Ill-qualified

This Tuesday I attended a very expensive conference called ‘Supporting Creative Industries’. It wasn’t nearly as useful as I’d hoped – and I know a number of other delegates felt the same. As I understand it, the government definition of creative industries includes 13 disciplines, including fashion, advertising, the arts, films, new media, advertising, publishing, design etc. Unfortunately, the only ones which seem to get any attention are new media, film and design. I was very disappointed at the narrow focus of the sessions, which not only failed to touch on important issues such as IP, publishing, live performance and so on, but also seemed to be entirely aimed at Higher Educational establishments. Those of us who were employers, arts organisations or local authorities just sat there wondering where our four hundred quid had gone.