Education Creative Industries

A new kind of creative industry

It’s appropriate that we’re in Dundee talking about the new creative industries. One of the city’s most famous old creative industries, weaving, was based on machinery that used cards punched with binary code, the forerunner of digital. And digital is the technology that underpins much of this new industrial revolution.

Having spent the last fifteen years running a ‘design consultancy’ I’m now told that I actually run a ‘creative industry’. It’s funny but I had the feeling that something was up when phototypesetting disappeared. Overnight the graphics studio changed shape, out went typesetting rules, cow gum and line board, putty rubbers, registration marks, mark-ups and mark-up pens, overlays, Rubalith, Schafelines, halftone line and dot screens.

In the interior design part of our company the architects and designers lost all but one of their drawing boards, complete with their parallel motions. They also lost Rotring technical pens and endless bottles of black ink. French curves and adjustable set-squares were next to go. Then Apple Macs began to appear in the studio, so, we dismantled our process camera. It had been an integral part of the graphic design studio and had originally been craned into position. But we took it apart bit by bit and threw it in a skip—one day it had been worth fifteen thousand pounds, but six months and one Apple Mac later, it was worth nothing—we couldn’t even give it away. Today the studio looks less cluttered but some important things remain—I still write in my day book rather than use a use an electronic assistant and I still use a sketch book. Other things, too, have changed: mostly I write electronic mail, use a mobile phone and my laptop which together help me work in corners of my life I never before knew existed.

Not only do I find myself working in strange ways and odd times but I find myself working with strangers; now I’m just as likely to work with and employ graduates from the arts, humanities and business schools as I am to employ graduates from design or the fine arts. I’m also much more likely to employ people with specific skills on a job by job basis or to forge informal partnerships with people and organisations that complement my own. I form companies and joint ventures to do specific projects but keep my core business slim, light, flexible and adaptable—because I don’t know what I’ll be doing tomorrow.

We now use our core skills in new ways. We’ve kept our expertise in particular areas, such as in setting type correctly—for the benefit of those clients who appreciate a well-turned line and are willing to pay for our experience. It worries me that as text-based knowledge remains, for the time being, at the core of our communications system both in the real world and on-line, and English the international language of choice. It worries me because we’ve forgotten how to spell, how to write in sentences and that we’ve put aside 3,000 years of typographic heritage. So, in Graven Images we continue to exploit our heritage, our skills. We now write, and publish and broadcast and curate exhibitions and develop critical debate about creativity and how it affects us, because we can and because the education we were given helps us to flourish in a changing world. Which is just as well, because the only thing I am sure about is that I won’t be working in the same way for long.

My only certainty is that there is no certainty, which, from a creative point of view, is very exciting. I feel lucky that I learned to welcome change, and I feel fortunate that I was given the tools with which to identify reassuring patterns or opportunities, in apparent chaos.

I’m also grateful for the teachers who taught me to be persistent because change is as exhausting as it is rewarding. Change means endless, costly software updates and the constant replacement of hardware, network failures, technical gliches, and interface problems with clients and subcontractors. Change means that we have to continually re-educate ourselves and our employees and our clients. Change is expensive because it takes time, and time used to be the only thing we had to sell. Now we also create content for other media: books, exhibitions or television programmes that, with the help of new technologies, can be cheaply distributed and sold, over and over again. This means we don’t have endlessly find fee paying clients, instead, we become our own client, turning our creativity into a tangible, lucrative asset, we have become a primary industry.

With all of this change happening around us, we would have been very stupid not to spend some time trying to understand the reasons behind it, and the implications for our business and our future—did we even have a future and would it be called ‘design’? We struggled to understand what the government and strategists meant by the ‘creative industries’, was it a pejorative term and did it have a bearing on the way we should go about our business?

The new creative industries

In their 1998 Mapping Document the Creative Industries Task Force describes ‘creative industries’ as; “those activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”. They include: advertising, architecture, the art and antiques market, crafts, design, designer fashion, film, interactive leisure software, music, the performing arts, publishing, software and television and radio.

The ‘creative industries’ is not a definition as such, for if intellectual property were the common denominator then the pharmaceutical industries would be included in the list. They, like many creative industries, invest heavily in research and development at the beginning of a project and then reap the benefits in years to come through selling licenses to produce their product.

I believe that creativity is in everything we make and do, it’s an intrinsic part of being human and a vital part in every successful industry, not an exclusive part of what are now described as the ‘creative industries’. Most things that work well and give pleasure have been deliberately designed with more than a modest measure of creativity.

In many ways the lack of an absolute definition of the creative industries probably betrays the real state of industrial creativity, which although it has been around for a very long time is a little understood phenomena. But the emergence of a loose term to describe what I do certainly raises interesting and overdue questions, such as; “what does my business have in common with an antique dealership? Or, what for that matter could the antiques market and the interactive leisure software industry possibly have in common?” What the Creative Industries Mapping Document most usefully reveals is that the world as we thought we knew it is changing, and gathering momentum more quickly than we can comprehend. This makes life hard for all of us, in the creative industries and in the business of education, because it’s difficult to plan ahead when you don’t know what to plan for.

But there are ways to gain a clearer picture of the future, and that’s by looking at the past, because some aspects of the creative industries are comfortably familiar.

For a start, I don’t think there’s anything especially new about the idea of bringing together ‘creativity’ and ‘industry’. Industry and creativity have been happily co-existing for years. How else could we have civilised ourselves, built cities and filled them with so many amazing products? So there must be some clues in the past that can help us deal with the problems of the future.

Yet, at the same time, I don’t believe that this latest manifestation of ‘industrial creativity’ is just political spin or the emperor’s new clothes. We are in fact living and working in profoundly different ways compared to how we went about our business five, three, or even two years ago. It’s as if progress is rushing ahead, but surely this too must have happened before?

Technological change

Cataclysmic technological change has occurred twice in the past 250 years at a scale that’s in any way comparable to what we’re living through today. What many believe to be the first industrial revolution took place between 1760 and 1850 causing upheaval but giving us widespread innovations ranging from the mechanisation of hand skills, such as weaving, to the production of iron and steam engines. Its effects ricocheted around the globe, heralding a new social order and a new ‘world order’ with Great Britain, and the industrial north, at the heart of the Empire.

In this first Industrial Revolution the old creative industries broke with history and the craft traditions that had always underpinned the production of goods. With the help of new mechanical machines we began to make vast amounts of every imaginable kind of thing. But in order to make these new goods functional and attractive, educational institutions and schools of ‘applied art’, science and ‘industrial design’ emerged, in direct response to the new technologies. Their job was to ensure that the deluge of new manufactured goods was of the highest aesthetic and functional quality.

The first of these new educational institutions was a school of industrial design founded in London in 1837. It was originally designed to serve as a resource for manufacturing industry, containing reference material of many different styles and periods. In 1852 it moved from its original home in Somerset Place to Marlborough House and was renamed Central School of Practical Art before moving to new buildings in Exhibition Road in 1863. It was then renamed the Victoria & Albert Museum by Queen Victoria in 1896 before eventually, in 1909, becoming an art museum that embraced the Royal College of Art.

Hot on its heels, and 400 miles further north, was the second oldest school of design and art. The Glasgow school originated as the Glasgow School of Design in 1844, but with funding from the Haldane Trust it was able to initiate teaching in the fine arts, and by 1892 was known as the Glasgow School of Art. While the RCA and it’s adjoining museum were enjoying royal patronage the Glasgow school was busy educating the people who would shape the iconic locomotives, ships and heavy industrial products that would extend the influence of the Great British Empire. This earned Glasgow the title of ‘the finest Victorian city in the Empire’ and Scotland and the industrial North became the ‘workshop of the World’.

The time that elapsed from the moment when the first acrid brown shoots of the first industrial revolution emerged in 1760, to the foundation of the first school of industrial creativity, 77 grimy years had passed.

By the time education had caught up with the seemingly relentless pace of industrial progress, and its resulting social change, a second wave of industrial revolution was already upon us. Between 1890 and 1930 Scotland once again played a significant role in shaping the modern era with the help of Bell and Mackintosh, and Logie Baird was on his way. The RCA and Glasgow School of Art were by now fully formed, internationally respected institutions, well able to work alongside scientific universities and new technical colleges to understand, interpret, plan and exploit the benefits of widespread telecommunications and internal combustion engines. The results were literally, electrifying.

But this second industrial revolution was very different from the one that preceded it. For instead of being at the mercy of change, an educational framework was already established with which strategists could identify, understand and even shape, predict and control the outcome of change. Education had become an integral part of the process of change, maximising its potential. This time round schoolchildren and graduates were equipped with the skills they needed to enter industry and win jobs. Young people were educated to become employees.

Today we’re living through a third industrial revolution that has come to pass more quickly than anyone but science fiction writers, could have predicted. But this new wave of change is intrinsically different from anything that’s gone before. The previous industrial upheavals expanded through the creation of physical capital: mechanical machines, vast rail, power and manufacturing networks. This third industrial revolution grows and gathers speed in a completely new way: through the creation of invisible, virtual, communications networks and a myriad ever-changing, highly adaptable and creative micro-business made possible by the unprecedented power of digital technologies and microprocessors.

Now, increasing numbers of creative people have their own powerful and inexpensive machines, their own means of design, production, distribution and promotion through their personal computers. They take what education they can and tailor it to fit, or go on-line or extracurricular to beg, steal and borrow what they need to get by. Therefore, educating students to expect to become employees is no longer a viable option.

So what next?

For 15 years I’ve been working as a designer in a consultancy with one very important difference. We’ve always worked across traditional creative disciplines, as well as within them. What seemed sensible to us has in fact turned out to be one of our greatest strengths; our ability to understand and manage the process of creating diverse things. It’s certainly eased our transformation from a traditional design consultancy into ‘new creative industry’ and the people we look to employ or work with are people similarly inclined. They can read and write and are sociable, capable of challenging us, and have a broad range of interests. They’ve probably had the benefit of further education and are able to transferring their knowledge to new areas, and they’re willing to continue to change and to learn throughout their lives.

I believe that no one will be able to compete in the knowledge economy without being literate and modestly numerate. But there is an immediate need for a new kind of creative curriculum, one that unites the arts and science in the common purpose of creativity. This curriculum must also help people to be flexible and to work in teams, solve problems, innovate and take risks.

The traditional bastions of creativity, art and design remain of value in themselves, but their value is limited, especially if they become only self-referring departments. Specialisation has already relegated art to the level of entertainment; a mere party trick. Likewise, observational drawing and other drawn communication, without the benefit of analytical methods and research, is of no more value than learning to balance a ball on your nose—it’s a handy conversation piece.

Two weeks ago I was talking with Simon Waterfall, creative director the international website design company, Deepend. I was explaining how hard it was for us to find people with the right skills. I assumed it was because I was based in Glasgow, but I was wrong. Simon has offices all over the world and he has exactly the same problems. He recently opened an office in Bangalore to get skilled technical graduates he couldn’t get in the UK, and he is still desperately searching for creative people. (We always think that the grass is greener, but it’s not always the case.) When he opened his New York office he advertised for designers and received over seven hundred job applications. After weeks of interviewing he could employ only four people. Like me, he believes the situation is now critical.

I welcome the term, creative industries, because it allows me to talk about creativity rather than the old vocations ‘art’ or ‘design’, and because it allows all of us all to talk about creative and analytical skills in every aspect of every subject from algebra to zoology. When students leave the art class and go on to further education their understanding of their subject should be equivalent in depth, analytical method and importance to that of mathematics and science.

Already, the Singapore government is committed to expanding the teaching of creativity to occupy fully one third of the curriculum by 2020. But where will we be in 2020? Hopefully, not in Singapore.

Speed and invisibility are key characteristics of this third revolution. In order to keep pace with it, and to reach the people who need it most, education must become fast and virtual, too. Because we all need education, we need it everywhere as never before; we need it all of the time, 24 hours a day.