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Midlands New Media
Is there such a thing?
Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Coventry and the rest of the West Midlands conurbation have always had a healthy Arts scene, which I have continued to follow remotely via Created In Birmingham, Creative Wolverhampton, et al. But for some time I have been trying to uncover a comparable Midlands New Media scene, and drawn a blank. Either the Midland New Media scene is too small to be seen, or is very well hidden.
Xmas always drags me back to the heartland for a tour of duty (never a chore as I love Wolverhampton and miss it dearly), and whenever I’m back I nose around looking for some signs of New Media activity. Last week I went to Wolverhampton Art Gallery and saw their Pop Art exhibition. Wolves Art Gallery is usually good at promoting local talent, and when I saw they had a touch-screen interactive for the exhibition, I had to seek out the local talent employed to build it. But, after a bit of research, I was VERY disappointed to discover they had employed a London agency for the job.
It’s a great little interactive, but really nothing that complicated. It takes a snapshot using the iMac built in camera, gives you some drawing tools to pop-tart it up a bit, and then uploads it to Flickr. The kids love it, clearly, and it kept me and my little one entertained. But technology-wise, it was the kind of stuff I was doing five years ago, so I couldn’t understand why this had needed to be farmed out of the county. Unless of course that there simply isn’t even the most basic of New Media skills in the Midlands area. Please say this isn’t true.
The UK clearly has it’s New Media hubs – London, Brighton and Bristol – all of which we know about because their activity is very visible. I am several miles from Bristol but I can keep up with what’s going on there via the underscore mailing list. In Brighton we have the BNM list, the Flash Brighton Group, Brighton Bloggers, the Digital Festival, the Flash On The Beach conference and many more. When I look for similar evidence of life in the Midlands area – it just isn’t there.
I’d love to be able to return to the heartland one day soon. I spent most of the nineties farting around on the Birmingham Arts scene (working for the mighty VIVID), and I have always thought of my sojourn in Brighton as a temporary placement (eight years and counting). But I make my living in New Media now, so it looks like I would be unemployed if I was to return home.
So this is my question for the day – why is there no Midlands New Media scene? Please don’t say I’m going to have to come up there to try and start one.
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January 2nd, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Hello Matt. I’ve come across a couple of organisations which are vaguely “New Media” and largely West Midlands focused.
- Multipack: http://www.multipack.co.uk/ – was quite active last year, but nothing since October
- PHP West Midlands: http://www.phpwm.org/ – more of a coder group, but pretty active and interesting, with more than a few New Media types contributing
You’re right though, there aren’t many high-profile groups.
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:04 am
The two resources you point out are exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of – evidence of activity – but still I’m wondering “don’t you guys talk to each other”. The two mailing lists I use regularly in Brighton, Flash Brighton and BNM, never seem to shut up. I now rely on this “community”, every job I have had in the last five years has come through word of mouth. I can’t imagine what my working life would be like without it.
Are there any mailing lists you use regularly for idle chatter?
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I’m quite a miserable git, really. I do enough talking on IRC at work and emailing to keep me busy. PHP WM is a good place to go for idle chat
January 5th, 2008 at 11:46 am
There’s #phpwm on irc.freenode.net if you want idle chatter; alternatively the mailing list can be semi useful (http://mailman.lug.org.uk) with various job postings and random questions/conversation.
Thanks
David.
January 11th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Interesting post Matt. I’ve been wondering if there’s other hotspots of new media activity in the UK but i’m yet to hear of any.
I’d consider moving to the Midlands as a possibility at some point, so it’ll be interesting to see what you uncover
January 17th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Matt, has it occurred to you (and I’m sure it has), that both you and I – midlanders both, are in brighton. Maybe all those personalities that were, are, and will be destined for new media, just are not destined for the midlands.
I could not imagine returning there. My home town (and I say this with great affection) is full of ugly stupid people (no, really it is), and I say that without a trace of snobbery – it is another country, another way of life that I just am not suited to.
as ever, great blog!
January 20th, 2008 at 12:51 am
LOL @ neil. I love the idea of having been “destined” for New Media. What did we do in an earlier life to deserve such karma?
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Hello. I’d like to say that you’re right, the new media scene in the West Midlands is pretty small but it does exist.
We – TAK! – for one are trying to make moves here and we’re slowly succeeding.
I’m very disappointed with Airside being selected for the Wolverhampton Gallery kiosk but they did have an exhibition there a year ago and I’m sure that helped them get that job.
I noticed in this comments list the name Iestyn and I’m guessing it’s the same Iestyn who worked at Icon Medialab / Brandlab back in 2000. Hello…. this is Dom who worked with you on the Brandlab Flash website!
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Cheers Dom, yeah I stumbled across Tak in my research, and you look like an interesting bunch. Linky.
What I’m beginning to conclude is that there are the companies out there in the Mids, as I’ve seen some great work on web portfolios, but the companies are so spread out geographically that they just aren’t connecting.
In Brighton and Bristol everyone is packed into a much smaller area, so it’s easy to keep bumping into people. Even in London the industry tends to clump around certain areas.
But this raises the question, does it require physical proximity to form a sense of community these days?
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Hey dom! It’s me
I’d like to learn more about the new media scene up in the West Midlands.. could you send me an email? My name @ iestyn.net
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Hello again – you have to remember you’re comparing a county (west midlands) to cities (london, brighton, bristol)
Within Birmingham there are quite a lot of new media companies who do engage from time to time with each other just like in other cities. However – I do feel the scene up here is a bit lacking (for example trying to find good staff is nigh on impossible!)
Hey Iestyn – I thought it was you! I’ll drop you an email – good to hear from you!
D
January 27th, 2008 at 1:11 am
Hi; I posted about your comments on D’log. As part of the post, it muses on and rounds up some of the activity happening in Birmingham:
http://www.d-log.info/?p=3082
January 30th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Great post d’log (and great blog). Your point about the top-down support vs a bottom-up movement may be very pertinent. If I’m looking for grassroots activity as evidence of Midlands New Media I may be looking in the wrong place.
This subject continues to interest me, and my investigations continue, so it will probably warrant a follow up post at some point. For now, if there’s anyone else looking for a foothold into the Midlands media scene I’ve compiled the best of my discoveries here: Midlands New Media .co.uk
February 3rd, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Hi – nice to read an outside perspective for once. I thought it was just me… but yeah – I’ve been using any opportunity possible to pull together some interactive types to talk.
Over the last couple of years I helped set up Plus http://www.youplusus.net with a bunch of others which in one sense was a way of pulling people together.
Also, there’s been Digital Central for the last couple of years and that’s putting some cash behind a short series of networking events – I’m helping with ideas to use that in the most useful way. If you have ideas let me know and I’ll pass on.
Coming up this year is something called the Digital Event which looks like it could be interesting – not sure what professional/interactive angles it includes.
Thanks,
Stef
February 5th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Broadcast magazine did a piece recently on new media work in Birmingham specifically related in some way to TV. As Stef mentioned on his blog, it doesn’t say much new and only covers this one niche, but is a solid summary of who is doing what in th NM/TV world in the West Midlands. It is password protected but Pete Ashton has kindly made it available here:
http://mirror.peteashton.com/digital_leader.html
NM in Birmingham is growing (between the five or so key companies we must be approaching 100 employees, nothing huge but certainly expanding over the last couple of years), but perhaps more interestingly the level of clients tends to be impressive with plenty of international brands catered for.
I’d definitely agree with D’log’s comment that it feels like everyone is too busy getting on with it to shout about it.
Dan
February 19th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Worth noting that the silence was due to a redesign in progress (launched the end of Jan). However, most of the actual chatter from Multipack folks goes on via blogs and twitter these days.
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Our agency for one is doing our bit for putting Birmingham on the NM map by taking some rather juicy digital business out of London agencies – Match.com, Virgin, Kwik-Fit…
It would be great to have a social scene for the bods to get together and collaborate but what has been said above is absolutely true of us. We’re constantly busy and it’s hard to find time.
Virtual communities might be the way forward.