Districts of Creativity Dundee Workshop

DISTRICTS OF CREATIVITY DUNDEE WORKSHOP OUTPUTS Reverse Mission to Scotland October 2015

The Districts of Creativity Network unites 13 of the most creative and innovative regions around the world. The network was formed to foster the exchange of best practices and experiences of stimulating creativity and innovation in business, culture and education.

In late October 2015 a group of international delegates hosted by the Scottish Government visited Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow to learn and share experiences. In Dundee, the delegates visited world class bio-tech labs at the University of Dundee, watched presentations on the video games industry at Abertay University including serious games exploring disease prevention. They also heard how Creative Dundee and the waterfront development including the V&A Museum have created a new optimism in the city. The delegates responses and advice were captured in a short workshop in the innovation space at Scott and Fyfe, an employee owned technical textile manufacturers in Tayport.

This is a transcription of delegates notes.

www.districtsofcreativity.org

Encourage unselfish collaboration. Open source learning. Hats

of de Bono. Connecting people (possibly “different”). Listen to music for

15 minutes (together) before starting a dialogue. Always challenge the status quo. 60+ break up – when an organisation grows beyond

60 people, break it up. Through example and showing

evidence of previous success. Emphasising open dialogue and

communication and reducing the stigma of failure. Co-working office

and housing. Introduce artists in the group. Go out. Work in

unusual spaces. Water is attractive - use it to bring people together.

Invest in infrastructure. Do it fast (don’t linger). Communicate about it. A

day in the others shoes. Facilitating cross-collaboration between disciplines. Move around. Cruise ships to bring in the

money.

How do you build an effective culture of collaboration and

creativity?“

Skip leaders. Guggenheim Museum. Conduct meetings standing. Big Challenge (which ‘moves’ people). Cross-over events for industry art

culture. Address challenges from industry teams from art, culture,

creative industries. Arrange blind dates. Awards. Team Building. Build

a diverse team: gender, age, culture, talents and skill sets. Mix offices from industry, art, culture, creative industries. Develop

formats. Communicate. Start from zero. Start with finding ideas with

shared enthusiasm. Public event like Dutch design week. Trigger by

future assignments. Believe that there will be a follow-up. Define small

predications for success and long term bigger ones. Swap teams for

one day/week. Follow-up: start up, package of business modelling,

vouchers, network knowledge, investors. Farmer Organisation

Netherlands.


creativity?

Slack-time. Designer work/sleep with challenge owners for deeper

understanding and co-creation. Put all change-makers and stakeholders

together: students, farmer, policy, entrepreneur, and researcher. Start

doing it. Have people in your organisation that have experience in

different branches. Create/do/organize unexpected reactions or

feedback. Postpone Judgement. Good food/Good coffee. A

concept needs a home. You need to have some time, money and backing

from management.Clear communication lines, opportunities

for networking/matching. Challenge Business rituals. Visualise

fast. Give room/space for disruptive actions. Invite an artist in your team.

Be open minded. Give freedom to your people. Self-organized

teams. Culture of “open minds” and open minded language.


creativity?

The power of optimism to rejuvenate again. Be

optimistic, trust yourself. Innovation and big ideas can happen

anywhere, not just big cities. Interdisciplinary respect. Good

ideas need investment. Interdisciplinary teams. Regular

events amongst creative workers. Strong support and

effective use of collaboration spaces. Positive attitude,

governmental support, youngsters/students. Game can

be serious. Respect employees not depending on what they do.

Game changer! Follow what already exists. Be agile. Capitalise on

change. Time sensitive. Trust your employees: make sure

everyone is involved. “Need is the mother of all inventions”

Create opportunities. Do not wait for them. Yesterday’s solution

won’t solve today’s problems and make us successful tomorrow.

What can we learn from Dundee’s experience?

Create an open atmosphere. Lose naysayers. Games, games,

games. Shareholder involvement for best ideas. Data is made

available in a useful way (good translation of

business needs). Let people work in one room. Serious

gaming is necessary to involve people at challenges at food

production/farms. Data = open = useful! Original

presentations. The role of educational adjustments in creating new

business. Government/region/city should take a role by

facilitating and allocate money. Collaboration – crossovers

education/company. A life without vegetables. Multi-disciplinary

work, looks great but intangible “recipe”. Embed in DNA of the

region. Translation only works in co-creation. Never give up

“failing” is a trigger to innovate. The role of charities in

financing research. We need tighter hubs in our own district.

Maximizing the empty and added value of the different partners

via effective collaboration. Culture of collaboration cross-

sectoral between policy levels.


Willingness to change. Have a bold plan (big space). Enthusiasm.

Business = passion = great student presentation. Attitude of

entrepreneurship. Start with the intention of giving to society. Open innovation. It’s all about sharing (big) data. It’s ok to fail.

Multidisciplinary. Translating data. Employee ownership. Contact with

environment. Bridging tradition and innovation. Fulfillment

employees. Taking tradition (like textile industry) and adapt for the

future. Listening to every idea. It’s possible to transform a 115 year old

company (amazing). The power of involvement. Scott and Fyfe is

cool. Social design training in city council. Be proud. Small is

beautiful. Big is even nicer. The multidisciplinary project in the “gaming”

education works. Hold on to your strategies for a longer

period of time. Emphasis on the process. copy that! Waterfront. I

love the workshop space at Scott and Fyfe. Destructive

approach. (waterfront). Serious games are cool.


Keep on moving. (organisation/people/challenges). Match

making with other fields. Embracing the unknown!

Contact firms/organisations doing the same.

Strengthen the intermediate industries. Triple helix

cooperation focusing on innovation and cross over

business development.(Ricardo Semler). BRYO “bright young

entrepreneurs”. Look at Flanders DC and the cooperation with

business. “my machine” project. Come to Dutch design week.

Position of the arts? Digital arts and entertainment Kortrijk.

Business models. New media and communication technology.

Devine! IPO! Ricardo Semler – the 7 day weekend. Build

ecosystems with unusual suspects. Brew better beer. User centred

design. Learn fast, fail cheap.

What can Dundee learn from the Districts?

The district are truly inspired by Dundee. Schools, public and

private. Travel! Visit other places. Ideas are found elsewhere. Reverse

mission. Connect with education. Internships. Create a strategic

agenda for the region. Bring in the bicycles. Free public transport. To network or not to network. Creative lunch for single workers.

“Flipping” the classroom. Start a foodie culture. Bring mixed terms of

students together to deal with hairy issues. Use civil society. Leisure as

carrier. Use beaches for creative rest. Business model canvas (Alex

Osterwalder). Emerging global social enterprise. Lose your

dominant logic! Act in spite of fear. Business models. Match making

B2B, B2G, business to business, business to government.

Creating entrepreneurial culture. Government models. Financing

models. Funding models. More artist as spokesmen. Establish

global think tank economic developer. Virtual consultants (forums,

blogs). To cuckold! (learn from other sectors). What about the arts? Data

is used in agrifood (low input high output). Censoring. ICT solutions.


First incentives, then putting people to work, works better. #ulabnb

#ulabscot. Use the “man bites dog” methodology for getting insights.

Use experimental design landscapes “EDC” for complex challenges.

European social innovation week. Dutch design week. Getting

empathetic insights. The 20% project can be done with design research.

Student/Government/Business work spaces. (like gruyterfabriek). Read

the book “frame innovation” by Professor Kees Dorst. Big/open data

living lab in Edinburgh. Connect with different social designers.

”


Workshop facilitated by Hazel White and Mike Press from openchange.co.uk and Gillian Easson from creativedundee.com. Open Change is a design-led organisation that helps people do the things they want to do, better. Creative Dundee is an international exemplar of how to bring creative communities together. Thanks to Michaela Millar at scott-fyfe.com a 150 year old employee owned creative manufacturer that embeds design thinking in all of its operations. Photography by Kathryn Rattray.

Images available at http://bit.ly/DoCDundee. Contact: [email protected]

http://creativedundee.com

http://www.scott-fyfe.com