Author Archives: Patrick Willcocks
It is makey makey time at #BirminghamMadeMe. A Hackathon for Non Techies. Honest!
Birmingham Made Me takes a different tack on Wednesday 19th June. Far from the standard works of a design and innovation conference; this session is a hands on approach to innovation. Have you ever heard of makey makey; neither had I ….well take a look at this video. It is an approach developed at MIT […]
Local Infrastructure Funding for Birmingham: Positives and Negatives
The announcement recently by Eric Pickles of Local Infrastructure funding loans from the Housing and Communities Agency for three projects in Birmingham’s Enterprise Zone is good news. The three projects that have won resources from the fund are; Masshouse – Funding will partly be spent on creating an attractive public square. Arena Central – Funding will […]
Boris Launches His Vision for London 2020: lessons for Birmingham
Boris Johnson launched his vision for London yesterday (details here) gaining significant press and twitter coverage . In skim reading it it leapt out at me that this sort of summary overview; this distillation of objectives is what is missing certainly in Birmingham and possibly other cities. Now the document might be a little too […]
#BirminghamMadeMe: Today a fascinating session looking at Design and Economic Growth with The CEO of the Design Council
Birmingham Made Me continues. Tomorrow I am attending a session largely focussed on transportation but the line up is very strong today with John Mathers from the Design Council, Irene Ng from Warwick University and Benjamin Reid from the Work Foundation amongst a range of speakers looking at Design and Innovation and its role in […]
Birmingham Made Me; Opening speech by Albert Bore and Overview of the Launch event @ideabirmingham
Yesterday was the opening of Birmingham Made Me Expo and Design Festival. The two key note speakers were John Cridland Director General from the CBI and Albert Bore, Leader of Birmingham City Council. John Cridland focussed on the importance of regenerating local areas. He mentioned Birmingham’s impressive progress and gave enthusiastic support for the Greater […]
Birmingham Made Me Opens
Today the 2nd Birmingham Made Me Expo and Design Festival launches. A really interesting programme and it seems that, going on the website, there may be tickets left for some of the events. Well worth attending, events are free and you get free entry into Thinktank as well. Today we will hear key note speakers […]
‘Cross Innovation’ in Birmingham: how can the creative industries stimulate innovation #xinnovate
The Cross Innovation project is holding a workshop tomorrow in Birmingham to look at how we can use our real strengths in the creative and digital sectors to push start innovation in Birmingham’s wider economy. We have invited a range of policy makers, academics, creative firms and funders to get beneath the skin of the issue. […]
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 […]
UrbanPivot 