The next Moseley Creative Forum will be tomorrow evening 7-9pm Thursday 23 April.

The discussion will be on ‘Creativity in the Downturn’.

…how is the recession affecting creative industries? …and what role can they play in a recovery?
…what is the situation in Birmingham? … and Moseley?

The panel will include Dave Harte who covers this issue on his blog, as well as Ollie Legget Managing Director of IE Design, an established and successful design company, who will be offering advice on how best to adapt to changing economic environments.

There have been some interesting events looking at this subject on a citywide and national level; Dominika Jankowska at Media Enterprise has written a useful summary of the recent ‘Crunch Time‘ event organised by Screen West Midlands and Creative Rebublic.

Creative Alternatives, the first in a series of discussions organised by Chamberlain Forum included specific data on West Midlands and Birmingham from Dermot Finch of Centre for Cities. Their latest report Cities Outlook 2009 on city economies is available to download.

We will be discussing these issues and how they affect us at a community level. If you would like to come along, please email us on moseleyexchange@googlemail.com or call 0121 449 8585.

If you have any thoughts or topics you would like to see at future Creative Forum events, let us know.

The Moseley Exchange is a new project that has been developed to improve the social and economic situation in Moseley. Our aim is to create wealth for the community and build stronger links between the different residents in our community. Normally these two aims are dealt with separately but we’re trying to combine them and that’s a challenge.

Another successful outcome for us would be the development of a cluster of creative businesses based in Moseley. We feel one of Moseley’s strengths is the concentration of people living in the neighbourhood who work in the creative sector. It’s always had a reputation for Artists but that has never been recognised by the City Council as an economic asset for the City or the region. We feel the neighbourhood needs to build on the theme of Moseley as a “creative village”.

Moseley Community Development Trust is part of larger movement across the country. There are now 400 Development Trusts in the UK and they’re all working to help regenerate their neighbourhood; but not in the traditional way.

Development Trusts are often called “community anchor organisations” and they are:

community owned and led

cultivating enterprise

developing community assets

transforming communities for good

Tony Thapar – Moseley Development Trust Co-ordinator