‘A New Deal of the Mind’ puts creative at centre of economic recovery

In January this year an article by Martin Bright in the New Statesmen started a new movement, ‘A New Deal of the Mind’. Its aim is to boost employment in Britain's creative sector - for the good of the entire nation. This quickly resulted in a gathering of top names (none from advertising though) at 11 Downing Street in late March. The agenda was to discuss how cultivating creative talent and investing in the creative industries would help Britain get out of recession and build a stronger economy.

This may sounds like the pipe dreams of a bunch of artists and designers, but far from it. Some of the most respected names in the creative and associated industries attending and debated the issues with politicians. Alan Yentob (BBC Creative Director), Adam Thorpe (Creative Director, St Martin’s Design Against Crime Research Centre), Jude Kelly (Artistic Director, Southbank Centre), Peter Cleg (architect) and Michael Wolff (Wolff Olins) were a few creative names. This impressive meeting of minds is a plethora of initiatives aiming to stimulate employment in the creative industries.

The theory is not fantasy, but based on historic experience. The New Deal of the Mind is inspired by the cultural programmes of President Roosevelt’s 1930s Works Progress Administration (WPA), which employed artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning and writers such as Saul Bellow, John Cheever and Ralph Ellison. Economic evidence shows that investing in the creative industries grows economy, manufacturing is a black hole by comparison. As for banking ...well the less said the better.

What started out as an article and a gathering has snowballed into a coalition of like minds with a powerful agenda and a lot of political support. It has captured the imaginations of many writers, artists, designers, musicians, film makers, innovators, inventors, entrepreneurs and teachers.

Having met Martin Bright, we share the same views and philosophy, he is passionate and not surprisingly very bright (well he was editor of the New Statesmen). I have little doubt that this movement will enter the history books and really deliver change.

Having recently taken this same thinking – that we need to cultivate creativity – and put it into action in Creative Orchestra, I certainly welcome this movement. At the moment there’s little to no government money that’s easily accessible to start up creative ventures. What monies are available will require an army of clerics to fill out the forms. Sadly, given the fact the government spends billions across the creative industries none goes into startups.

In fact you need three years of accounts to get on any roster. Ironically, it should be the other way, if the government invested in new creative businesses it’d not only get more talent for it’s money (younger companies tend to be more creative) but most would grow the economy. Throwing money at established businesses is good for them but adds less to the economy than to shareholders, many who live abroad. With the growing preference for social enterprises (pushed by Ed Miliband), even the government is starting to look at where their money goes long term. Companies delivering big bucks to shareholders could find themselves on the wrong side, while Social Enterprise could be best placed to pick up government spending.

Given the current recession within the creative industries, I think we all know victims of recent redundancies, it’s a fair point to ask exactly what our industry is doing to cultivate future talent and help the current thousands of young creatives grads get jobs? “Not a lot” most would say. Unlike the design industry who has picked this up quickly and is running already with ideas.

The words of the Works Progress Administration founder Harry Hopkins has become a rallying cry for NDM. “Give a man a dole, and you save his body and destroy his spirit. Give him a job and you save both body and spirit.”

In a time when we are putting people out of work we need to ask the moral question, “it’s not what the recession is doing to us but what we can do to beat the recession”. Cultivating creativity seems to be the answer.

Pigeons, politics and people who watch porn. It's all fun isn't it?

So we had a good laugh, Pigeon media got best read news story of the day and everyone was amused. Except the man from Croydon. He rang up the offices of Creative Orchestra and asked for a media pack. Now you may well think I’m stretching an April Fool too far but this is for real, there really are people out there who are that stupid. So we plan to send him a mock pack. By pigeon of course.

After we did our creative lounge event on the Circle Line we managed to get two complaints. TfL complained we’d bastardised their logo by turning it into a Creative Line logo. CBS media wrote us a nasty letter and claimed we were breaking the law. We did get lots of positive emails from the nice public we met and gave a limited edition badge to. I do love legal departments, they are so detached from the real world and take life far too seriously. Think I’ll send them a little present and a badge by pigeon. I’ve put the Creative Orchestra teams on it.

Many people have asked if Mother sent us a present in response to our fun anti-aging mailer? No. Nothing. Not a thing. Zilch. Come on guys, loosen up, join the fun, address is on the website – www.creativeorchestra.com.

The other question has been are we targeting other agencies. You bet. Unless they get us first. Isn’t it time we put some fun back into the business? I remember when Trevor's lot at TBWA  redecorated the front of our hording at Saatchi (we were redoing our reception) with a slogan, 'if you want real creativity, walk around the corner (or something like that).  Half the board were furious, lawers were called, the other just wanted to play. Whatever happened to that saying “the most fun you can have with your trousers on”? I want everyone to put the fun back – umm, think I’ll set up a Facebook group, Funvertising. Wonder how many ad industry related ones there are? Media Monkeys is one.

So Mrs Smith’s husband has a porn channel, well if you lived in anywhere but England that wouldn’t be news. Just how Victorian are we? Europeans and Scandinavians are so relaxed about sex and porn yet in the UK we seem to be dominated by nun reading Daily Mail moralists. Having worked on many sexual health campaigns over the years it seems as soon as you mention the word condom a bunch of nuns are protesting outside your door. When we put up a poster with CONDOM on (for Femidom) in Birmingham a bunch of mums from the local Catholic school complained that “this poster is disgusting, we’re having to explain to our kids what a condom is.” And we wonder why we have the highest teen pregnancy rate in Europe. Blame the do goody moral right I say. Of course the issue of politicians (all parties) claiming expenses for their family’s back rooms isn’t ethical.

In the US a designer called Benjamin Edgar has launched a water in a tetrapack titled BOXED WATER IS BETTER FOR THE EARTH. His idea is doing the rounds of ethical blogs and is excellent. Of course this is a good idea except that as one blogger points out, tetrapaks, like coffee cups, are impregnated with a plastic to make them waterproof so they don’t rot in landfill. Still a good idea though and nice packaging.

Every year we throw away 400 billion paper coffee cups that sit in landfill for over 100 years! If you visit the Channel 4 Battlefront website you’ll be able to see the campaign Aimee Nathan is doing. She wants us all to take our own cups into Starbucks rather than buy a paper one. Starbucks are the only coffee chain that offers a discount if you bring in your own cup. Another campaigner, Alex Rose, wants to tackle gun and knife crime. His idea was to make a key pedant out of old guns and to get people to wear it as a symbol to reject weapons. Simply brilliant! Check out the others.

As Twitter is the new trend I’ve joined the bandwagon but really can’t do with writing trash like ‘having a cup of coffee…standing at bus stops…looking out of window’. Some Twitters are so dull, why do people read them? So I decided to have some fun and launch ecoSuperMan. eSM has to face the reality of balancing real life (shopping, cleaning, ironing, feeding the cat, doing a job) with being a super hero and being an eco-evangelist. Check it out.