‘A vision, a story, a brand’

Reflections from the Collaboration + Creativity knowledge sharing event about and at the Centre for Creative Collaboration on January 24, 2012. Visited amplified, for coverage of the event from other participants.

In times of economic doom, and general gloom (it is January afterall) it is inspiring to hear about alternatives to the current model of ‘finance capitalism’ – namely, the creative economy.

The concept of the Centre for Creative Collaboration (where shiftLabs is currently housed) is rooted in the creative economy; if we want to reduce dependency on the finance sector and rebalance the economy more equitably, this is one viable solution. The good news is that the UK has one of the world’s most developed creative economies, which has flourished inspite of (and sadly, not because of) government policy.

As Geoffrey Crossick, Vice Chancellor of the University of London and the first speaker at the Collaboration + Creativity event said ‘a narrow conception of skills and knowledge by universities and policy makers stifles new ideas and creativity.’

Creative knowledge is borne out of collaboration, interaction and an engagement with digital technologies. It is dynamic and social, not linear and not formed initially and disseminated later; creative knowledge is transferred during the process of creation, which is a fairly tricky concept to get your head around.

Networks are also important because they act as ‘innovation eco-systems’ by providing a space for ideas to be discussed, spread and reproduced. The best description of these types of settings that I heard today is ‘interactive spaces where serendipity may hold sway.’ As a society, we need to facilitate networks that promote innovation and encourage the creative economy; this is not possible without the background of a culturally rich environment, which is something that governments often don’t understand.

The Centre for Collaborative Creation (C4CC) was expected to draw in 200 visitors in the last year: over 4,000 people have now been through these doors; if anything shows how much of an appetite there is for alternative ways of working, it is this statistic. A tangible benefit that puts this in context is that C4CC has provided over 30 people with full-time jobs or internships and the value of someone being in employment (and not on benefits) is between £5,000 and £15,000: a huge benefit for the real economy.

Examples of models used to foster innovation here are:

• Ideas collaboration – ideas and concepts that significantly enhance projects
• Industry collaboration – people and projects making links with an industrial partner resulting in an ensuing benefit
•  Economic impact – ideas develop to provide employment to collaborators or individuals

So what does this mean for shiftLabs?

Within the Oxfam campaign teams context, campaigners were coming up against the same obstacles and required space to develop new ideas. In order to change practice & developed new ideas, not just within Oxfam but within our partners and affiliates, a large degree of autonomy was required, which led to the birth of shiftLabs. The benefits of working in CC4C have been numerous; specifically because this space has allowed new ideas and projects to develop. 

VOICE (a shiftLabs endeavor) was gifted a project from another organization with a completion deadline of 4 weeks. This would have been near impossible, if we hadn’t been able to utilize more flexible methods of working and lessons we have developed within this space.  We managed to run a successful global Blog Action Day that engaged over 3,000 bloggers from 108 countries and support from 9 NGOs, the Foreign Office, the Guardian, the Department for International Development, and numerous influential social media and blogging networks. As a result we reached an estimated audience of 2.5 – 3 million blog readers with unique and interesting thoughts around food on World Food Day. The flexible, collaborative and supportive environment of C4CC was key in helping us complete this project successfully.

Crucially, CC4C is not institutional and can thus offer space for collaboration which is incredibly important in formulating new ideas; working in an environment where everyone has a shared purpose but different methods of working is invaluable. We can even look at micro-collaborations in the form of Twitter or other social media sites in creating economic value.

Digital teams in any organization can often experience difficulties finding their place; CC4C is a great way of facilitating ideas and methods for such teams. Linear strategies work well when the final goal is known from the start but this is not always the case. For example, blogs and social networks are increasingly guiding and shaping policy and campaigning and analyzing this process could prove to be an extremely useful tool for the future. If people working in innovation labs like ours take some of these ideas back to their respective HQs and nurture them the future of campaign strategy could be quite different.