The Golden Triangle of Innovation & Other Ghost Concepts
That’s where we live apparently – Luton is one of the prongs of an innovation trident, with Oxford and Cambridge the others. I learned this at one of three conferences over the past ten days. I learned other things too – some were things people said, but most I realised by listening while people talked about something that didn’t concern me.
What follows here are a few of my ramblings from journeys over the past month as I sat and participated in conferences and panels that looked at where we are (or more truthfully where we are going). It’s always where we are going. If it’s confusing along the way, imagine what it was like to sit through!
So, what does The Golden Triangle of Innovation actually mean? Does saying it make it true? Does giving it a name make it real? In truth, it’s a flimsy concept that doesn’t really mean anything but makes the area sound grand and productive, and negates the need for facts and stats.
It’s symptomatic of many things that make being a film education officer hard work. Take literacy – at the first of my conference trilogy entitled ‘Digital Dialogue’, numerous people talked about issues surrounding media and cine-literacy but no one seemed to know what it meant. There is no clear, singular meaning or directive, so everyone uses it to a personal end, which makes any meaningful debate flawed and ultimately pointless. Because there is no singular meaning for people to draw from, people can hide behind a smokescreen and use it for their own purposes. There are a lot of ideas, strategies and policies to be aware of - a crippling amount for people who actually ‘do’. Indeed, the best part of the day (a discussion on how to address the national strategies on a local level) had to be cancelled because of over-running. The one useful side of everyone being bombarded by ‘agenda’ was skipped, leaving us all to wrestle individually with what we had consumed. Until you can tell me in clear, unassailable terms what you mean by literacy golden triangles or anything else, I’ll just keep ‘doing’ based on what I see in front of me everyday, thank you!
The next conference was on housing and regeneration. I was talking on a panel entitled ‘Economy Gloom, Arts Boom’, but ultimately it was a housing conference with a tokenistic nod to the creative industries. The following week, I attended a regeneration conference called ‘The Art of the Possible’, where arts companies talked about regenerating communities. Hang on, isn’t this a massive case of preaching to the converted? Housing people talking to housing people about the need to regenerate creatively and artists talking to artists about regenerating communities. Shouldn’t these conferences have merged so that both sides could talk to each other, learn from each other and work together?
It was infuriating to say the least and gave further proof of a lack of joined up thinking on any agenda. There is so much information, so many agencies, so many variables and it’s spiralling out of control. Who do we listen to? What do we deliver? Where do we go for support? After 3 days of listening, I was still no better off.
We have always just got on and delivered projects, with a motto of ‘Just get out there and do it’. We look locally for what to do and act globally when delivering a project. If we waited to find out definitively what we need to do, we would never do anything. By the time you have created a meaningful and layered project, the goalposts have moved and the plates have shifted. Instead of embarking on small scale projects, which tick boxes as and when they need to be ticked, we have spent the past 18 months developing projects which will benefit everyone as we have seen they need to be benefited. We have looked at our community – our demographic – and we have talked to people. We have trusted our own eyes and ears, and looked at a way to make a difference. We cover themes of literacy, delivering professional creative, critical and vocational skills. So we are doing our job. We are just doing it by ‘doing’.
Finally, how many talks and presentations about film fail because of lack of technological understanding? If I have to see another presenter shrug and say “Hey, I don't know how this stuff works”, I think I'll scream:
“Your lack of preparation irks me. You want to engage young people yet you are self professed, almost proud luddites and you seemingly have no will to learn how a laptop connects to a projector. As soon as you do your ‘fail and shrug dance’, you lose the respect of half the room, because they could do it, and naturally think, if you can't even work the tech, how can you possibly expect us to take your words seriously? It's not just young people. You lose the respect and attention of the audience because it looks unprofessional.”
Well, maybe they just lose my respect. Sometimes technology fails and nothing can be done, but sometimes it can be avoided.
Get there early, work it out, run it through or lose the audience.
Okay, rant over. What is the ultimate message of this tirade? I’m not sure, I still haven’t worked through what it all means and looking at my diary I see conferences and meetings looming later this year, which will presumably tell me something different. At least I can look forward to a summer of working with 150 young people, to real and tangible ends. It’s exciting to be inspired and engaged by your surroundings on a local level and to try to do something that could have regional and possibly national ramifications. I just hope we don’t add to the in-tray of stressed out teachers, providers and practitioners!