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Creative London - Does It Still Exist?

22/01/2018
Branding and Marketing Agency
London, United Kingdom
91
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Mark Terry-Lush, managing director and executive creative director of The Honey Partnership gives his thoughts on the capital's creative scene

London has always billed itself as the ultimate creative city, although the pressure to keep up appearances is rising - especially for those at the cutting edge. Rent rises, developers and Brexit are all contributing to a fear that Europe’s capital of cool has lost its mojo - but there is hope.

The bad news is that creative London is arguably being priced out of existence. City Hall studies show that London is set to lose 30 percent of artists’ studios in the next few years and in the past decade the UK’s capital has lost 50 percent of clubs and 40 percent of grassroots music venues. The main drivers of this erosion are changes in funding regimes and market developments, with a recent report quoting evidence of a growing “artistic brain drain” as artists are “driven out of the areas that they have helped to regenerate.” 

A recent Creative Social event brought the trend into sharp focus. Held in the once-backwater of Hackney Wick, now a skyline of cranes and fast-paced development, the host venue Stour Space, is a haven for makers and creators overlooking the Olympic Stadium. It’s easy to wander the area and be struck by mechanics busy in back street garages, print shops, and independent businesses enveloped by building sites luxury apartment blocks.  

The canals around Fish Island are home to hundreds of houseboats framed by iconic graffiti.  Stour Space itself is almost certainly fighting for survival as greedy landlords and a cash-strapped council would no doubt love to sell off the land to a Starbucks developer. 

For hundreds of years, a deeply ingrained history of innovation runs through its veins, it continues to provide the backdrop for some of the world's most boundary-pushing thinkers, doers and culture makers. Adjacent are under-threat warehouses that house more than 500 craft businesses - some are dwellings as well as workshops.  Sadly Hackney Council doesn’t recognise them as homes and residents live in a lengthening shadow of eviction.

The theme is a recurring one - and indeed the process of upgrading (call it gentrification if you will) is one that has shaped London for aeons. The story of Stour Space will ring familiar to hosts of other grassroots creatives and projects across the city, primarily in the East and South East, the ravening developers most recent banquet. 

Indeed, one vignette at Creative Social came courtesy of Robbie Phillips, a big wall climber who has conquered some of the world’s most difficult rock faces. He’s manning the walls at the Hackney Wick Boulder Project, where the groups scale the boulder problems to the tune of Robbie’s tales of adventure, anxiety, physical pain, and how to take a vertically challenged dump on the north face of the Eiger. London climbing venues are also under challenge, as just across the water, redevelopment of the former Peek Freans Biscuit Factory will see the Biscuit Climbing wall close for good in May 2018 - another victory chalked up to the developers. 

But in the midst of adversity comes creativity - in fact, many link the two together inextricably.  The galvanising power of fear and its ability to deliver creative drive has been widely documented by writers, artists and creatives through the ages. 

David Ogilvy famously captured the power - and the value - of fear in his book, Ogilvy On Advertising: “The copywriter lives with fear. Will he have a big idea before Tuesday morning? Will the client buy it? Will it get a high test score? Will it sell the product? I never sit down to write an advertisement without thinking THIS TIME I AM GOING TO FAIL.”

Hopefully these times of uncertainty will deliver a potent creative boost across the board - there is certainly plenty of good news in the digital innovation coming out of the capital in 2018. There are the pure-play blockchain startups like The London Block Exchange, blockchain accelerators such as Cofound.it, alongside Fintech market disruptors such as Loot, an alternative to high-street banking. 

Perhaps the pinnacle of creative startups, the new social network The Dots, aims to bring creatives themselves together more closely than ever before - dubbed the LinkedIn for creatives, there’s plenty here to get excited about.

Clearly the powers that be have taken notice, because as part of a broad new initiative from London mayor Mayor, Sadiq Khan, plans for £500,000 in funding to develop ‘Creative Enterprise Zones’ across the capital have been proposed. Ten boroughs across London will each receive a £50,000 development grant to create permanent affordable creative workspaces, as well as provide business rates relief, and additionally offer skills support for artists and creative businesses. 

There are undoubtedly tough challenges ahead for the creative industries in the UK as a whole, and particularly in London over the coming years. But we must channel that fear into better, more innovative creativity. Have faith, we shall not fail - this time, at least.

Mark Terry-Lush is managing director and executive creative director of The Honey Partnership. 

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