Today’s world is a consumer society where brands rule and a logo often takes prominence over the actual product itself. Artist Sarah Kissel’s fascination with haute couture’s identity crisis and in particular this movement of diffusion labels is expressed in her latest ‘luxury brand degradation’ art project.
Pure Magenta is a progression from her brilliantly perceptive ‘Faux Real’ work, showcased online at www.puremagenta.com.
Another great body of work, and a further continuation of Kissell’s passion for the perverse public fascination with iconography is that of her ‘Still Remains’ exhibition, a celebration of Jackie Onassis’ birth as an icon through the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
We were very pleased to be recently asked to contribute to ‘After the Crunch’, a new book launched this week by Creative & Cultural Skills and Counterpoint, the British Council think tank.
“In the last ten years the creative industries have become one of the most fashionable and talked-about components of the global economy. Are they just froth on the surface of exuberant capitalism, about to be blown away by global recession?” – so ask the editors, who include Shelagh Wright, John Newbigin, John Kiefer, John Holden and Tom Bewick.
In the book, 42 artists, entrepreneurs, commentators, analysts, policy-makers, policy-sceptics, academics, financiers – and citizens – set out their hopes and fears for the future and ask you to join the debate about what kind of world you want, After The Crunch.
The first of our monthly Radar briefings in Arts Industry magazine kicked off with CultureLabel co-founder and former BMW Group trend-scout, Florian Wupperfeld, voyaging into his Favourites folder to profile blogs worth watching to help keep ahead of consumer trends.
“…To conclude, and answer the intial question posed; yes, it is feasible to treat a cultural entity as a brand, deploying all related design and marketing tools. On the other hand, the nature of a cultural institution is not measurable purely in commercial terms, and the mechanisms governing the laws of reputation and perceived value in the cultural semiotic sphere might slightly differ in focus and intensity than those ruling in the purely commercial world.
But the real question is: could the notions of authenticity and integrity as we identify them at the heart of the branding of culture, of the branding through culture, actually constitute the seeds of a new paradigm for branding in general?”
Marco Bevolo is a visiting lecturer at the University of Leeds, UK, and an advisory board member at ISISUF in Milan, C3 Gallery of New York and MU of Eindhoven. He is Design Director at Philips Design and lives in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, and Turin, Italy.
The article is based on a study performed on behalf of Istituto Internazionale Studi sul Futurismo of Milan and the content was presented during lectures at the Nijenrode University of The Netherlands and at the School of Design at the University of Leeds.
Last Thursday we attended a summit of all the public agencies currently engaged in promoting or delivering technological developments in the culture sector. There were a combination of strategic agencies, current project leads and some of the major institutions in the room.
With the current amount of focus and investment going into technology in the culture sector (e.g. through digitisation, content distribution, user-generated content sites, etc.), the need for sector-wide guiding principles and a joined-up approach cannot be overstated. The aim of the gathering was therefore simple and yet devillishly difficult: find a way for all of the agents to work more closely together on their technology strategies.
We recently hosted a private dinner and discussion for 15 innovative senior cultural managers and policy professionals from the West Midlands region. The findings are feeding into our report on the Entrepreneurial Museum for Renaissance West Midlands and the MLA, due to be released late October.
For now, here’s a snippet to whet your appetite. First, speaking from their direct experience, we asked what is the single most critical success factor for creating a culture of innovation:
Katie Dawson, Learning and Development Manager at Pinsent Masons LLP, explains how the law firm has managed to develop a culture of ideas and innovation:
It’s a brave new world for lawyers, who, not so very long ago, weren’t allowed to sell or promote their services. Now it’s a fight against competitors for clients and talent, both of whom are demanding more from their law firm.
It’s difficult striking a balance between billable hours and development time, when one has such a clear and direct impact upon the company bottom line. Both are equally important, however.
Once a year all employees take ‘time out’, in the form of a conference. This gives a good, informal opportunity to network and socialise with their peers, and provide their verdict on the status quo.
Pinsent Masons builds innovation into the job description, encouraging it to be viewed as a requirement by all staff. In terms of HR, this means that we work to a competency framework. At each employee review meeting, staff members are graded against the criteria for displaying innovative behaviour, which is defined for each employment level.
Formally-appointed local ‘champions’ and ‘values agents’ work closely together to ensure that good new ideas do actually get implemented. It’s really easy to have lots of great ideas, and see nothing come of them, so we make sure there is a clear line of responsibility attached to implementation. The champions collect and develop ideas, while the ‘values agent’ is responsible for ensuring they reflect company values.
Our Senior Managing Partner has a regular ‘Ask Chris’ session on the intranet as one method to gather new ideas for improvement and innovation. We also have diversity groups that are consulted on ideas for handling any new client or matter.
Rewards come in the form of public recognition through our staff magazine, as well as through pay bonuses emerging out of the competency framework.
New ideas get so easily ‘absorbed’ it becomes hard to look back and identify our greatest innovation. Perhaps one example would be Out-law.com, our website providing legal advice, which we’re very proud to say recently received recognition for excellence through a Webby award – the first time a law firm has won one.
It’s vital that staff have ownership over their area of work and innovations – decentralised decisions are essential. At one time, all of our decisions had to go through all 300+ partners, which made it really difficult to implement new ideas. Fortunately, now those days are long gone.
Investment in an ‘ideas culture’ is a purely commercial decision. On one hand, we save thousands of pounds per year through staff retention. On the other, our clients demand to be seen by humans not robots – to achieve this, we take our ‘ideas culture’ very seriously – supporting our brand of “No Barriers”.
Opening Statement from this year’s Ars Electronica:
“…The age of copyright and intellectual property has reached its expiration date. A development that already manifested itself in the technical fundamentals of the Internet has reared its head in the actual practices of a young generation of users and is bringing forth a new economy of sharing and open access.
With this provocative formulation, Ars Electronica is placing one of the core issues of modern knowledge-based society at the focal point of this year’s festival program. What’s at stake: the value of intellectual property, freedom of information and copyright protection, big profit-making opportunities and the vision of an open knowledge-based society that seeks to build its new economy on the basis of creativity and innovation. The crux of the matter is that we still lack practical, workable rules and regulations governing this new reality and—of no small importance—that the task of coming up with them ought not to be left up to lawyers and MBAs alone.
After all, regardless of the perspective from which one approaches this issue—that of the Internet pirates, the inventors of a new information commons, the pioneers of a sharing economy or the apologists of the creative industries—one thing remains true: if knowledge and content actually are to be the new capital of postindustrial society, then they have to circulate and be accessible by all…”
It is often difficult to comprehend the changes that we are experiencing as a society today, whether social, economic, political or technological in nature. To use the cliche, we are now so used to it, change has become the only constant.
For some, the non-stop rhetoric of revolution fuels a persuasive counter-argument: that in reality, despite all the hype, today’s society is notable for the lack of revolutionary innovation compared with preceding centuries. Richard Morrison, for example, has argued that there is no sign yet of any cataclysmic changes that the years around 1900 or 1800 produced. The internet, the iPod, the mobile phone, human genome mapping… they’re all simply clever commercial applications of earlier breakthroughs, in his view.
Furthermore, Morrison argues that we may even be going backwards, regressing spiritually back into the 20th century as we advance chronologically into the 21st:
“Where’s the audacious genius – the Leonardo, the Einstein, the Freud, the Beethoven, or the Picasso – who’s going to pump a little visionary exhilaration into our bland, plodding, nervous, mediocre, copycat era?”
Donald Braben, professor of physics at University College London, echoes this view, blaming the requirements of ‘efficiency’ and ‘relevance’ for research funding as “a killer for Einstein types”.
Perhaps there is some truth to this – our experience of change has been so gradual and constant, we’ve had little awareness that the rate of change has been growing more rapid.
Shift Happens
To illustrate this, let’s look to the thinking and attitudes arising out from west-coast America. As long ago as 2004, college student Karl Fisch created a presentation to try and help his teachers understand the pace of change in which they lived. Since posting this online four years ago, over five million conversations have revolved around his work, each grappling with the central theme of our changing world. Here’s the latest YouTube version:
Continuity, change and the culture sector
Change today combines pioneering technological and demographic advances with a continuation or reinvention of many familiar sights and rituals. One of the greatest advantages for the culture sector is its familiarity with this paradox: having spent centuries balancing priceless heritage with modern interpretation, the sector is uniquely placed to provide leadership on balancing timeless conventions with modern innovations.
For cultural entrepreneurs, social interactions are not necessarily just a means to an end but represent a source of power and a greater potential for success in their own right. Entrepreneurs in the ‘new’ industries, Rifkin argues, are motivated by being “universally connected so as to affect and shape human consciousness itself.” Baron and Markman argue that this social capital and social skills can enhance an entrepreneur’s success. A high level of social capital, built on a favourable reputation, relevant previous experience, and direct personal contacts, can assist entrepreneurs in gaining access to key potential stakeholders. Once that access is gained, four social skills
