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Kokoa Collection Tasting at Saint Caffe, Tuesday 9th July, 4pm-5.30pm.

Kokoa Collection Tasting at Saint Caffe, Tuesday 9th July, 4pm-5.30pm.

Open to coffee shop owners, baristas, delis, hotels and other related catering  + hospitality businesses, you are invited to join Kokoa Collection‘s Paul Eagles on Tuesday 9th July at Saint Caffe in St. Paul’s Square for a free taster and demonstration of their single origin hot chocolate.

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Kokoa’s hot chocolate collection is specially sourced from origin and made with tablets or flakes of real chocolate!
If you want to come to the event, please RSVP to tim@indielove.co.uk with the subject line Kokoa Collection Event
Places are strictly limited to two people per business.


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#FutureFoodies

#FutureFoodies

I am delighted to be helping out tonight at the #FutureFoodies event which represents some of the very best independent talent that Birmingham has to offer. I will be there as a passionate foodie and supporter of many of the indies on show!

The event runs from 5.30pm until 8.00pm at Hotel LaTour this evening.

For more information, click here and be sure to tweet out (#futurefoodies) about the event if you’re going.

 

 

New Layout ….

Oh the joys of new layouts. This is looking different … and will look even more different! Hurrah! If you spot dodgy links, a classic 404 or anything not looking quite right, please let me know – tim@indielove.co.uk.

indieLove links, June 17th 2013

Here’s a roundup of a few things that have caught my eye over the last couple weeks.

The Bristol Pound is just the tip of the iceberg
As John Rogers demonstrates in this piece the Guardian, the Bristol or Brixton pound are just two examples of what local currencies can achieve. The impact that local currencies and related ideas are having on both community and tourism is getting attention on a European scale. Indeed, the article introduces projects from Nantes to the Austrian village of Langenegg, and that the European Union fund a project called Community Currencies in Action, which “is now helping the public sector to understand the purpose and function of local currencies through a series of pilot projects.”

The Chat Diary
If like me, you partake in a number of chats on twitter, then this brilliant resource by Mark Shaw will tell you what’s happening and when! Follow on twitter @thechatdiary.

….Oh and if you want to analyse the effectiveness of your twitter chats, use OneQube (thanking Mark Shaw for this recommendation via CraftySkills too!!)

Retail Ready People
A volunteering and skills development programme for young people 16-25 interested in retail and business. Started in Brighton and Enfield and now moving onto Rochdale and Leeds, this inspiring programme is about the future of the high street. As Dan Thompson‘s says in a recent piece in The Independent, “Retail Ready People is all about trying, testing and prototyping. That practical research by young people is laying the foundations for a new high street, one that goes beyond chain store retail and provides new forms of social and community activities.”

Two great blog pieces from Kindred HQ ….

Is it time for freelancers to have more rights?
There are some great points in this piece from the folk at Kindred HQ. With more and more of us becoming freelancers, the ‘establishment’ (as they call it) have yet to put in place a number of changes in legislation and work rights that can support us when certain situations do not play out. The support structures, in particular in the realm of financial security (getting paid), is not there.

Peer to peer funding for indies
A very useful overview of the upward trajectory in the peer to peer funding marketplace focussing on the likes of Zopa, Funding Circle and Ratesetter. I think Alex Butler makes a really good point that this kind of model could work for getting freelancers’ ideas off the ground, provided one can articulate the business and investment proposition of the idea!

Find Pop-Up Space For Your Idea with Appear Here
With the continued growth of popup spaces around the UK, Appear Here is described an “online marketplace to list, discover, and book short-term retail spaces around the UK.” Appear Here is currently in London, Bath, Manchester, Leeds and Edinburgh. Like them on facebook and follow them on twitter.

New Neighbourhood Crowdfunding Platform: Changify
Established by Design for Social Change (D4SC), Changify is a new neighbourhood funding platform. Changify is a new service for the public to initiate and support local and community change projects directly from their mobile phones, and seek backing from brands, councils, local businesses and other supporters. It’s an exciting platform that engages with all members of the public to submit their ideas for approval with an outline post and video.

The price of espresso in London
A really interesting piece by Square Mile‘s James Hoffmann about the relative cost of espresso across the London. Always one for an intriguing anecdote on coffee, James asks “Does the pricing itself mean anything? Is it expensive? Is it cheap? I can’t really comment. All I would say is that if I were planning to open a shop, and focused on serving high quality drinks, I’d know with some confidence that the market can bear at least £2.00 quite comfortably.” For a lot of coffee shops centrally located in other major UK cities, I would say it’s quite similar. What do you think?

Our new flyers are here … thanks to John Williamson for his design work.

Our new flyers are here … thanks to John Williamson for his design work.

Our new flyers are now available.

 

Look out for them at various indie locations across Brum and if you are an independent business and would like to take advantage of the support we offer, please email me – tim@indielove.co.uk.

Quick word of thanks to John Williamson, our most excellent designer, for designing these at very short notice.

For those who don’t know John, he is a Birmingham based graphic designer specialising in all areas of branding and design for print. He is very talented and has recently turned freelance full-time after spending three years designing in-house for one of the UK’s leading construction companies.

www.john-williamson.com // @j_s_williamson 

Links Round Up, 16th June 2013

Here’s a roundup of things that have caught my eye of the past few weeks:

So, the figure is 8%
A week after Stan’s Cafe’s most concerning blog about the projected consequences of 5, 10 or 15% cuts to ACE funding, the Department of Culture has agreed to an 8% budget cut. What does this mean? Well as Stan’s Cafe’s blog indicates, just a 5% cut could result in one third of English subsidised arts companies losing all of their national public funding, even if lottery money may help 200 or so organisations that can no longer be given revenue funding. Whilst it could have been worse, the consequences of 8% alone are likely to be marked!

The future of the library
The Arts Council have brought out a report looking at the Future of our libraries. Envisioning the Future of Libraries looks at where the services might go. With mixed reviews by professionals (see here), there are obvious questions over allocations of costs, resources especially ACE seems to allude to the future cuts that are going to take place, but crucially how libraries need to step up and work out how they are going to best serve the needs of their community.

The future of literacy is to code
According to NESTA, digital learning is the fourth literacy behind english, maths and science and ahead of the arts. Interestingly 67% of British Children aged 8-15 want to learn to code, but still only 3% know how to!

…. And the youth of the UK are pretty confident in their Digital Literacy, stating that they are more “tech savvy” than their global peers according to this survey from Telefonica. The research found that 49 percent in the UK believed they had an “excellent knowledge of technology” compared to just 30 percent worldwide.

Culture Net
Culture Net has been set up as the primary source of information on arts and cultural provision for children and young people in the West Midlands. Full of very useful information, Culture Net profiles the major providers of cultural services for 0 to 19 year olds in schools and other settings.

Some Tech stuff

Google Street View Hyperlapse
This is brill, an experiment for creating interactive Google Street View hyper-lapse animations. Learn more about this project here.

3D Printing Courses
To show the progress of 3D Printing, this course at the brilliant Betahaus in Berlin, shows where I think we are going. The hands-on 3D printing course is for all levels, novices up to designers. No experience is required! Just bring your laptop, a 3-butto mouse and the rest is taught

… and if proof, if any was needed, of where we are going, we will soon be producing custom 3D-printed sugar for “mega cool cakes” (as it is described!).

Dumb Store
Still a significant number of us do not use smartphones, or dumb phones as they’re charmingly described. The Dumb Store caters for this … in their own words: “The Dumb Store is a demonstration of what can be done using dumb phones.” I think it also points more fundamentally to the fact that still a significant number of people do not use smart phones.

Why Are There So Many Productivity Apps and How Do I Pick One?
This is the question posed by Thorin Klosowski in this entertaining read. I’m an app geek and always trying loads of them because I enjoy it. Occasionally I might switch but also it is because I want my clients to make informed choices, but I always go back to the same few that work best for me. As Thorin says, “it’s not about the app you use, it’s how you use it. Find one that works and stick with it.”

Tictail – the new free online shop (up to a point!)
If you don’t want to make a complicated shop to sell your products, Tictail provides you the tools you need to create a shop in minutes, the basics of which are FREE. Tictail has some premium options like discounts, password protection or a custom web address, but this is a pretty cool free platform to watch out for.

A Colourful Crowd: Spin day, Spot Day (Saturday 29th June 2013)

A Colourful Crowd: Spin day, Spot Day (Saturday 29th June 2013)

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A Colourful Crowd invites you to get positively dotty at their latest one-day extravaganza, Spin day, Spot day!

Inspired by Hirst’s spin and spot paintings, #thecrowd have chosen a host of fun, action-packed and slightly bonkers activities to get all your senses in a spin!

– Make and check out some Spin Day fashions
– Throw paint around and fill in the dots as part of our public art ‘mess’
– Twist your body and ‘dig’ some happening moves
– Play in #thecrowd’s very own ‘Room of Madness’
– Eat spot toast until you ‘pop’!

Come twist summer style with #TheCrowd on 29 June!

Download the event flyer here

Follow on twitter: @acolourfulcrowd
Like on facebook /acolourfulcrowd
Hashtags: #spinspotday, #thecrowd, #walsall

Links Round Up, 18th May 2013

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Here’s a roundup of things that have caught my eye of the past few weeks:

#musesocial: What’s the point of social media for museums? Held on April 23, 2013, this is the roundup of a museum technology community chat in the States to discuss connecting their social media efforts to broader strategies and goals. The chat was hosted by @danamuses, @sluggernova with help from @erinblasco. Some great insights and anecdotes on social media usage for cultural instutitions.

Not unrelated to this, here’s some stats on digital engagement with museums this side of the pond, and check out Ideas for Museums, a project about the history of museum computerization, collecting interviews with museum professionals who were/are working on implementing digital technologies in everyday museum practice.

European arts funding: why don’t more UK cultural organisations apply? Yvette Vaughan Jones, Chief executive of @VisitingArts makes some really pertinent points on why we don’t go for more applications and challenges some of the preconceptions versus the reality of going for EU funding (partnering, R&D, applications, bureaucracy). Given the political chat regarding the future of EU membership over the past few weeks, I think this piece is a stark reminder of the important role that EU funding has played in the UK’s creative economy.

artsmart. Held in London from Monday 17th June until Friday 5th July 2013, this three week long summer festival of events and activities for students and graduates from UAL looks cool and has some good speakers. It invites you “to get smart and make it happen in the creative industries.”  Follow on twitter.

Birmingham Made Me: held in June, run by Idea Birmingham, Birmingham’s two-week design expo is crammed full of content – names, brands, ideas and hot stuff that’s worth going to see – go explore!

Grants for the Arts changes: the Arts Council are making changes to the G4A programme. This is the roundup!

Trade in creative products reached new peak in 2011. The UNCTAD Global Database on the Creative Economy demonstrates the growth in creative goods and services between 2002-2011, this is despite a dip in 2008 as a result global economic downturn in 2008. Now it appears that the global creative economy is on the rise again year on year.

And as a bit of humour and maybe a few home truths …. 

Artspeak. Filling the space between fact and fiction (!), this amusing piece in the Guardian rounds up some of the bizarre examples of art lingo … what to say and what to say. Some home truths for many of us working in the arts :).

If you like artspeak, be sure to check out artybollocks and 500 letters!

 

 

 

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