onionbagblog

To firstsite! …early on Friday morning. *very* early.

The Golden Goose of Sunny Colch came-a-calling with the lure of croissants, sausages and bacon. My mantra for life is to never turn down a cooked breakfast when offered. The 7:30am calling card captured my attention; slightly above the bacon interest on the agenda was to contribute to the Creative Colchester vision for the months ahead.

Over sixty other early morning creative and cooked breakfast enthusiasts had also made the effort. Local artists, designers, PR people, business folk, Council representatives, Councillors, bacon loving bloggers – all were present, all were keen to contribute to the collaboration that was to follow.

In essence we were gathering at the Golden Goose to ask what can firstsite do for Colchester and the community? The very existence of the Visual Arts Facility is a momentous achievement in itself. But a building is a building is a building – how can this be used to stimulate culture, collaboration and more importantly, the hyperlocal Colchester economy?

This all comes at a cost of course – cultural projects sadly don’t just grow with a sprinkling of magic blue sky thinking beans and a bit of hippy love thinking thrown in. Which is precisely where the Haven Gateway Partnership comes in, with a grant of £25,000 to help kick start creative projects.

Um… wannna sponsor a #hyperlocal blog, fellas?

Thought not.

The event then developed with a series of informal introductions and agenda setting speeches for the morning, before breaking out into six different discussion groups. Linda Barker, the Head of Strategy Policy and Regeneration at Colchester Borough Council led the way. Folk with fancy titles usually do…

“This morning is all about ambition. The Arts Council has given firstsite a remit for creativity. We now need to take the legacy of the building out into Colchester.”

Which is a fair point, and one which is easier to define than it is to implement. Public spaces – or even perceived public spaces – just don’t just grow a cultural identity overnight. You don’t need to observe the *possible* highbrow elitist approach of a VAF to witness this either. Colchester United leaving Layer Road for the Community Stadium is another example of a building taking time to bed down.

Anthony Roberts, the Director of Colchester Arts Centre was next up to enthuse the bacon buttie chompers. Anthony is a lively, engaging and inspiring chap, even at shortly after 8am on a Friday morning. His vision alone should be sufficient to persuade the doubters that Sunny Colch needs a cultural economy if it wishes to continue with expansion:

“Now that firstsite has been built, if we were to stop this project right now, then we all might as well go home. This building is all about being a tool that will hopefully enable us to communicate with our community.”

Jokes about Watford were then shared. They had a slight toilet edge for 8am, but also reminded us that Sunny Colch has a tremendous positive spirit for the future that needs to be captured and harnessed.

A presentation was then given by Andrew Erskine of the Tom Fleming Consultancy. He introduced the vision document that has brought us all to the VAF at such an early hour. The aims and objectives were perhaps slightly more rambling than the actual process:

“How can the opening of firstsite and the development of the cultural economy help to develop creativity, growth and sustainability in Colchester?”

Simple: spunk away all the money on artistic grants for any dreamer, idealist, bored blogger etc before the Eurozone economy goes completely tits up and we’re left with an empty shell of a Golden Goose building that will make for a rather good skateboard park.

Ahem.

If only it were that easy; if only I could skateboard.

Nope – for all of the experimentation within the arts, we are still talking about a serious economy. This is prevalent nowhere more so than Colchester, which for a town of its size certainly punches above its weight employing over 500 professional creatives.

You need a business plan; you need a strategy for creative growth. You need to fund bored bloggers…

Andrew then outlined how the whole is less than the sum of the parts for the Sunny Colch creative economy. I kinda got the point, but couldn’t but help think that Comrade Moakes is bang on the money in his beautiful Colchester: S*** the Bed, um, essay.

The problem for Colchester when it comes to cultural tourism [urgh] is that apparently not many people are aware of what the town has to offer. Historically the Garrison will rightly always be valued. The problem for the cultural planners is how to best talk up Sunny Colch as a great creative place to live and work.

Andrew explained various barriers, including limited online connectivity, the absence of joined up groups [debatable...] and other local priorities.

The five-year vision was outlined as:

“Continuing to have a strong cultural infrastructure – firstsite is here to stay. The town needs to become a place where culture is valued as a great place to develop creativy – just look at what is happening across the road at @15QueenStreet.”

The cultural infrastructure and lack of online connectivity argument was striking. Put simply, Sunny Colch is running backwards up the arse end of the modern interweb, struggling to keep up with the pace that is required to truly deliver a digital economy.

Connectivity is poor in the town, both as a base signal and with mobile broadband. Being stuck out in the sticks just further lets you slip down the arse end of the modern interweb.

But have no fear – what we need is a Man from the Council with a remit to use all the power of the local authority to get Sunny Colch online.

Cometh the hour, cometh Nigel Myers, the Enterprise and Tourism Manager at Colchester Borough Council – hurrah!

But hang on, Comrades – what the chuffers is a public civil servant doing trying to lay down a big fat broadband pipe down the bottom of my back garden?

“Colchester Borough Council has an enabling role. We aren’t proposing spending public money, but using our assets that are already there. We are unique in that as a council, we own the CCTV infrastructure. This ducting enables broadband speed improvements.”

A broadband heat map of Colchester was then shown. firstsite went distinctly frosty, where we realised that our town isn’t very hot when it comes to the modern interweb. It’s not even luke warm, being the 8th worst location for connectivity in the country.

[top tip: the lovely new cafe at the VAF has a ROCKIN' big fat broadband pipe that allows you to *shhh* occasionally upload work related video projects that yer pipe in the back garden could only dream of...]

Insipid, um, Sunny Colch is about to turn up the heating on the broadband map. The vision from Nigel is to create a digital wireless town, with public speeds of between 11-20 Mbps in the town centre over the mobile network. This is all going live by the end of 2011. Which is… super fast.

With the framework for the Creative Colchester morning now making more sense, we were invited to break out into six different groups, choosing an area that was of personal and professional interest.

Talent, Bringing to Life, Culture and Creativity, Community, Economics and Building Spaces were the six themes. I settled down with the community crowd.

Our conversations were as diverse as our own backgrounds. Tasked with how to help firstsite deliver to the community, the dialogue covered food groups to school assemblies. We concluded with three inspiring models that have so far delivered on this front in Sunny Colch: Slack Space, the Free Festival and 15 Queen Street.

Talk is cheap however, and so is my time. With work commitments beckoning back at base, I had to bugger off and bypass the possibility of more bacon butties. Which in itself, would have been a feat worthy of an Arts Council Grant.

So in conclusion, it’s back to Comrade Moakes and S*** the Bed! Colchester…

Nice bacon.