enough, pretty much the only thing they cared about was the money money money. Even though we had grown year on year, it was not enough for them.

So during the awards 2007 we came second place – in our category of two entries.

We actually had people come up to us after the meal at the awards telling us we should ahve won because our work was more creative than the other entry.

We came away from the awards feeling pretty deflated, and let down. We had not gone there genuinely expecting to win, but we really believed it was about the work that companies produce. It very quickly became clear that the whole thing is just about moeny and not creativity, and as such, within our company it has become known as the ‘Financial City Awards’.

As for the night itself, as soon as I walked in to the venue, I commented to my girlfriend about the tacky presentation of the event, and was even more shcoked at the appaling production quality of the interviews on the screens for the nominees – even to the point that they got our name wrong. Then to make things worse, they spend more time and energy bigging up the people who were going to hand out the awards rather than looking at the ‘creative’ talent who were in the room, much to my irritation.

Soembody who I won’t name but who has already comemnted above, asked me when I met them for the first time some 6-8 months after the awards “did you notice how all the winners were the companies who had received funding?” …. I hadn’t even thought about it, but it made sense.

It cost our company about £4,500 to enter the awards, jumping through all the hoops and fulfilling their ‘entering needs’.

So, after this long rant, are we bitter? Yes, a touch in honesty. Do we really care about the City Council’s opinion? No, as it became very clear that they have no idea what real creativity is.

We have worked with some really great people at the council who have been excellent client. It’s jsut extremely dissapointing that as an organisation they are pretty poor, and make life so much harder and less enjoyable than it should be. For us, as an organisation, they have been nothing more than a hindrance to our business.

Now, I’m off to congratulate LHM Media on their win – I know them very well.

re furthest sticker stuck, I saw a TAK! sticker in Tokyo…

Thinking about my own work on creative projects in the city, any recognition would be great, but I think I’d most like to be congratulated by my peers on making work which is inspiring, or touching, or groundbreaking. Lots of the companies involved in these awards make work which is all of those things, but it’s these bits of their work I think we should be celebrating.

Incidentally, I think it’s also the thing other creatives, and the general public at large, would be most interested in hearing about too, and it’s those things which make people want to work in, live in or visit this city, which of course has its own financial benefits.

Of course it’s great that we have some financially successful creative businesses in the city and I’m very proud of them. But I’m more proud of the fact that some of them make amazing work, and that’s what I’d tell someone who’d never heard of them. If someone asked you about a particular theatre or web design company you’d tell them about the shows they put on or the websites they design first wouldn’t you? You might mention the fact that they’re financially successful too, but that’s not what would make someone want to visit that theatre, or employ that company to redesign their website.

The best quality lowbrow creation.

CiB awards sounds a little bit worrying to me – this site works because it doesn’t put one thing above another qualitatively. Recency and interestingness are the things I look for here. But Pete’s idea s worth discussing!

There’s been various conversations for a few years on “why don’t we organise a big party every year” which would seem pretty simple to get off the ground with a few sponsors. Perhaps I’m naive.

James says he wants to see arts organisations mentioned. Aren’t a lot of them non-profit? Hence they can’t enter.

If we’re talking categories, how about:

Coolest pixel
Most genius collaboration
Stupidest idea that actually worked
Most cumulative happiness given to people you’ve never met
Most money made in one day
Furthest sticker stuck
Biggest ‘wow’
Most surprising use of a public space
Most comments on a blog post tagged ‘birminghamuk’
Most ridiculous stunt
Biggest bang for buck
Narrowest niche

I often bore people at business/funding meetings with the idea that if this was the 1970s we’d all be talking about ‘the workers’ rather than ‘business’. At that time the worker had power beyond their role as employee because almost everyone belonged to a representative body: a union. They had power and they often wielded it.

Now that we’re in the unique position of having a representative body for Creative Workers in the city, Creative Republic, how creative use them to wield some power. What if Creative Republic we’re tasked with (re)conceiving a Creative City Awards for Birmingham?

The link with business is still there as well. Focusing awards on creativity and creative producers can still drive business growth by positioning the city as a place where the best of creative ideas are developed, nurtured and, where appropriate, commercialised.

@Pete. Bring on the semantic debate – my fave kind! What is Creativity? That’s a question being posed at our next book club (we’re due to read John Hope Mason’s ‘The Value of Creativity’).

Birmingham Creative Spotlight. One “thing” (organisation, individual, collective, whatever) per month gets a massive push through various media outlets.

Use the Icanhascheezburger model to bubble them up through online voting and then selected by a board of peers. (I’ll let someone else decide how the board should be selected.)

I’ll still come the awards ceremony, though…as long as the Villa aren’t at home and it’s not a special 3-parter on The Bill or something..but otherwise, y’know, I’m there.

:)

Get the panel from outside Birmingham, consiting of people who know their “creating” and it’d be completely fair.

Perhaps other companies/creatives will do something similar and make this happen?

Run it like BiNS’s Brummie Of The Year with nominations across a range of creative areas and then have a panel judge the categories along with a vote for the big one.

Then we all go to the pub for the awards to be handed out. Job’s a goodun.

Dave, as with Anthony Herron, I agree with your conclusion.

I also think that official figures are often misleading though.

If you look at either business figures or creative ‘workers’, the way they are counted varies dramatically from one bean counter to another. If you haven’t employed a new person to demonstrate growth etc. These conditions are irrelevant to most creative working practice and new definitions for old models like ‘co-working’. It is obvious that what we have are guide lines drawn up by those concerned with other industries and sectors imposing a system of reward and classification on a sector they have little knowledge of.

Anthony, “You are not more creative just because you’ve made more money than someone else”. Spot on – either the title of the event is misleading or the process is inherently wrong. Other views that it should be a creative led award for creative achievement would be more advantageous to promoting those who either have no ‘recognizable’ financial trading record or, for some strange reason known only to creative people – actually create with no financial agenda in mind – does anyone remember that one?

However, rather than worry about this award being misguided and trying to fix it, isn’t there room for another award? Do we really need to have a one size fits all award – that will never happen.

Being a creative of any description should not require you to demonstrate financial acumen, procedures or achievement to justify worth in cultural or social terms.

Rewarding purely on financial success should be left to those sectors where it is applicable. Using creativity as a buzz word is misleading. After all making money isn’t always so much a skill as a character trait.

Creative Businesses have to strike a balance between creativity and being a business. They cannot exist without each other, nor should one dictate to the other.

Awards should recognise success in achieving this balance; after all, presenting a plaque to an entrepreneur who had a great idea and went bust is hardly inspiring.

Rich Batsford
(core member of the creative network and “not for profit organisation” Project X Presents”.
Xx

I own a ‘creative’ company, but I didn’t apply, nor is it something that currently interests me. But the fact you have to be a company (or even declared sole trader) is a joke. Is Banksy an ltd? To win a mercury music prize, do you have to submit a profit/loss forecast for the next three years? Shouldn’t the awards be for erm, people, who are creative or innovative regardless if they are profitable? You are not more creative just because you’ve made more money than someone else. And some of the nominees? I think your eligible to apply if you have more than 1 colour on your business cards.

Maybe what we need from these awards are a celebration of the Creative City that recognises the contribution that the creative occupations make. There are 25,925 creative workers in the CIs in the city (2005 figure). Even more creatives work outside the CIs in other types of companies so the pool of potential nominees is suddenly much wider. Birmingham has a longstanding obsession with all things business but how about we champion the workers for a change? Get together a panel of creative workers rather than MDs and business support managers. Some of the above categories still stand (Innovation, Brand, an overall Creative Industries Award) but there could be others:

Best Creative Team
Best Sector Champion(s)
Best Creative Newcomer
Most Promising Graduate (picked from end of year shows)
Maybe a ‘Birmingham Creative Industries Fellowship’ Award?

A focus on workers and their work rather than businesses and their balance sheet might be just what this set of awards needs.