The Fish Can Sing`s guide to the new creative

The Fish Can Sing’s guide to the new creative economy
The Fish Can Sing’s guide to the new creative economy
Published by The Fish Can Sing Ltd
Copyright © 2005 The Fish Can Sing Ltd
ISBN 0 9551280 0 5
Contents
Foreword
5
Introduction
7
1 Where we live
10
2 Good morning!
12
3 Let’s go, kids!
14
4 Homework
16
5 Appleschool
18
6 At the office
20
7 Mmmm!
22
8 Ready to eat?
24
9 Rest and play
10 Let’s go shopping
26
28
11 Who wants coffee?
30
12 Bottoms up!
32
13 Hallelujah!
34
14 Wherever next?
36
15 Creative Frontiers
38
Postscript
41
The Fish Can Sing
47
Credits
48
Please visit www.oldjobnewjob.com to download
an electronic version of CreativeWorld and for more
information.
4
Foreword
Some years ago, creativity in branding was a Big
Idea. In our technologically advanced society, so
the theory went, two important things had happened:
quality had become increasingly uniform, and the
consumer, thanks to the increasing variety of and
access to media formats, had been empowered to
make better decisions as well as create his or her
own content. In this environment, emotional value
was paramount to shifting product. Consumers had
to feel a brand.
And as brands strove for an engaging media-wide
identity that would make that happen, the boundaries
of advertising, PR, marketing and media began
to blur – every discipline was about generating
content and doing so in a way that would confound
expectations. The work of creative agencies became
dizzyingly hard to pin down; the term ‘marketing’
alone could be prefixed by ‘event’, guerrilla’, ‘viral’,
‘experiential’...
In 2005, the picture is even more complex. Everywhere
you look, something is being customised, re-imagined
or jerry-rigged from scratch by a new generation of
content providers. And we’re not talking about the
established Creative Classes anymore. To paraphrase
Raymond Williams, creativity is ordinary. Everyone
does it, from internet newsletter entrepreneurs in the
East End of London to car modifiers in Bradford to
hair colourists in Swansea. More importantly, some
of them are very good at it indeed.
So what are the implications? If it’s Salam Pax, not
Rageh Omar, that really brought the Iraq war home
to us, and if Popbitch makes newspaper diarists
look anaemic, and if advertising companies actively
fashion campaigns to look like amateur vlogs, what
now for the traditional creative media? And what
now for the brands that traditionally rely on them?
It is these questions that The Fish Can Sing set out
to answer in CreativeWorld, using a team of the best
cultural analysts (and, indeed, creatives) that 2005
has to offer.
Dan Holliday – Partner, The Fish Can Sing
5
6
Introduction
How creative are you? Do you wish you could be
more so? Or do you yearn for a simpler world where
‘creativity’ is for artists and ordering a cup of coffee
is straightforward? Are you even sure you know what
it means now when someone talks about ‘being
creative’?
Does it mean they paint pictures or make films, or
work in an open-plan office with Apple Macs and
sew sequins on to their Zara clothes? Does it mean
that they are trying to get into the same mindset as
Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, or just that they are
doing a course in massage and alternative therapy?
Is making an iTunes playlist creative? How about
designing a poster for the school charity cake sale?
Opening your own micro-specialist museum?
Finding cool new fascias for your phone? Doing
your car up? Thinking of new sexual fantasies?
Painting the windowsills?
In Britain in 2005 these are question that matter,
because being creative has become big business
– literally. In Gordon Brown’s last budget there was
no mention of the manufacturing or service sectors,
but a good five minutes for the ‘creative industries’,
which, he said, were now bringing in 8% of all
national income and employing one in 20 of the
nation’s workforce.
There was to be special help for these industries,
because, as call centres relocate to Bangalore and
factories to China, the ‘creative industries’ are seen
as socio-economic saviours. Since 1997-98, output
in the creative industries has been growing by up
to 20% a year, compared with under 6% for the
economy as a whole.
Urban developers believe the best way to regenerate
a rundown area it to persuade loft-dwelling creative
types to move in. More school-leavers want to work
in the creative sector than in any other. Little Johnny
might have wanted to be a train driver, and little
Johnny junior a yuppie businessman, but little Jack
the lad dreams of designing style bars. No wonder
Tony Blair hangs out with pop stars and proclaims the
United Kingdom ‘the design workshop of the world’.
But what do Blair and Brown mean by ‘creative
industries’? The Department of Trade and Industry
defines them as:
. Content creation, i.e. anything to do with
publishing, music, advertising, film & TV, radio,
interactive leisure software
. Anything to do with design
. Heritage, Museums and Tourism
. The Performing Arts.
Which makes sense, but there are a lot of other
industries whose workers consider themselves
creative too. What about fashion stylists, hair
colourists, Max Power-type mechanics, nail-bar
girls, coffee-shop managers, chefs? It’s now
common to hear managers in every business
from waste disposal to computing talk about
finding ‘creative solutions’ to their problems.
It’s no longer just about funky PR, music, media,
design, craft and performance work done by freespirited people with improbably shaped iMacs in
cool offices in converted warehouses. In a world
where talk of personalisation, lifestyle and selfexpression is so common, fewer and fewer jobs
and activities seem to be resistant to creativity.
Ask Trinny and Susannah, or Handy Andy, or, God
forbid, Jeremy Clarkson.
So, if the official creative industries are going to
become as important as car-making and coalmining once were, and if even the people working
in car-making and coal-mining are going to become
creative, the question is – what will life be like? How
will today’s post-industrial world look when it has
become the CreativeWorld of tomorrow?
Over the next few pages we’ll look at what a few
days in the life of CreativeWorld 2015 will be like.
What will you be doing? Where will you live? Will
you have fun? Turn the page and find out…
7
8
The Fish Can Sing’s guide to the new creative economy
1 Where we live
By 2015 new lifestyles have changed the face of the
typical British street. People no longer think of where
they live and where they work as different kinds of
space; they work in their homes and sleep in bunks
in their offices. Colleagues even share workspaces
in each other’s houses.
What’s going on?
Old ideas about privacy have broken down – dozens
of the street’s residents deliver information about
their building and business services by allowing
passers-by to access their wireless networks. Many
also use the outside of their homes to show off the
creative services they offer and several have rooms
inside that serve as ‘micro-shops’.
Many of the homes are used as small-scale shops.
Numbers 4, 10 and 16 are delis, selling vegetables
grown in the garden. Numbers 64, 87 and 100 all
have at least one room in use as an art gallery two
days a week. Number 43 has taken the idea a stage
further – the furniture and fittings are constantly
changing, and the old ones being offered for sale.
Open spaces are no longer drab and plain. They
are areas for creative expression, where local
people of all ages are encouraged to give their
neighbourhood a unique character. Among the
homes and small businesses, global corporations
have ‘glocal’ outlets that have been adapted to
their particular environments.
For example? Each month the bus shelters and
library are redecorated by a local graffiti artist. A
public ‘battle’ decides who gets the commission
(see bottom left) – competitors have five minutes to
spray on specially erected canvases and progress
according to audience approval. Bored waiting for
the bus? Just swipe your phone over that barcode
in the shelter: instant information about the piece
you’re looking at and who sprayed it.
In CreativeWorld people want to make the most of
every moment and every space. Places should be
unique and life should be fun.
10
The stickers in the window show that number 52 is
home to a podcaster and the live feeds on the LED
board above the door at number 53 show that a
blogger lives there. A video director lives at number
54 – the plasma screen in the front window is
playing his showreel.
The responsibility for all pre-1920 public art has
been handed to local art bodies and local artists
are invited to modify them, updating the old into
the new (see top centre).
Because so many people have jobs that take them
to different places in the city during the day, they
need spaces where they can relax and other spaces
– transit-offices – where they can catch up on
correspondence and have meetings. Typical of
brands that have survived by ‘3D-ing’ themselves
is Vodafone, now better known for its on-street
Vodapods (‘lie back and connect’) than its phone
services (see bottom right).
The Artist and Engineer may look like a local pub,
but things are very different inside. We’ll call in there
for a drink later…
2 Good morning!
Since the Government’s 2011 sleep-encouragement
campaign ‘Brains Work Better with Bed’, getting your
head down at night has been taken more seriously.
Most people now accept that their minds are suppler
after plenty of rest, so ‘sleeprooms’ have become the
most important spaces in any house.
Unlike old-fashioned bedrooms, these don’t contain
televisions, books, radios, DVD players and computers
– no wonder people used to need sleeping pills…
Everything about a sleeproom is meant to help you
sleep, so all those other fun things stay outside in
the wakeroom.
For hard-working professionals in CreativeWorld,
an effective sleeproom has become a status symbol,
and their ten hours a night something to boast about
– in fact, rest is now considered so fundamental to
health and productivity that sleep therapy has been
made available on the NHS.
Let’s look at one CreativeWorld family coming out
of their sleeptime in preparation for the new day.
Our family is called The Smithses – although that
doesn’t mean they always will be, of course. In
CreativeWorld, families can choose their own names.
Since work means more to them in the new creative
economy, many people have reverted to the old
practice of naming themselves according to what
they do.
So at Appleschool Johnny Smiths will sit next to
Kyle Scan, Easy Programmer and Smale Hair, as
well as Simple Volkswagen and Jack Oxford-EnglishDictionary, who have had their names sponsored.
We’ll drop in and see them in chapter five.
The Smithses, meanwhile, are named after their
grandparents’ favourite band from the 1980s. Mrs
Smiths, the head of the household, was conceived
to a song called ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody
Loved Me’.
Anyway, let’s get on with the day!
12
What’s going on?
Unlike old-fashioned rectangular mattress-and-base
beds, CreativeWorld beds are ergonomically
designed using both high-end technology and
natural materials. As you can tell from the Smithses’
beds, they are as much of a status symbol as
expensive kitchens used to be. They are, of course,
customisable to the sleeper’s specific needs.
Everyone has their own sleeproom, but a sliding
wall means mum and dad can combine theirs and
sleep together at weekends.
Radio networks are in terminal decline and alarms
are thought too harsh and impersonal, so Kellogg’s
customisable waking devices have become
ubiquitous. Revealing the time only when prompted
by your voice, they are connected to the internet
and allow you to pre-select programmes from your
favourite podcaster. Alternatively, specialist content
programmers can put together series of audio-visual
wakeup calls – this month dad Mac has chosen
Studio One b-sides accompanied by flyers, posters
and album artwork. Meanwhile, the Smiths children
wake up to the cartoon series Immyjez, in which
mutant children fight evil using their creative instincts.
Overnight, mum Kate’s personal stylist has e-mailed
her three options on what to wear for today’s
appointment with the deputy editor of Trendsweek
(she’s a trend marketer, but more about that later).
It looks as though it might rain, but of course they
know that. As soon as she clicks on the option she
fancies, her automated wardrobe starts putting it
together for her.
The Smithses are too busy to look after their own
greenspace. Their gardenhelp Patrick is already
here and has brought in fruit from the greenhouse
for breakfast. At breakfast, the Smithses will inject
it with Sanatogen Superfruit – a blend of newgeneration organic immune-system boosters
and vitamins.
As usual, Johnny will spill the vitamin blend
across several surfaces. But it’ll be easy to wipe
off – in CreativeWorld most furniture is coated with
a protective material, because it’s leased. That way
people can change their environments whenever
they want, which is usually about every 18 months.
3 Let’s go, kids!
In CreativeWorld, children are no longer encouraged
to spend their spare time playing on swings and
slides, or in ball pools. In the economy of knowledge
and ideas, their enthusiasm and curiosity are valuable
assets, which means that the old ‘keep them quiet’
approach isn’t just unkind – it’s bad business.
The nurseries of 2015 are set up so kids can paint
untapped grey matter all the colours of the rainbow,
and CreativeWorld toddlers spend their formative
years in mini studios, theatres and rehearsal spaces.
While Mrs Smiths is on her way to work, Mr Smiths
drops off little Abbie at her nursery. For him this is a
chance to chat with the other ‘Dictaphone Dads’ –
although they don’t talk much at first, because early
morning is prime inspiration time. As the kids wave
goodbye, many of the dads feel a familiar pang of
emotion and take out sound recording devices to try
to capture their feelings. Later, some will listen to
themselves and use their thoughts as inspiration for
creative projects.
As they chat at the gates, the fathers take note
of any ideas, gossip, business opportunities and
possible barters that come up in conversation.
Having seen Abbie eye the authentic-looking
hobbyhorse that Yazzmin Lathe carried into nursery,
Mr Smiths, a Creative Body Planner, is interested
to discover that her mother is trying to get in shape
for summer...
For now let’s leave the dads to it and follow Abbie.
Inside are a number of branded, activity-specific
franchises. In some less affluent areas families have
to get by with just one or two, often on separate
sites. However, some years ago the Smiths moved
into the catchment area for the PolyCulture centre,
which brings them all together under one roof; the
wealthiest parents buy their kids all-in passes so they
can wander the complex at will, becoming highly
employable polymaths.
14
What’s going on?
Now that almost everyone is qualified as a
creative, originality commands a high premium
and companies pay handsomely for the uninhibited
insights of children. Prelapse PR run a zone for
PlayStorms (top right) – today’s is for the benefit of
Nokia, who need a new angle for its latest gadget.
CreativeWorld parents dream of their progeny
becoming one of Prelapse’s ‘Lil’ Luminaries’,
who can earn up to £150 a week (paid directly
into a college fund) blind-steering creative
marketing projects.
Abbie’s hard at work on some organic potatopainting, using the Baby Einstein Baby Da Vinci
SpudBrush. After all, she has her Absolut art
scholarship to think about. The Saatchi Kids crèche
chain is always on the lookout for emerging artists
– its leaders are part-time art dealers who specialise
in Art Naif. Promising pieces are hung in a public
gallery space immediately; it's curated by volunteer
dads and in the background you can probably see
the art teacher from Appleschool, who is making
one of his regular visits to scout the star pupils
of tomorrow.
In the Napster zone, children have access to
simplified, highly intuitive percussive and electronic
instruments – products that nappy and baby food
manufacturers have commissioned in an attempt
to become lifestyle brands for the creative toddler.
In the near corner, hard at work on his latest track,
is Vinnie Amanuensis (the name consultant said
it sounded better than Mr. Helpbuddy). Last year
Domino paid £1,000 for the rights to his Mind-Crawls,
a musique concrète mini-album he recorded by
wandering around the nursery with a Huggies
microphone.
The BBC’s educational wing has produced
versions of key scenes from Shakespeare, which
use psychology pioneered by Teletubbies creator
Dame Anne Wood to encourage mimicry. Miles St.
Enciller has picked up on it faster than most, and
has a burgeoning career providing baby voiceovers
for cartoons and radio drama. As the children
play and learn, they’re filmed, and DVDs of edited
highlights are made available to their parents
– these make great gifts and watching them helps
the little ones become accustomed to seeing
themselves on screen.
4 Homework
After dropping Abbie off at PolyCulture, Mr Smiths
returns home to work. In many CreativeWorld families
it’s the women who go out to work, because their
negotiating, nurturing and ‘people’ skills help them
deal with the human interaction of offices and
meetings.
Men’s more self-oriented personalities mean they
are best suited to working alone, although they often
have helpbuddies – young men or women who hang
out and help, and so get the knowledge that will help
them become fully fledged creatives one day. They
are rather like old-fashioned apprentices, and often
come from what are now ‘disadvantaged’ backgrounds – middle-class, suburban homes and
healthy childhoods. This means they have to work
extra hard to be taken seriously by creativity-funding
organisations, who tend to believe that the most
interesting work is done by people from the margins
of society.
Mr Smiths works as a Creative Body Planner. He
helps clients monitor the latest developments in
‘total style’ so he can recommend the most up-to-date
body shapes, the healthiest way to achieve them and
what kind of hairstyles and clothes will best suit them.
He specialises in picking complementary ‘personality
colours’ – next season’s Rubenesque look, for
instance, can be paired with robust greed or hints
of coyness. Here we can see him looking through
predictions for emergent body shapes.
Everyone has more than one job, though – some
people have three or four, and many of these are
similar to what used to be called ‘hobbies’. Mr
Smiths, who used to work as a graffiti artist, now
uses his talents to make slogan T-shirts in the
afternoon. He comes up with at least four new
slogans every week and auctions many of them
to T-shirt brands on barterboard.com.
16
What’s going on?
The girl with Mr Smiths is Texaco. She’s from a
wealthy suburb of Edinburgh and wants to make
fonefilms – shorts the networks offer as downloads
to mobile communications devices. To earn money
in the meantime she works as Mr Smiths’s
helpbuddy. She yearns to have a decent income so
she can buy back her name – a large student debt
meant she had to accept sponsorship from one
of the oil corporations, which, being unpopular,
traditionally offer large incentives.
Both will take time out to blog during the day.
Mr Smiths blogs about Japanese culture (he’s
fluent), and his work is paid for by hundreds of
micro-donations from readers. Texaco blogs
about TV images of the war with China.
In CreativeWorld, hard currency has all but been
replaced by a flexible bartering system. Individuals
trade their time and services, and their rates go up
and down daily depending on how busy they are.
Each morning Texaco checks her and Mr Smiths’s
orders pages and adjusts their rate accordingly. Like
many people in CreativeWorld, they post this on a
board outside as well as on the net.
All TV, music and video are personalised by a
central server called the iSphere (more of which
later) – so there are multiple screens in each room.
Mr Smiths is a keen supporter of Free Forever, an
organisation set up four years ago to counter the
various guerrilla groups within the Mind Ecology
movement. Mind ecologists (or ‘claricissists’) believe
that over-stimulating environments, mass media and
excessive brand marketing damage mental wellbeing. They want the Government to impose
restrictions and think creativity should now be
discouraged rather than encouraged. Conservatives
like Mr Smiths believe these radicals endanger the
very foundations of CreativeWorld and that their
campaign for ‘clear spaces’ needs to be challenged.
Sometimes he conceives FF slogans free of charge.
Look on the wall and you’ll see a poster advertising
an FF meeting at the Artist and Engineer next week.
5 Appleschool
CreativeWorld’s schools are unrecognisable to
anyone who grew up in the 20th century. For one
thing, they are fun.
By 2008 university-fixated targets and league tables
had driven the state school system into meltdown.
Having watched their graduate brothers and sisters
turn into what CreativeWorld marketers termed
BASICS (BA, Stuck In Customer Services), kids were
desperate to learn skills for the new economy, but
schools were failing to provide. And without anything
to fire their imagination or ambition, pupils had lost
interest in core skills too.
The Government’s Creative Brands in Schools
initiative (2010) changed all that. Now Apple fund/
facilitate hundreds of media suites nationwide and
employ freelance trainers to teach workshops in
Computing for Business, Dreamweaver, Photoshop,
Quark and more. (Microsoft’s rival venture failed
because they insisted on teaching exclusively their
own products.) Thanks to this, in 2015 things look
much brighter.
Johnny Smiths has been dictating his blog on the
way to school. It has made him 15 minutes late,
but we needn’t worry: the first 20 minutes of the day
are spent in ToolUp, the modern version of assembly
and a way of linking day-to-day education with, in
the words of the PM, ‘the world outside the school
bubble’. Here students are left to prepare themselves
for the day with coffee, tea, web access and the day’s
key press. So it’s Johnny’s own time he’s wasting.
Since it’s one of his class’s twice-weekly RBDs –
Right-Brain Days – Johnny isn’t wearing a uniform;
on an LBD he’d be in the regulation Zara blazer
and slacks appropriate to core subjects like maths,
foreign languages and business practice. For today’s
work in AppleSuite, though, he’ll be in his own jeans
and a vintage Kings of Leon tee.
Some of the RBD output is used to invigorate LBDs;
if Damien Pepsimax comes up with a design for a set
of greetings cards in Design, next Monday’s Business
Principles class will do a case study on how to market
and sell it.
18
What’s going on?
As you’ve probably guessed, the unruly bunch at
the bottom are on an RBD. Looks like fun, doesn’t
it? But note the interest on the faces of the LBD
students (top) – now that schools have got the
balance right it’s less of a struggle to hold their
pupils’ attention.
The students keep work, research and other data
on school-branded ThinkPods. Worn on the wrist
(see top right), these are hard drives with a basic
integrated screen and music player. They support
wireless transfer to other devices and plug into
school computers and recording equipment.
Display and performance at Appleschool are
regular and institutionalised – meaning popular
and enjoyable fortnightly events rather than the
dutiful seasonal ones seen at schools in the 20th
century. In fact, the students sitting on the bench
outside are rehearsing a sketch for a forthcoming
revue evening. There is a focus on bringing in the
public as well as the parents, which works because
everyone is keen to spot the next big thing.
Johnny’s class is on a break, but as you can see
most of the pupils are still working – on RBDs
nobody wants to leave the suite. Unfortunately
the ThinkPod contains a pedometer, and students
who haven’t done the government-recommended
amount of physical activity will be sent to the
Adidas Gym for Sport Detention.
Over on the bottom right you can see Harley Sub’s
workspace. She’s been designing flyers for her older
brother’s local club nights, and a few of his friends
have made enquiries. It’s turned into a small income,
and as long as she shows evidence of artistic
development and good professional practice she’s
allowed to integrate it into her school work. (These
are called Paying Integrated Projects, and Harley’s
can be considered for assessment in both Design
and Business Principles.)
6 At the office
Mrs Smiths is head of Brand-Trend Intersecting at 625
Ltd, a company that specialises in Trend Marketing.
Trend Marketing involves both monitoring social
trends and helping brands get into line with them.
Mrs Smiths’s job is to match the values of new
trends with those of brands who subscribe to the
service, and then explain to the brands’ trendalignment managers what they need to do.
When this practice was initiated ten years ago
it would take months for brands to relaunch,
but improved communications, transport and
management structures mean that brands can
now gain a competitive advantage by getting
their new look and products out in a week.
This is essential, because the big, slow six-month
trends of the late 20th century have now been replaced
by ‘mayfly’ trends – things that are popular for a day
because of comms-waves caused, for example, by
someone blogging it and everyone else linking to it.
The importance of trends is now measured by how
frequently they recur. Measuring the large, mediumterm and mayfly trends is so complex that only
trained trend analysts like 625 can do it. And since
all trends are potentially hip until they are appropriated
by a brand, trend marketers are hugely important
– only they know which trends recur too frequently
and which are due to recur. That’s Mrs Smiths’s job
– pretty important!
20
What’s going on?
Five years after the global ‘soft-riots’ by Microsoft
staff protesting at the dehumanising aspects of
‘cubicle farms’, many companies have accepted
the demand for individuated spaces. Each 625
employee can specify the environment in which
she or he works best. That’s why there are offices
decorated as bathrooms, treehouses, living rooms,
car simulators and country streams. Mrs Smiths’s
office is a café-bar in a hamlet in the Carpathians
(see bottom left).
What sort of departments does a company like
625 have? Well, the usual. Trend Analysis, Mavens,
Trend Alignment, Monitoring and Trace Eradication
(getting rid of anything that might remind people of
previous alignments).
Office maintenance is done by everyone on a rota
basis. Some years ago psychologists identified
Mason’s syndrome, a condition whose sufferers lost
mental stability as a result of doing nothing other
than interacting with screens and paper. Thanks to
a Government initiative to revive and rethink the old
concept of multi-tasking, your new office might be
built by your colleague from Trend Alignment.
One of the most successful ‘3D’ brand initiatives is
the BBC water cooler (see centre). Not only does it
run trailers for the coming evening’s viewing, it also
dispenses water with various nutraceutical mixes to
enhance mood and promote conversation.
Like many companies, 625 uses only a number as
its name, thus allowing customers to project their
own image of the company. Naming companies
is now seen as slow and hierarchical, and semirandom numbers – 625 was the 625th trend
marketing company to be registered at Companies
House – are preferred by forward thinkers.
7 Mmmm!
Once Mr Smiths has finished work for the day he
collects Abbie and Johnny and takes them to the
food quarter to buy food for the family’s evening meal.
Most British cities have food quarters – areas that
were once old-fashioned wholesale markets or
warehouses and have now been regenerated by
turning them into colourful markets where stallholders sell all kinds of independently produced
foods. Mr Smiths keeps an eye out for his friend
Alice Conference, who, like many urban creatives,
moved to the country a few years ago, in her case
to start a pear orchard.
In CreativeWorld, customers like to know the story
of their food, so producers like Alice have to come
up with interesting accounts of how it was made.
If you can’t tell the story yourself, you can employ
one of the many writers and content-providers
who specialise in ‘production narratives’. Some
use hand-made books, some allow you to interview
the producer at their home in the country and others
place a short film in a chip embedded in the label.
Look closely at this food quarter and you’ll see one
happy customer learning more about the fishing
vessel that caught the fresh mackerel she’s holding.
Some of the markets in food quarters are owned by
local councils and/or co-operatives, but a growing
number are being bought and run by the supermarket
chains. Despite becoming the most powerful private
organisations in the country, the supermarkets have
now lost sales to the independent food producers
and have adopted the ‘multi-market’ as a new strategy.
Mr Smiths was disappointed when Tesco took over
the local market. He even designed T-shirts for the
protest group – but he still shops here as it’s the
most convenient choice.
22
What’s going on?
Some producers sell their own produce, while
others prefer to sell through traders. The traders try
to offer ranges of foods that are distinct to them and
are always on the lookout for interesting new ideas.
Since pesticide manufacturers began fighting
back against bad publicity with new Friendly
Chemicals™, producers have argued about what
is really ‘safe’ food. Instead of the old ‘organic’ and
‘conventional’ foods there is now a wide range of
in-between categories including ‘Semi-organic’,
‘Soil-grown’, ‘Friendly-cleaned’.
Like old-fashioned information desks, ‘maven
kiosks’ are found in many shopping areas and
markets. They are rented to mavens, people who
specialise in knowing about specific kinds of
products. Here a Tesco food maven is advising a
customer on the very best options for hand-made
Wensleydale cheese.
The market deli offers ‘end-to-end shopping
solutions’. Customers simply give them a budget
and a nutritional/culinary brief (e.g. ‘more organic
meat’, ‘I want a better understanding of Chinese
cooking’, ‘I want to give a dinner party for six’).
The deli staff create a weekly menu for them,
including recipes and nutritional information. Any
specialist ingredients are sourced and delivered
and a database allows the deli to cross-reference
ingredients, recipes and customer data in order to
make better recommendations.
Like many big global brands, Coca-Cola stopped
using its name on packaging a few years ago and
now relies on its customers’ familiarity with its
white-ribbon design. Also like other big global
brands, Coca-Cola now fosters a creative relationship
with people by selling the ingredients for making
different kinds of Coke and Coke-flavoured food
and drink.
8 Ready to eat?
CreativeWorld families do not only eat, sleep and
relax at home – they also work, get inspired and
share new ideas there. And because inspiration and
ideas can come from every area of life most people
think of having separate rooms in the living area as
rather old fashioned. Instead they have one space in
which lots of different things can happen – often all
at once.
We join the family during Dining. They’re working to
a recipe from Jules Oliver’s withthekids.com site,
conveniently displayed on a manoeuvrable, heatproof
screen attached to the cooker.
Before they get started, the kids check the organic,
oils-enhanced sashimi cuts for freshness and aromatest the seaweed for evidence of nutritional minerals.
Having been educated under the Government’s
Sense360 programme – which, in turn, was driven
by the need for new talent attuned to the shift away
from ‘conventional intelligence’ – Abbie and Johnny
are more sensitive to these things than their parents.
While they fix the meal, Mr and Mrs Smiths are brainstorming new T-shirt slogans; Johnny and Abbie help
by writing the ideas up on the whiteboard on the far
wall. Of course, the Smiths children are encouraged
to add their own thoughts too. According to the
Department for Family Affairs, children who are
engaged in the creative process in the family home
are more likely to have good careers later in life.
What’s going on?
If this chicken looks odd, it’s because Mrs Smiths
has just activated the HumaneHarvest device, which
will kill it painlessly at the touch of the button she is
holding in her right hand. Meat-eating CreativeWorld
families think killing animals and preparing the meat
yourself means guaranteed freshness and a proper
connection with nature. Many of them try to eat as
much of the animal as possible, finishing it up in
soups and stews. Cooking this way helps develop
the all-important qualities of adventurousness
and imagination.
When it comes to roasting the lucky chap, Mrs
Smiths will turn to her AgaNought – a digital foodpreparation device that precisely recreates authentic,
rustic conditions while cooking at microwave-oven
speeds. The wood-fired peasant stove, tandoor and
stone pizza oven settings are all popular, but today
it’s set to Fijian lovo.
Mum’s planning to bake a cake for tomorrow
afternoon, so she’ll need to use the AgaNought’s
‘FrostFriend’ functionality later on. She’ll design the
cake with a special pen on a touch-sensitive screen
and then it will be iced automatically in the easy-toclean FrostFriend compartment.
The toaster is also connected to the internet and the
Smithses have subscribed to a service that will burn
interesting designs into the toast. Today’s toast
artist is ‘FLMR’ and his design is a stencil of Hillary
Clinton on one side with a No War With China
slogan on the other.
CreativeWorld homes are business spaces as well
as family spaces, so the modern dining table extends
to make a small conference table. The fold-up
chairs in the corner are for extra-busy meetings.
You can’t look through the Smithses’ Rolodex - it’s
private. However, if you did you’d notice that the
only distinct category is ‘Family’ – business and
social contacts have merged almost entirely.
On the kitchen table is the Local Creatives Newsletter
– a monthly collection of news and notices written
by creatives in the area and printed on paper as a
novelty, nostalgic gesture. Later on, during Lounge,
some friends will be dropping round to work on the
next one.
24
9 Rest and play
After dinner, the Smithses enjoy an hour or so of
own-time. Health specialists recommend following
the natural ebb and flow of family members’ energy,
in much the same way as teachers do with younger
pupils – overdoing together-time, according to the
Life Rhythms white paper, can lead to weakened
imaginations and other serious personality disorders.
What’s going on?
Because her bedtime is coming up, Abbie is stationed
in front of an Immyjez Dreamer video. Nowhere near
as manic as the regular Immyjez cartoons (which
several bloggers have hinted contain subliminal
messages from beleaguered junkfood advertisers),
these feature the familiar characters drifting in and
out of focus to soothing music and are said to
promote inventive dreaming.
Johnny is listening to a live public radio programme
from a studio in the local library – some local kids
are hosting an hour of sub-rock. In 2015 access to
radio is far more open; podcasting started the job,
but ‘New Radio’, a media-wide survey that saw 82%
of people declare ‘illegitimate’ broadcasters more
interesting than the legitimate ones, finished it.
Mr Smiths is keeping half an eye on Trash Ceiling, a
friend’s documentary on unskilled workers shut out
by the creative boom. He’s agreed to blog about it if
the director films Abbie’s 5th birthday. Why only half
an eye? Well, people in CreativeWorld have found
that being in contact with screen-media for 97% of
their waking hours helps them develop the lifeskill of
‘multiviewing’ (source: Endemol Research, 2013).
Also on the monitor are a Gamba Osaka-Chelsea
Worldleague football match and Bloomberg-Yahoo’s
creative markets feed.
Johnny is on the computer uploading the latest
episode of Jimmy Weirdboy to the local wireless
network. This is the animated soap opera he created
using Sims Soap. The older boy next door, who plays
in a fourth-wave punk band, has added a new track
to his area – which Johnny downloads secretly. The
generation gap is still in evidence when it comes to
music – Mr Smiths considers post-1991 rock and
pop music ‘moribund and narcissistic’ compared
to the hot ‘eth-niche’ scenes. To Johnny’s dismay,
his father’s network area is packed with Croatian
folk-hop.
Let’s give them some privacy for now and catch up
with them tomorrow…
26
Up on Mr Smiths’s bookcase is Post-Grime
Confidential, a collection his friend Asa Redundant
(who we’ll run into later) put together for the
publishing wing of Rough Trade International.
They commission specialists to create audiovisual,
anthropological records of music scenes as soon
as possible after they break.
The spherical device on the table is Apple’s iSphere.
A wireless server for management of home and
local networks, it also monitors activity and delivers
appropriate ads and content according to limits set
by the user (between 0 for ‘don't bother me’ and 10
for ‘receptive to all new content’). It is thanks to the
iSphere’s intelligence that Mr Smiths is catching the
last 20 minutes of the match.
Not for long, however. As media-savvy as Mr
Smiths’s generation are, the technology gap
between fathers and sons still exists. While dad
usually struggles with the iSphere, Johnny casually
hacks into it and replaces its carefully chosen
content with cut-ups of old horror movies and stills
from Jimmy Weirdboy. He falls about laughing as his
dad becomes confused about some of the images
he is seeing.
Mr Smiths is using the SkyPlus+ MeCam to liven
up the football action. His Nike SensaSlippers map
below-the-knee movements on to a digital avatar.
Alternatively, the Heromulator can paste his digital
likeness on to famous goalscoring runs of the past.
Now that so many people plough their creativity into
business, ‘back to basics’ craftsmanship is used for
relaxation, in the same way that yoga and meditation
once were. Mrs Smiths is switching off by painting.
She is simply depicting what’s in front of her and is
not too concerned with the quality of the picture,
since the end product isn’t the point. Look closely
and you’ll see her aligning her breathing with her
brush strokes.
10 Let’s go shopping
At the weekend, the Smithses head for the high
street to do some shopping and to meet some
friends. The whole family looks forward to this,
because in CreativeWorld high streets are attractive
places of comfort, fun and, of course, stimulation.
In 2009 Omni, an ambient retail consultancy, showed
that the millions of Euros wasted on UK shop interiors
would be better spent on the shared, public spaces
outside, as it was these spaces that were putting
people off and driving them to the edge-of-town
‘retail ranches’.
On the Smithses’ high street a council of shop
owners and managers brought in the locally based
HortiCity Gardening Company to sort the place out.
The result was intelligent, site-specific planting,
public art and, thanks to businesses being allocated
‘front-garden’ space and encouraged to use it
creatively, a green, vibrant continental feel.
In this environment the ‘yob’ has become the stuff
of legend. New ASBOs (Artistically Sterile Behaviour
Orders) have forcibly channelled useless aggression
into creative work. The young gentleman tinkering
with the car is serving his at Car Nouveau, which
does modifications and paintjobs for everyone from
eco-warriors to rappers.
Mr Smiths spots Asa Redundant coming out of
Redundant Records and waves. They met in the local
bookshop’s self-publishing department – Mr Smiths
delivered the manuscript for his Be Excellent to Each
Other: 101 Moral Absolutes for a Secular Society at
the same time as Asa was printing a monograph on
Verlaine’s right-hand technique.
As usual he’s heading to the Artist and Engineer
with a minor local celebrity. Record shops now rely
on close, facilitating relationships with local acts
to generate revenue and brand equity. By offering
basic studio, rehearsal and performance space – and
discreetly using the ruthless A&R instincts he learned
at Sony before it downsized – Asa has insinuated
Redundant into the mythology of several closely
watched acts.
28
What’s going on?
Bedclothes is a small concern run by designer/
owner Phenomena Stitch. Downstairs she offers
a small, handmade off-the-peg range and a
Customisation Stylist service – customers turn
up with a handbag or a pair of jeans. She tells
them what they can do with them and makes any
modifications the customer chooses. Upstairs is a
three-room B&B-cum-showroom. Phenomena will
consider offers on any of the furniture or décor
guests want to buy.
XhiBits’n’Pieces is a destination store that blends
ambient retail with conceptual art. Like the Tchibo
chain of the noughties, it rotates stock thematically;
unlike Tchibo, the chosen theme is always selected
by a local artist and completely governs the interior
of the store. This month, under the title ‘After Many
a Summer’, the stock includes vintage sunglasses
and old menus prised from disused ice-cream vans.
The floor is strewn with smashed beercans and
singed grass (for which those in the know will
pay good money – they’ve been smashed and
singed by the autobiographical performance artist
Eddie Confessor.)
The man in the yellow shirt is pointing his mobile
communication device at the bus stop to download
information about local transport in the area. With
so much information available in this way, waving
gadgets about in the street has become as common
a practice as talking to someone via a wireless
headset.
BMW funded, and now run, the architect-designed,
sub-ground-level parking scheme you can see here
– and other car companies have 3D’d with similar
schemes in other towns and cities. We’ll pop over
the reinforced glass ceiling, drop into Starbucks
for a Red Bull Latte next, but for now look out for
a ‘Starbusk’ point – as the coffee company that
‘owns’ music, they provide a high-quality street
entertainment service.
11 Who wants coffee?
One thing that hasn’t changed is shoppers’ need for
a restorative coffee.
Starbucks has come to ‘own’ music in the café
market: tables have terminals with internet access
and the latest music-generation software (with
specially commissioned, coffee-specific samples –
beans being ground, milk being frothed, filters being
cleared). Users earn store credit every time someone
uploads one of their tunes or playlists and the system
lets you comment and vote on others’ work.
Of course, you can use this to make a compilation
of singles and album tracks, but that’s rather old hat
now. Sipping on a goats’ milk macchiato, Mr Smiths
browses some recent in-store ‘grind-ups’ and lines
up a few old classics while Johnny puts together a
tune of his own.
The intention is to create a father/son playlist and
earn the Smithses some free coffee. True to Saturday
tradition, though, the project stalls when dad tries
to make ‘Hand in Glove’ the first track. Johnny
puts his headphones on and Mr Smiths sets about
downloading a Starbucks podcast on the provenance
of their organic Venezuelan Roast.
Mrs Smiths rolls her eyes and tries to distract Abbie.
625 need some information on hyperbolic geometry
to support a project for Apple, so she’s looking on
the library network’s National eBooks Service (NeBS),
which Starbucks sponsor and are the only café chain
licensed to deliver.
NeBS also offers the premium MyReader service –
customers request a reader/backgrounder on any
subject under the sun, and MyReader commissions
one of a network of experts to put it together. Many
struggling higher-education institutions make extra
money by making their staff available.
Delighted to find what she wants, Mrs Smiths
disappears into one of several Break-In Areas
– an ironic reference to the ‘breakout rooms’ office
workers used to go to for a coffee – to place a call
to her boss.
30
What’s going on?
These days, people are keener than ever to know
what they’re drinking – so there’s detailed information
on the science of coffee available at the counter.
Customers can also borrow from the store’s own
extensive library of coffee-related materials.
Watching some documentaries has helped the
three customers on the right understand more
about their drink.
For nearly 18 months Vodafone and Starbucks have
been fighting it out to become the market-leading
‘floating office’ brand. Vodafone are pushing the
privacy and comfort of the Vodapod, while Starbucks
emphasise the social edge of the Break-In areas –
they can seat up to six and have facilities for giving
presentations and making conference calls. Of
course the usual office problems crop up – the
man at the counter is angry because Windows
has crashed on his hired laptop.
The blend-your-own bar (or ‘mixing desk’, see right)
incorporates both luxury and highly commercial
coffee products, catering for kids as well as chinstroking connoisseurs, and has given birth to hordes
of young iconoclasts eager to mash up Vietnamese
Weasel Roast with butterscotch syrup and popping
candy.
12 Bottoms up!
In the evening Mr and Mrs Smiths leave Abbie and
Johnny in the care of a babysitter and head off for a
drink at their local pub, the Artist and Engineer. Since
very high rates of alcotax were introduced to curb
excessive drinking in 2010, most alcohol consumption
has been done at home.
The Artist and Engineer still prides itself on its
collection of Finnish micro-brewery nutra-ales, but
like many bars it is now as much about entertainment
as boozing. Drinkers have access to a small collection
of musical instruments and a rudimentary stage, and
on Fridays regulars often gather round a battered
upright piano for a singsong as closing time
approaches.
A network of touch-screen terminals in the pub allows
regulars to have an ‘account’ where they save details
of which guest beers and snacks they’ve tried, which
bands they’ve seen and which records they’ve
enjoyed on the jukebox. Data is consolidated into
a scoring system that helps guide new customers
as well as informing the pub’s buying strategy.
Not all the Artist and Engineer’s customers were
delighted when Ewan the landlord opted in to the
Government’s ‘Pal in a Glass’ scheme. When
monitors embedded in the glass detect inebriation,
reasonable, non-confrontational advice about not
drinking any more appears on a screen in its base.
Some glasses with voice-recognition are able to
‘converse’ by returning advice of increasing severity;
the Government has just banned software that allows
people to make glasses that hurl insults at the drinker.
32
What’s going on?
The glasses might look the same, but you should
taste what’s in them. Mr Smiths has ordered an
organic rye beer with fresh blackberry and vanilla
and Mrs Smiths has gone for a Swedish wholegrain
lager with cranberry and East Surrey pear. Old Mr
Marks-Spencer remarks – as he does every Friday
– that Starbucks started off all this mixing your own
drinks thing years ago.
The Artist and Engineer gets its snacks from
Gastrosnax at the multi-market. Mr Stasiuk’s
curry pirogis usually go down well at closing
time. Right now, Mr Smiths is tucking into his
favourite indulgence – acorn-fed organic Saddleback
scratchings with Dorset beach sea-salt. Mrs Smiths
worries about his heart, but at least it’s ethical.
When they’re not making their own entertainment,
the punters enjoy sponsored events – pubs are
great for 3Ding brands. A sign on the wall advertises
Monday’s Durex Speed Date night, Wednesday’s
Google Pub Quiz and Friday’s Orange Creative
Network night.
The odd, coloured shapes by the stairs were all
created by customers who participated in the pub’s
occasional craft days, on which local tradesmen
come in on a Sunday and teach the basics of
disciplines like woodwork, clay-modelling and
brass-rubbing in a relaxed atmosphere. Pubs
that can offer self-improvement schemes to their
customers are highly popular with drinkers – and
the Government.
13 Hallelujah!
On Sunday morning the Smiths go to church. Yes,
church! In the 20th century, Mr and Mrs Smiths’s
parents believed that organised religion was on the
way out as society became more technologically
advanced. But you only have to look at the Smithses
and their friends here to see how wrong they were.
Mr and Mrs Smiths belong to the Church of the
Global Self. It’s one of the counter-fundamentalist
churches that disaffected clerics of all denominations
set up in the early years of the 21st century, after the
world’s major religions fell into the hands of severe,
illiberal regimes.
When those regimes began employing artists to
make-over their image, they spurred the new creative
classes into action. Reclaiming the word ‘church’
and drawing heavily on the 1990s cult of self-help,
groups launched a mass of counter-fundamentalist
or ‘simply spiritual’ churches, including the Church
of Sentience (dedicated to the rights of animals), the
Church of the Maternal Earth (heavily influenced by
Gaia theory) and the Church of Kindness (dedicated
to basic good manners and decency).
Like many of these churches, the Church of the
Global Self encourages its people to create
decorations, music, texts and multi-disciplinary
displays celebrating the idea of God as the sum of
the goodwill of all the people on earth. As you can
see, a meeting at the Church of the Global Self is
nothing like the old, uncreative ‘services’ of Mr and
Mrs Smiths’ grandparents’ era.
34
What’s going on?
Many old abandoned churches have been adapted
into multi-faith meeting centres, under the terms of
Sir Anthony Blair’s monumental New Labour, New
God policy – his last great initiative before finally
leaving office in 2010.
Hymns are written by members of the congregation
and all relate to the realities of life in the church’s
local area.
Although they shy away from classical Christianity
and other religions, many counter-fundamentalist
churches celebrate individuals who took a spiritual
stand against convention and law, as well as a
plethora of other deities and heroes. Looking around
the room we can see, among others, portraits of Dr
Martin Luther King, Martin Luther, John the Baptist,
Pastor Martin Niemöller, Ganesh, Ulysses and
the Buddha.
You’ll have to look carefully to see it, but there are
plenty of people here hoping to meet future lifepartners. Long working hours make it hard to meet
new people in CreativeWorld, but religious meetings
are great places for socialising and even dating.
Two people, usually a man and a woman, take charge
of each meeting. They have no particular authority –
they’re simply members of the congregation working
to a rota.
As you can see, goods are on offer over by the wall
– food, images, text, computer programs, clothes,
books and so on. Proceeds go to church funds.
Like many churches, this one has virtually no
branding inside – mainstream religion’s decision
to accept sponsorship from funeral services and
formalwear companies prompted many counterfundamentalists to make churches ‘media-pure’.
However, the Church of the Global Self has
accepted unobtrusive placement from the
household cleaning products range Purity,
which was regarded as a ‘good fit’.
14 Wherever next?
On Sunday afternoon the Smiths go home, pack and
travel to the airport to fly off on holiday.
They’re flying Creative Class on one of Virgin’s
1500-seater Boeing Megabus jets. It looks like the
Smithses have been lucky today, because Virgin has
allocated their flight to its famous Air-Playne. The
Air-Playne is a one-off ‘super-creative’ vessel that
is rotated randomly around Virgin’s long-haul routes.
The Playne contains family live-and-work spaces,
sleepspaces, spas, cinemas, galleries, tuition areas,
and, of course, three eating areas. All have been
customised by professional artists and designers,
and personal spaces are distributed on a first-comefirst-served basis. So now it actually pays to check
in two hours early (nobody has missed a long-haul
Virgin flight since March 2010).
When the Megabus was first announced, airlines
claimed that all passengers would have access to
this sort of luxury. But rising fuel prices meant the
promise had to be abandoned in favour of price
cutting, which now allows people to travel from
London to New York for £40 return. Virgin’s Playne
kept the dream of super-premium travel for all alive
– and the chance of flying on it attracted customers
and kept them loyal. And no wonder.
The elated Smithses are given highly prized Playne
wristbands, which contain information about the
customer’s food, drink and leisure preferences,
allowing the crew to tailor onboard service to each
person’s needs. Wristbands from the first Playne
flight have changed hands for up to £7,000 on eBay,
and even the Smithses’ brand-new versions will be
worth a bit when they get home – though Abbie and
Johnny will proudly wear theirs until they fall off.
As the Smiths fly off, we must now take our leave
of them. We’ll be seeing them again though – when
we’re all living in CreativeWorld ourselves.
36
What’s going on?
The Smithses can choose and cook their own food
in the self-preparation restaurant, or enjoy table
service in one of the other two. Of course they
go for the former. Here we can see mum Kate
preparing a pumpkin kimao with one of the Playne’s
professional cookbuddies (see left).
Meanwhile, the children visit the website of their
hotel to see their room being prepared – should
they see any interior design problems they can
fire an email off to the management and have them
rectified. After Mrs Smiths has finished cooking
she’ll go online herself and download a trend report
from their destination.
Never one to miss an opportunity, Mr Smiths
pitches some ideas for the safety procedure routine.
These are no longer explained by stewardesses
or pre-recorded videos – people became so inured
to them that airlines realised the only way to get
passengers to take safety instructions seriously
was to deliver them with fresh content every time.
This has established a system of ‘sky-patronage’
which, despite having helped many a struggling
artist, struggled itself to survive the fallout from Jake
and Dinos Chapman’s ‘Welcome To Safety’
commission of 2013.
Of course, such a large plane can be intimidating
to those who aren’t comfortable with air travel.
Now that sedatives are frowned upon (they dull the
creative mind) and hypnosis is legal only in business
meetings, Virgin recommend passengers use the
balance and harmony of ikebana to still their nerves.
Though rarely successful first time, its cumulative
effects have proved extraordinary – Mr Smiths has
certainly improved (see right).
15 Creative Frontiers
It’s not just the United Kingdom that changed when it joined CreativeWorld. Here’s a quick, handy guide to the
Europe of the future.
Amsterdam, Holland
Antwerp, Belgium
Athens, Greece
Baltic states
Barcelona, Spain
Bergen, Norway
Berlin, Germany
Bilbao, Spain
Copenhagen, Denmark
Dublin, Ireland
Edinburgh, Scotland
Graz, Austria
Helsinki, Finland
Ibiza, Spain
Krakow, Poland
Lisbon, Portugal
London, UK
Madrid, Spain
Milan, Italy
Moscow, Russia
Paris, France
Prague, Czech Republic
Puszta, Hungary
Reykjavik, Iceland
Rome, Italy
Stockholm, Sweden
Stuttgart, Germany
Valencia, Spain
Varna, Bulgaria
Venice, Italy
Vienna, Austria
Zagreb, Croatia
Zurich, Switzerland
38
Old world
Lace, trade
Diamonds
Tourism
Trade
Trade
Oil
Techno, unrest
Heavy industry, shipping
Philosophy
Brewing
Law
Classical music
Paper, forestry
Salt, trade
Iron, steel
Navigation, exploration
Banking
Bullfighting, antiques
Fashion
Literature
Cars
Tourism
Agriculture
Forestry, fishing
Scooters, romance
Electronics
Car manufacture
Oranges
Shipping
Printing
Operetta, cake
Textiles
Banking
CreativeWorld
Head offices, drug-enhanced advertising
Avant garde fashion, pretentious beer
Outdoor eating
New media
Peasant cookery, boutiques
Post-dance pop music
Anti-capitalism
Urban regeneration, town planning
Die-hard hippies
Writing, conversation
Neo-Dandyism
Storytelling
Mobile telephony interfaces
Ranch clubbing
Photography
Street festivals
Progressive hip-hop, pirate radio
Hedonism, unreconstructed machismo
Industrial design, coffee culture
Concept nightclubs, fashion
Graffiti, slogans, protest
Printing, film
Farmhouse renovation, downshifter autobiographies
Folktronica, myth
New Classicism, ceremony
Glassware, self-control
Old-school hip-hop
Rock festivals
Family holidays
Pre-digital nostalgia, afternoon tea
Avant garde music
Animated film
Warehouse parties
40
Postscript
Make it new: notes on the creation of CreativeWorld
By Richard Benson and Peter Lyle
1 The Creative Economy
In his March 2005 Budget Gordon Brown once again
explained, in his uniquely downbeat way, that he was
still the miracle-worker, ensuring Britain had never
had it so good. We are now living, he said, through
the longest period of sustained economic growth
since records began, maintaining a healthier level
of national debt than Germany, the US or Japan and
seeing our living standards rise by 3% each year.
Yet his speech also had a less rosy subtext about
the relative decline of the old foundations of our
economic strength. To ensure the nation’s ‘long-term
prosperity’, he explained, we need to deal with the
fact that developing countries are on their way to
producing half of the world’s manufacturing exports.
A future as an unskilled production line of an economy
was no future at all. Britain’s ‘economic destiny’
rested on our leadership in the ‘skills, science and
knowledge economy’. He went on to give a speech
that devoted precisely zero paragraphs to manufacturing and just two to science. The ‘creative industries’,
which now account for 8% of national income,
luxuriated in three of their own.1
This, then, is the new financial world that developed
countries such as Britain have to face. Ours is a
globalised economy, a marketplace in which other
countries can pay people a lot less and produce a lot
more. The big three regions are China – where most
of the clothes we wear, cars we drive and consumer
electronics we enjoy are already made – for sheer
mass of workers and manufacturing muscle; India
– already the world capital of call centre services and
outsourced computer infrastructures – for educated,
IT-savvy workers who do skilled technical jobs for
salaries that, converted into sterling, compare with
the UK minimum wage; and the emerging central and
eastern European nations, where millions of eager
graduates will soon be producing cut-price goods
and services that, thanks to their recent membership,
they’re entitled to sell cheap as chips within the EU.
creative businesses, producing high-quality,
innovative goods and services,’ as the then Trade
Secretary Patricia Hewitt put it in a June 2004
speech, which remains the most in-depth official
explanation yet of what the government understands
by, and hopes for, the ‘creative industries’.2
‘The term means different things to different people,’
Hewitt said, ‘but by my definition it means companies
which have their origin in creativity, skill, talent and
whose principle route to wealth and job creation is
through the generation and exploitation of intellectual
property.
‘In reality this means everything from advertising to
architecture; music and film to design and publishing;
fashion and computer games to TV and DVD.’
The creative economy, she explained, is growing at
8% per year. It accounts for one in five of all jobs in
London and £11.4 billion of our balance of trade,
‘well ahead of the construction industry, insurance
and pensions, and twice that of the pharmaceutical
sector’.
It is, she added, a growing sector that we have to
nurture and take seriously. Creative people and
creative businesses, she went on to say, ‘are the
way, and I happen to believe it’s the only way, we
are likely to compete in this challenging global
marketplace.’3
To compete, we must focus on innovation rather
than old-fashioned industrial volume, on the value of
thoughts rather than things, on ‘creative people and
41
2 The Creative Taxonomy
Because the precise parameters of the creative
economy remain a little hard to map out, a little
refresher course in what we mean by ‘creativity’
itself is in order. ‘Creativity’ signifies a shift from
consensus and conformity to a focus on the
individual, to personal dreams and desires. That,
in turn, modifies our idea of what people’s gender
or age suits them to, or precludes them from doing.
Then there’s work – something that’s no longer just
a matter of putting bread on the table, but a quest
for fulfilment, too; something, therefore, in which the
distinction and relationship between the personal and
the professional is blurred. In turn, productivity also
becomes a trickier thing to measure: it’s not just a
matter of output, but of more nebulous ideas such
as perception and satisfaction. And finally, since in
a consumer society so much of our self-expression
boils down to choices about what we buy, use and
wear, brands take on a pivotal role in our lives.
Brands are the means by which businesses can
convince individuals that they see and respect them
as individuals rather than as captive purchasers.
The term creative industries ‘means different things
to different people’. Hewitt conceded, before reeling
off that list of professional sectors – architecture,
design, publishing – that suggests she thinks
everything, from the car you drive to the paper you
read to your home, could be classified as the work
of creatives. Yet many Britons, even – perhaps
especially – those who are skilled, well educated
and part of the knowledge economy, proudly display
an enduring fear of fluffiness, a powerful distrust of
fancy ideas like ‘creativity’ and ‘self-expression’.
Blame the stiff upper lip, Blitz-era stoicism or the
way we feel so much more secure in our own
identities when contrasting them with the ‘pretentious’
French or the ‘emotional’ Italians, but the educated
elite, the ruling classes, the authorities, have a
historical suspicion of any solution that goes beyond
the bounds of good, honest workmanship and
common sense. But frankly it’s time they got over it.
Life in modern Britain indicates that the foundations
of CreativeWorld are already in place.
42
At its simplest, creativity denotes anything beyond
duty, function and common sense; at its broadest,
it means anything we might call ‘self-expression’.
It means the imprecise spirituality signified by a
Beckham-style tattoo – a Celtic band, a life-enhancing
slogan in Thai, Hindi or Japanese script – or a haircut.
You can walk down the street pierced and bodyarted up like someone out of Gladiator and nobody
bats an eyelid. In an era of special diets and single
parents, podcasts and people carriers, the conformist
numbers on which our conception of Olde England
are founded – nine-to-five, 2.4 children, meat and
two veg, three TV channels, two weeks’ holiday, at
Butlins, per annum – are the only things that look
really weird.
That’s why the modern consensus about how to
entice consumers to anything from products to politics
is to pretend there is no consensus. Marketers set
out – to borrow the slogan of Apple, who can still
market iPods as emblems of individuality even
though everyone, right up to George W. Bush, now
owns one – to demonstrate that a brand, like us,
thinks different. That’s why staff at London estate
agent Foxtons drive Minis bearing the company logo
in a graffiti or stencils-and-camouflage script, and
why their receptions resemble classy coffee shops.
That’s why Ikea’s anti-elitism ads flatter the discerning
designer in all of us (and why their Tottenham store
opening in early 2005 turned into a small-scale riot).
That’s why your friends look rather confused when
they return to the once-grey, provincial hometown
that they left for the big city. Where, they’re wondering,
is the no-nonsense, no-ambiguity culture of conformity
in which slacks and rolled-up shirtsleeves constituted
leisurewear? When did every generic Bloke suddenly
start dressing like a metrosexual hairdresser or a
refugee from reality TV?
This deference to our collective entitlement to selfexpression is also the defining feature of the one
big political buzzword of our time, Choice. We are
forever being offered more choice over our utilities
bills, our healthcare, our children’s education. But
while ‘Parent power’, ‘Your NHS’ or your right to
plump for the telephone enquiries service with the
catchiest theme tune all signify official faith in Joe
Public’s ability to judge what is best for him, they
surely don’t indicate that we’re all suddenly as expert
in each field as geologists, doctors or teachers. The
logical conclusion, the underlying message, is
something different: you’ve got a feeling in your
bones. You intuit. You divine. You just know.
It works the other way too, of course. We don’t want
to know that our elected leaders are good at their
jobs, we want to feel like we know them, know
they’re a bit like us, too – hence the endless to-ing
and fro-ing about trust. We don’t want our politicians
simply to be holders of offices, we want them to
be people too. That’s why Tony Blair rolls up his
shirtsleeves and sips his cup of tea. That’s why the
autumn 2004 conference season saw all the major
parties schedule Oprah-style discussions with key
party figures who, in the words of the Guardian’s
Jackie Ashley, were ‘grappling with a new popular
vocabulary that emphasises feeling, self-revelation
and emotional directness’.4 Not because they
necessarily wanted to – it was probably precisely
the kind of vague, uncertain stuff they had entered
politics to escape – but because, in the era of intuition
and Big Brother and bored voters, it was the best
way they could think of to re-engage the public
interest. (The public interest, by the way, is another
interesting idea: it used to denote anything decided
by those in power for our greater good. Now, judging
by the News of the World’s recent court victories, it
just means anything that captures our attention.)
Even if we’re terminally disengaged from our
politicians, however, our new willingness to trust in
our feelings has sparked a resurgence of spirituality.
In Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern, John
Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London
School of Economics, argues that globalisation, more
wealth and better health aren’t forging a more liberal,
rational world. In fact, even as we become ever
more materially comfortable, we’re experiencing a
resurgence of interest in the spiritual and irrational.5
(The American John Gray, who wrote the bestselling
1990s astrological relationship guide Men Are From
Mars, Women Are From Venus, is of course someone
else altogether. But the success of his paganthrowback approach to finding a man would seem
to prove the English John Gray’s point.)
An example: in the early 1990s, something called the
Alpha Course was born in a church in the not merely
well-, but veritably Choo-, heeled west London district
of Knightsbridge. It was a system, devised by Nicky
Gumbel, curate of Holy Trinity Brompton, to counter
the grey, top-down tradition of Anglicanism. It sought
to re-engage people with Christian doctrine via
modern marketing techniques and the language of
therapy. This new course has since been taken up
by hundreds of thousands of people across the world
and churches that have made it an essential ingredient
have flourished – almost like surrogate social clubs
– even as overall attendance has declined. Forget
singular decrees scorched on to stone tablets: the
new route to salvation was more akin to a selfrevealing chat in a coffee bar. ‘In the Enlightenment,’
Gumbel wrote of Alpha’s success, ‘reason ruled
supreme and explanation led to experience. In the
present transitional culture, with its “pick-and-mix”
worldview in which the New Age movement is a
potent strand, experiences lead to explanation.’6
3 The Social Ecology of the Creative Economy
How will the social rules and rewards of our world be
realigned in this new one? Who could get ahead and
who might miss out? Mum’s the first word, inevitably,
because the nearest contemporary equivalent of the
perfect future creative is the ball-juggling, work/lifebalancing, multitasking, parent-and-professional
Domestic Goddess. She’ll be more adept at networking, empathising and dealing with the other
necessary offshoots of blurred distinctions between
home and office.
Dad, meanwhile, might be better off looking after
the home, working in fields that are more solitary
and self-contained. Boys will continue to find solace
in their own obsessions and diversions as girls
continue to outpace them academically, and at the
more extreme ends of their behavioural tendencies
they may be able benefit from their isolated roles
and ultimately help the rest of us as a side effect.
In his book The Essential Difference, Cambridge
psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen has suggested
that the new world of information technology
might be better than the old one of manual
labour and office politics at accommodating those
(predominantly male) people with autistic spectrum
disorders. It could provide the scope for people
with social difficulties to use their talents in pursuing
personal projects, solving problems and designing
systems – all the skills vital to the growth of the
information age.7
In 2002, 29-year-old American computer programmer
Bram Cohen (no relation) launched Bittorrent, the
peer-to-peer download system that is by far the most
popular and speedy means of downloading movies
and TV shows to your computer. By the end of 2004
it was responsible for a third of all data sent across
the internet.8 Cohen has Asperger’s syndrome, which
facilitates incredible focus and concentration but
makes communication with others very difficult. In
the old industrial world – and even in the conventional
business tradition – his personality quirks might have
prevented his brilliant idea from ever reaching the
market. In the new world of information exchange,
all Cohen needed to do was work away on Bittorrent
alone, drop it on to the web and rely on early adopters
to find it and spread the word.
We can’t all be inventors of dazzling software, because,
if we were, nobody would need to bother downloading
anybody else’s work. We can’t all be fine artists,
because there’d be nobody to paint white lines on
the roads. We can’t all be actors, because actors
need audiences. But the modern definition of
creativity is sufficiently broad to save us from the
danger of replacing the old class system with a new
one based on access to art. Ours is, after all, an era
of artisan cheese and rickshaw taxis, a time in which
dumped furniture can be reclaimed, restored and
marketed as ‘premium vintage’, in which the name
of a capable and reliable plumber is passed between
friends with the kind of reverence Italian noblemen
once used to discuss getting that Michelangelo in
to work on their ceilings. Yesterday’s jobsworth is
today’s specialist craftsman; if we wait for the wheel
to come round, there’s every chance we’ll all get our
moment of artistic glory.
An example: in Australia there is a growing trend
for people in their 40s in high-pressure, highly paid
financial fields who feel burned out, unwanted or just
plain redundant to take their savings and invest them
in becoming ‘hobby farmers’, often while still playing
the markets part-time on the net. Hobby farmers
shun industrial-scale animal husbandry but rear
enough livestock to break even. Just as important
to many of them, though, is the fetishisation of the
lifestyle – the lifestyle that has been the bane of
so many real, hardworking agricultural families.
Perhaps there is a glimpse of the future in that kind
of role reversal, something in the choices of today’s
downsizers that demonstrates how citizens of the
future will embrace and express themselves through
practices and pastimes that others would regard
as dull, repetitive or even – horror of horrors – merely
functional.
In that June 2004 speech, Patricia Hewitt noted that
some scientists were looking suspiciously at the
promise of a creative economy, but warned against
43
falling back on old divisions between the hard,
empirical world of science and the soft, intangible
one of design and art.9 Scientists won’t be frozen
out of CreativeWorld, but helped out of their white
coats and welcomed in; labs will become living
rooms. Jonathan Ives’ Apple designs, the UK’s
booming videogame companies, the very term
‘designer babies’ – all depend on a relationship,
rather than an opposition, between art and science
and technology. To make the most of CreativeWorld,
we’ll all have to be neo-Renaissance women and
men for whom discovery and play is the thing,
whether it’s in the arts or science. We’ll be demi-Da
Vincis, painters one moment and programmers the
next. Our involvement in the big picture will depend
on our ability to use both sides of the brain.
4 Branded realities and neo-Luddites
As they continue their retreat from ideology,
governments will increasingly have to settle for the
role of managing elements of public life and, at best,
regulating the world of brands – the one place where
big, inspiring ideas will still be found.
In CreativeWorld, the world of intellectual content
rather than physical product, the ancient idea of
trademarks as guarantors of functional qualities like
‘good workmanship’ and ‘good value’ will be all but
extinct. It will take more than that kind of distinction
for brands to survive, they’ll need an emotional
component too. And as well as hitting that right
note, each brand will have to catch our eyes or win
our ears if it is to arrive, adapt and stay the course.
Stickers, sponsors’ logos, subliminal bleeps, ambient
assurances, unwanted video messages on your
PDA: brands will be competing for your attention
everywhere, like midges in the park on a summer
evening.
The kids will probably love all the attention and
promises of FREE stuff. For the rest of the inhabitants
of this branded world, however, things might get
more complicated.
In postmillennial Britain, we’re still getting over the
arrival of brands, still waking up to the way they
helped turn our grey, sober, Sunday-closing, postwar world into one big, groovy high street. Their
novelty still hasn’t worn off – after all, most of us
barely knew what they were 15 years ago. Come the
advent of CreativeWorld proper, though, that’s likely
to change. In some quarters, that gratitude and
wonder will have given way to suspicion about their
pervasive presence. Suspicion will be the preserve of
the parent class, those in late youth or early middleage with memories of life BB (Before Brands). Such
suspicion will be a logical extension of the early 21st
century’s Slow Food movement, which saw advocates
turn their back on convenience food. And it’ll share
that movement’s defining sense that life is better if
you bother to appreciate, rather than merely
consume, it.
44
In the UK today, the Noise Association already
lobbies against the increasingly intrusive sounds
of modern life (pub jukeboxes, videogames, mobile
rings, low-flying planes), supporting its stance with
evidence that quieter environments breed brainier
kids. In a related polemic, the people behind
Adbusters recently advocated emulating the work
of the pioneering conservationists of the 1960s,
but applying it to our cultural environments, which
increasingly face threats of pollution and destruction
from branded corporate interests and cleverly
marketed cultural hegemony.10 They point out that
the environmentalists began by reshaping our
perception of nature from a resource for us to
plunder to a system that sustains us and needs
preserving; the guardians of ‘cultural capital’, they
said, should engineer a similar conceptual shift.
But this is where CreativeWorld could do something
strange to the Mr Smithses and their ilk – to the
generation of parents whose affection for brands
and radical advocacy of unbridled creativity will have
helped bring it into being. His pursuit of an untainted
mental space will constitute a kind of protectionism,
aligning him not so much with the poets and painters
and play-schools of the 20th century but with the US
corporations and unions who scorned and symbolically
burned imported Japanese cars in the 1980s, or with
the less severe but comparably chauvinistic French
l’exception culturelle, with its oft-ridiculed and
nationalistic arts subsidies and its quotas restricting
foreign films. Mr Smiths’s progressive past might be
replaced by a kind of conservative, reactionary present.
5 Legislating for a creative future
Rules are there to be broken. It’s one of the dustiest
artistic clichés of all, but it is nevertheless a neat
summation of the complications and contradictions
of legislating for a creative economy. Art aspires to
uniqueness, but laws and civic strategies apply
equally to everybody. Creatives pursue change and
novelty, but guarantees of stability and predictability
are necessary to promote serious investment.
Nevertheless, the creative economy is already being
factored into planning and policy decisions in the
way manufacturing once was. Urban regeneration
schemes already incorporate promises of creative
futures – London’s 2012 successful Olympic bid, for
example, included a promise to ‘foster a culture of
enterprise and innovation’ in order to bring a brighter
and more productive new spirit to the run-down,
socially deprived Lea Valley in which the Olympic
Village would be based.11 (The association of new
sporting venues with a new lease of self-expressive
life for an area is a proven one: when Derby County
FC moved from their old stadium, the Baseball
Ground, to their new one, Pride Park, the cultural
and economic knock-on benefits were huge.)
A number of expressly ‘creative’ hub-buildings in
Britain, such as Birmingham’s Custard Factory and
Glasgow’s Modern Institute, have proved that planning
a centre to attract creatives can work. In the US,
Richard Florida, a Pittsburgh professor of regional
economic development, has devised a system for
measuring an area’s appeal to what he calls the
‘creative class’ – people who ‘do not consciously
think of themselves as a class [but] share a common
ethos that values creativity, individuality, difference,
and merit.’ Drawing these talents to your town and
preventing them from leaving, Florida argues, is
crucial in economically outpacing your rivals.
Affordable housing, good transport and efficient
services are not enough; cities need those intangibles
of variety, difference and idiosyncrasy too – ‘gays
and rock bands’, in Florida’s shorthand – if they
want to excel economically and enjoy the knock-on
benefits of creatives’ patronage.12
But even though Florida has enough faith in his
economic formula to write it up as a practical
equation, he doesn’t deal with the Starbucks Effect.
People in, say, Hoxton already do. Hoxton is the UK’s
best known example of a once desolate, ex-industrial
area that became a cultural centre because of its low
rents, easy access to the city and copious empty
factories perfect for studio spaces. Yet 10 years after
its rebirth, its landscape is increasingly dominated
by big names, expensive apartment developments
and expensive bars. It is testament to the power
of creativity to transform the perception of an area,
but on the other hand it seems to be prove that
uncovering a ‘cultural hotspot’ will eventually mean
paving the way for big business and artistic decline.
Maybe, in the mobile, frequent-flying modern world
where fewer of us stay where our roots are or feel
bound by familial ties, none of that matters. Maybe
no amount of rent control or planning restrictions
can preserve a place’s grooviness when its mojo has
simply gone for good. Creative people are contrary,
anyway: that’s the point. You can tell them to head
for or stay in a particular place, but you can’t count
on it happening. And maybe, when you’ve got
broadband, all this worrying about geography
misses the point anyway. Isn’t the battleground
in the world of ideas a non-spatial one?
The Government’s Creative Industries Forum on
Intellectual Property Rights, a joint initiative founded
by the DTI and the Department of Culture, Media
and Sport, raises another interesting question for the
new creative economy: how can there be rules that
simultaneously protect new ideas and innovations,
but don’t stack the odds in favour of the biggest
companies with the best lawyers? After all, it has
not been innovative young artists, but moneyed,
conservative record and film companies who have
been the most vigilant defenders of intellectual
property (or attackers of harmless downloaders,
depending on your perspective) in the digital era.
system has already been adopted by the think-tank
Demos – add to the debate. Even their growing
influence is likely to be superseded by some clever
so-and-so with a better idea. That’s the thing with
creative, enterprising types: their ideas come from
directions you didn’t even know existed.
1
All Budget references taken from the full text of
Gordon Brown’s speech of 16th March 2005, as
reprinted in the Daily Telegraph, 17th March 2005
2
Patricia Hewitt, ‘Knowledge in the Creative
Economy’, speech delivered on 29th June 2004
and available to download from
www.dti.gov.uk/industries/digital_content/creativei
ndustries.html
3
Hewitt, op. cit.
4
Jackie Ashley, ‘I confess: I’ve had enough of all
this personal politics’, the Guardian, 7th October
2004
5
See John Gray, Al Qaeda and what it means to be
Modern (Faber and Faber, London, 2004)
6
Nicky Gumbel, Telling Others (Kingsway
Communications, London, 1997), p.19
7
Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference
(Allen Lane, London, 2003), pp.164-165
8
See Clive Thompson, ‘The BitTorrent Effect’,
Wired, January 2005
9
Hewitt, op. cit.
10
See ‘Clarity of Mind’, Adbusters, March 2005
11
From the London 2012 bid team’s ‘Legacy’ press
release, 2004
12
Richard Florida, ‘The Rise of The Creative Class’,
the Washington Monthly, May 2002
It will be interesting to see what initiatives such as
Creative Commons – a non-profit organisation that
offers an alternative to full copyright and whose
45
46
The Fish Can Sing
The Fish Can Sing is an award-winning, international
communications agency with offices in London and
New York.
For more information on The Fish Can Sing,
please contact Howard Beale or Dan Holliday.
For new business, please contact Howard Beale.
We believe new technology has put media and
communications into the hands of the majority, so
buzz has become more than just another channel to
deliver reach and frequency.
UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7377 7571
It has become something fundamental. More than
simply a synonym for ‘word of mouth’, buzz is the
creation of relevant excitement and is central to
effective persuasive communication.
The information age is an opportunity to transform
brands, making them creative engines whose work
drives an ongoing conversation with consumers.
USA Tel: +1 212 375 6258
E-mail: howard@thefishcansing.com
or dan@thefishcansing.com
Addresses:
The Fish Can Sing Ltd, Units 25 & 26, Jack’s Place,
6 Corbet Place, London, E1 6NN, UK
The Fish Can Sing Inc, 584 Broadway, Suite 612,
NY, NY 10012, USA
We help our clients’ brands think in terms of
localisation and multi-community marketing,
making them sources of real cultural interest.
The Fish Can Sing offers expertise across a wide
range of marketing channels and techniques: PR,
digital, retail, event, branded content, installation,
stunt, guerrilla, viral, sponsorship and advertising.
Our team has expertise in brands, culture, media,
marketing and communications. We also have
extensive international experience across the beer
and spirits, telecoms, FMCG, sport, fashion and
media sectors.
The agency is named after the Icelandic writer
Hallador Laxness’s 1957 novel, which shows
how people find wonder in everyday things.
In modern urban cultures people love to discover
magic in the world around them. We believe brands
can create that magic.
47
Credits
Editors
Richard Benson is a journalist and author, and former
editor of The Face.
David Rainbird is a co-founder and Creative Director
of Fibre, a design practice.
Nathan Midgley is a writer and researcher. He works
for The Fish Can Sing and Reed Business Information.
Associate editor
Peter Lyle is a former editor of Carlos, and writes for
Tank, America and Wallpaper* among others.
Concept
Devised & directed by The Fish Can Sing.
Design
Art direction and design by Fibre.
Illustration
Illustrations created by Ben Hasler. Represented by
NB Illustration.
Contributors
Rob Levine is a former editor of Wired and Details.
He works as a writer and consultant.
Ekow Eshun is Creative Director of the ICA and
former editor of Arena.
Alex Bilmes is Features Editor of British GQ.
Kevin Braddock is contributing editor on British GQ,
Marmalade and Touch.
Nathan Usmar Lauder is a co-founder and Creative
Director of Fibre, a design practice.
Andy Whitlock, Gabriella Karlsson and Ingrid Sydow
are creatives at The Fish Can Sing.
Luke Wright is a founding member of poetry
collective Aisle16.
Jennifer Kabat is a former editor at The Face and the
American design magazine ID.
Thanks
Robert Lands, Simon Benham.
48
Disclaimer
This book is entirely unofficial. None of the brands or
personalities referred to herein have endorsed it, nor
have they licensed the use of their names or logos.
If the creative economy’s growth rate persists, what
will life be like in 2015?
Award-winning marketing agency The Fish Can
Sing has produced the first user's guide to Britain’s
creative future.
CreativeWorld is an illustrated book that brings
together some of the best designers, writers and
commentators in the UK to imagine a future in which
knowledge and creativity drive the British economy.
Drawing on current trends in media use, education,
working culture and branding, it flashes forward to
the year 2015 to follow a typical family to work, to
school, to the shops and even to church. It offers
insights into changes taking place in our lives today
– and into a new world of which every aspect of our
work, rest or play will be revolutionised.
ISBN 0-9551280-0-5
£20.00