Report of “Hello Creative World”, 24 April 2008. By Marije van Eck
The website for “Hello Creative World”, a conference in entrepreneurship in arts and creative education, informed me this event would “show a diversity of interactive tours, challenging climbs, relax cabins, physical training, exciting landscapes, and plenty of opportunities to share your knowledge and experience with a wide variety of Art Schools in Europe”. So, all prepared for an expedition, I arrived at the Dutch Design Center in Utrecht, a former furniture factory. Red and yellow ribbon led me to the Zagerij, where I was invited by the crew into a conference setting, beautifully decorated by artwork hanging from the ceiling. My visitor’s badge, very appropriate, was a Swiss army knife. I was very curious what this day had in store, because my background is not in arts. My drawing has never exceeded that of a ten year-old, and I would not consider myself very creative. I do have an interest in arts and education, and looked forward to hearing different voices and learning new things.
“Hello Creative World” was the result of the project ECCE (Economic Clusters of Cultural Enterprise), which aims to encourage the development of creative SMEs in various regions in Europe. The program started with a screening of the animation “A Fantastic Piano Lesson” by Ton van Rijswijk, which is - fortunately I might say - available on YouTube. A welcome speech by followed, in which the importance and exceptionality of the Faculty of Arts and Economics was explained by Derk Blijleven, dean of this faculty. Peter de Haan of Vrede van Utrecht, which provided funding for the event, explained that arts and culture have always been very important for the city, and they aspire to make Utrecht Cultural Capital of Europe, in 2018.
Keynote Speeches
First of two Keynote speakers, was Anamaria Willis, CEO of CIDA (Creative Industries Development Agency) in the UK. Her speech was perfectly suitable for this event, because her theatrical appearance and enthusiasm were very infectious. A woman with a background in theatre, Willis was all about “making things happen, profitably”. Through anecdotes of her personal success, she emphasized that the key to success and profit in the creative industries is belief. Belief in oneself, and in what one is doing. Teachers at art schools should give their students confidence, courage, to go out into the world and start a gainful business.
Some students will think making money out of arts is wrong, or not important, but Anamaria Willis said that money is needed in order to be able to keep doing what you want to do. There will be many people telling art students they do not know anything about business, but students should be proud of their improvisation skills when it comes to business skills. Because creative people create markets, whereas other entrepreneurs will be successful if they leap into it quickly enough. Willis ended her speech listing quite a few attributes creative entrepreneurs (should) have, among which: integrity, conceptual thinking, networking (local and global), commercial aptitude, and optimism. Confidence, belief, faith in making the impossible possible, and knowing what they are talking about, can make art students successful business(wo)men.
The second keynote speech was provided by Jeroen van Mastrigt, from the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU) Faculty of Arts, Media and Technology. His presentation was about the game industry. This is more my field of knowledge. Not a game designer, but having studied games, many examples from his speech were familiar to me, where they puzzled quite some people in the audience. Van Mastright has a history in new media, and is the initiator of the game design program at the HKU. He said there are many things wrong with the game industry, because a lot of companies do not innovate. Also, even though a lot of bigger companies have entered the game industry, they follow a blockbuster logic and focus on making games as realistic as possible. The game designers on the other hand, are young, energetic and innovative, but instead they create what the publisher wants them to create.
Jeroen van Mastrigt emphasized the role education can have in innovating the game industry. Students work, with large companies such as Philips, on innovative games, they create pervasive games and through creating these products they learn many (entrepreneur) skills. Education and research are very valuable to students, and some games created at art school are even so successful, that the students graduate already being entrepreneurs. “Giving kids the opportunity to create games is like not only teaching them how to read, but also how to write”, is how Van Mastright’s described the importance of the game design program.
The Climbs: Two Workshops
After the keynote speeches, the visitors were all invited to choose a workshop to attend. Options for the ‘first climb’ were: “Reflection - Developing Curricula”, “T-Shirts and Suits: Creativity and Business”, “Alumni Development” and “Talent Development: The role of governmental bodies in talent development”. Since everything was new to me, I chose the workshop that appealed to me most and in another part of the Dutch Design Center, I attended the workshop “T-shirts and Suits”. This workshop was moderated by Hans van Dulken of the HKU, and featured a panel of three speakers: David Parrish, an advisor and trainer for creative businesses, and author of the book T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity, also freely available as a pdf; Aileen Gilhooly, opera singer and consultant, and Pierre Gueydier, of the faculty of the arts, languages and history at Université Catholique de l’Ouest in West France, responsible for students’ career development.
The workshop focused largely on the gap between creative people and business people. Making money is something that a lot of artists will consider ‘impure’. David Parrish tries to bridge this gap through his trainings and his book, which aims to make business theory accessible to many people. Learning about business will give creative enterprises more strength. Concern that arose, creative people will be forced into business molds, was done away with, because it became clear that the advisors, who have a background in the creative industry, always ask the creative people what is important to them, so it is not always about making as much money as possible. Pierre Gueydier spoke about a program at his university where product design students are facilitated in finding a steady job, because often creative designers are only hired on a temporary or freelance basis. The added value of a designer for a company was discussed, and a workshop participant mentioned that these people can help the company not only create beautiful products, but often also care for the environment and can help create sustainable products.
After lunch, I attended a second workshop. Available were: “Business Start-Ups at University”, “Work-Based Learning”, “Entrepreneurship: Art or Experience?”, “Research in Education” and “Internationalization of Art schools”. Because of my university background, in which I rarely create, but always research, I chose the ‘retreat in a mountain cabin’. A small group of people attended this workshop on education, hosted by Giep Hagoort, Professor of Art and Economics at HKU. He is the author of the book Art Management: Entrepreneural Style and chairman of the research group Art and Economics, currently engaging in research of cultural SMEs in Utrecht.
Giep Hagoort mentioned that research is not a hot topic at the HKU. I can understand that, because the HKU is not a research school. A workshop participant of the Willem de Kooning art academy in Rotterdam faced the same problem. Students are starting up their own creative businesses as part of the educational program, but no one is doing any research on how these businesses are developing, so she was interested in starting up a research group. Lack of research, by students and teachers, on the one hand, is a problem. The kind of research that needs to be done, is also an issue. Organizations that provide funding want to see numbers, while research in arts will not often provide statistical data. Funding in itself is a big issue as well. What kind of research can you do, who can you do it with, will funding be provided if the research is interdisciplinary? These issues I believe are very serious, but also very common in all fields of research, and it will take a lot more for them to be solved.
During lunch, I spoke briefly with Derk Blijleven, who spoke during the introduction of the event. After telling him about my interest in new media, and my research in online video, we spoke about YouTube, and he asked me if in my opinion a graduating art student could say that they did not want to associate with YouTube and therefore not publish their work on the platform. I was attempted to leave that decision to the student, but what Blijleven told me next was this conference in a nutshell: No, a student cannot ignore a platform like YouTube, because of its massive size and influence, because an art student is a marketer, and needs to be noticed, and needs to be aware of what people, the potential consumers of their art are doing. “A Fantastic Piano Lesson” was viewed 44,366 times on YouTube. Hopefully that will give the art student the courage to make their art work profitable.
