Monthly Archives: May 2013
Social Innovation and Young People in Birmingham: A New Project
launching speeches May 23rd 2013 and Aston University are launching later this week an EU funded project looking at Social Innovation and Young people. The project titled Citispyce – will be seeking out innovative social practices (sometimes led by young people) across Europe and will also be looking at how such approaches can help […]
UnrulyVersity in TechCity at Digital Shoreditch #ds2013
What’s good so far about the Digital Shoreditch event. Well one highlight for me was the UnrulyVersity … A partnership between UnrulyMedia City University and Cass Business school to put on a pop up University with master classes by academics and practitioners in the heart of TechCity. City University have always been quite innovative; I […]
Linking Creative Businesses to the wider economy: The Serendipidity Machine
Amsterdam academic Sebastian Olma is over in Birmingham next month to speak at the Birmingham Made Me festival (details here). Sebastian is an international scholar and expert working at the interface between creativity and business and has a track record in connecting governments, companies and organizations to the innovative potential of social networks. He advises several […]
Birmingham’s Overseas Visitors – Flatlining for a decade
Tourism is very important to Birmingham; the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP has recently chosen it (In its Strategy for Growth) as one of the key sectors it wants to grow. Recent figures produced from the International Passenger Survey confirm that Birmingham is treading water when it comes to overseas overnight visitors. The chart below […]
Birmingham Made Me – Dont Miss this
Birmingham’s second Design Expo is coming up next month and I wanted to post a short piece on it as it looks really good. The event over 16 days hosted largely in Millennium Point covers a lot of interesting ground; taking Design in its widest sense. It’s programme can be seen on its website (here). […]
Towards Sustainable Transportation: Cooperation and Transport challenges in European Metropolitan Regions
CATCH-MR: An EU Interregional Project Seven metropolitan regions, stretching from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, worked during 2010-2012 to investigate strategic approaches to achieve more sustainable transport. The joint planning office for Berlin and Brandenburg was lead partner, and the final conference was organized by the Province of Rome. The 12 project partners organized their […]
What link is there between Digbeth and SimCity
You may not have noticed but for the first time for many years there is a new version of SimCity; the urban planning video game. In an interview (here) with the lead designer Stone Librande he discusses how it has developed. Now what is the link to Digbeth. (For those of you not cognisant with Birmingham; […]
Air pollution: the hidden and neglected killer!
Now this is not my area of expertise but I thought I ought to raise at least the issue of air pollution in our cities, particularly outside of London. I have been following recently the impact of the EU Air Quality directives on the UK and the fact that at many sites in the UK […]
Quirky Festivals for Quirky Places
I recently did a blog post on the forthcoming Digital Shoreditch Festival which seems to exactly fill the billing for the title of this post. Shoreditch is a fascinating area, close to the City of London but with none of its coldness. It draws from the artistic and entrepreneurial drive of its host borough Hackney […]
Transport in Cities of the Future – Yes we may be car less!
Now this is interesting stuff. Don’t read the LEP strategy or even any current Birmingham City Council strategies if you want to know what this might look like. Just listen to Julia King in the video opposite to see what we need to do and then come along to see Professor Miles Tight. His lecture […]
UrbanPivot 