Service Design Cork Meetup - Inaugural Session

Wednesday April 15th at CIT James Barry gallery. Facilitated by Heather Madden and Catherine Murphy. www.cit.ie/servicedesigncork #servicedesigncork

What is service design?
The ongoing issue is understanding what this is all about! User involvement is the central element to improving existing services and creating new ones at various levels of complexity. These can range from relatively simple ones like entertainment and professional services right up to the mammoths of education, public service and healthcare. Example methods are service blueprints and personas.

A light bulb moment
Heather then told the story of how as a business analyst looking for ways to improve the admissions process, coming across a project at the University of Derby project it was her "light bulb moment". Here was a solution to the challenge.

What I learnt from a Panel Discussion on Creative Entrepreneurship – Quarter @ TDC – Makeshift Ensemble at the Triskel, Cork.

Saturday afternoon Makeshift Ensemble and Theatre Development Centre (TDC) held "Quarter@TDC 1214" a day of creative events at the the Triskel Cork. It kicked off with a panel discussion on creative entrepreneurship. 

Lovely tea and cakes were laid on and a hanging installation by Pauline Gibbons definitely warmed the tone of the space. Eszter Nemethi, hostess of Makeshift Ensemble began by introducing the panel:

Colm O'Herlihy – Starter of the Mountain Dew festival Macroom (Coming to Cork this year)

Pat Kiernan – Artistic Director and founder of theatre company Corca Dorca

Emer Ní Chíobháin – Sample Studios, Cork

Dave Calnan – founder of the all-ages venue, The Kino

Rhona Flynn – Founder Cork Community Printshop

I was happy to feel a sense of a excitement about stuff happening in Cork. Spaces around city have become available to use. "Cork is amazing right now." (Colm). 

Question "What was the initial motivation for what you have done?" 
It seemed to be a general case of necessity after leaving college ... Colm spoke of organically starting off the Mountain Dew festival with his friends... Pat and Aoife needed a way to keep doing what they wanted to do by setting up collaborative resources ... Dave saw a lack of a venue for under-age music fans. Rhona is thinking strategically to maintain the long term sustainability of her own livelihood and practice. 

Much of the debate centred around making a living, the choices and issues around that.  The current options for practising artists are:

#1. Go on the the dole : 

PRO: no compromise to your work.
CON: you can't be seen to be in business or do commercial work without getting cut-off. Your long hours are not valued. 

#2. Get Funding :
PRO: an income.
CON:  you are vulnerable to changes in funding structures reactions of funding bodies and politicians to the work, you may have to change the work to maintain funding eligibility.

#3. Commercialise your work : PRO sell the work to get an income.
CON: adaptation or compromise of work.

#4. Teach / work a regular job : PRO: an income,
CON: some qualification requirements. Job scarcity. Current embargo in public sector. 

Funding is a generally accepted option but as Pat Kiernan said there is always only a certain amount and a far greater demand. 

Rhona asserted her support for funding but asked about long term sustainability – if someone is planning a family, house, school runs (a life)… how can you plan or depend on funding for that? 

Working for free – 14 to 16 hrs a day, there is no value on your time. You have to get paid. Self subsidisation is a false economy... People can't maintain that. There is a belief that the dole is an alternative arts council. A wage for artists? – Get to work!!!

How can you maintain an independent practice without compromising the work and making a living?

Option #5 – Be a creative entrepreneur :

PRO: long-term financial sustainability and producing work on your own terms.
CON: no guide book to hand, new terrain, requires diversifying your skills requires taking responsibility and risks. Hard work. 

Question: "So what is creative entrepreneurship?"

Dave Calnan's succinct response was: "Making stuff happen"

The panel agreed that we all need to move away from preconceptions of what an entrepreneur is (business suits briefcases, wheeling and dealing)…. It's more about sharing resources and setting up businesses using our artistic creative skills and ideas. Colm mentioned that this requires "diversification" of work and skills. 

Collaboration is the new way to work rather than competition of old. By building a network of mutual support we can create opportunities for each other. There is benefit of being in a group. The word "ecology" was mentioned which seemed to sum that up nicely.

The result is a cultivation of independence of your own work and empowering others to do the same. Rhona called for a responsibility for our ourselves, our futures and the sustainability of our practices.

Some advice:

Get off the dole:

Apply for the Back to work scheme and do a FÁS start your own business course. Check out the Workspace scheme from the arts council. 

Change the system

Petition politicians for legislative change. Check out the National Campaign for the Arts - the dole and artists practice.

Be clear about your aim

Rhona urged the room: paraphrasing her: "You have to be so so clear about what you want - to get things done especially through the hard times. Have a clear focus for what you want to get out of it. One of the things that stops people from taking action is that their aims are too general and not specific enough."

See the bigger picture

Create things to give back - provide things to make the things. Different kinds of audiences can have different finding streams. Question and brainstorm the potential and possibilities of your project.

Communicate

I asked the crowd to define the value and worth of their work. Communicate to those outside of your knowledge circle. Widen the demand for the work by selling and persuading people on the value for them. 

Listen. 

Aoife from Artlink had the final word: Go beyond your own concerns and ask what you can do for others by listening to what is needed. 

Question "What stops people from doing this?" 
I didn't take notes for that … if you were there too maybe you could help fill in the rest? 

So afterwards a few of us camped at the roundy table in Gulp'd, talked art inspiration and invented ideas for schemes and dreams.

(Quarter is a tri-monthly mini arts festival by Makeshift Ensemble. The next event is on 03/05/14 @TDCcork  facebook.com/quartercork)

Leave a comment on what / how you heard this! It would be great to add further links to resources mentioned. 

Ai Wei Wei - Sunflower

"I always think art is a tool to set up new questions"

'Sunflowers' officially opens today in the turbine hall, Tate Modern. I loved the simplicity. You can just hang out on the millions of porcelain hand-made sunflower seeds, make angels, play with the seeds, watch the world go by... The documentary is worth seeing - Chinese production in a small traditional town with long heritage of hand crafted ceramics. Sunflowers are symbols of the chinese during the Cultural Revolution, Mao was the sun.

Article on ME magazine

Ramachandran – What you see is what you feel

Julie Michel - My Way

Before I first moved to London, I went to my local library and photocopied all the pages of the area around where I would go to college, and taped them all together into a kind of monster wall hanging. Fluorescent filled areas for parks and bits of interest, and village areas ringed. Staring at the areas and getting familiar with the names was essential for beginning the trawl through rental adverts. So when I came across these maps from Julie Michel, it all came back to me. the personalisation of an area to visit with stickers and interventions. She has found some neat ways of folding the maps too.... so check out the rest of the site as well.

Johnathan Harris – World Building Manifesto

Life/work can be lonely, a struggle, and very confusing at times. But then someone comes along and in their own way they speak a truth that inspires and resonates. You realise that many others battle with similar issues but some have verbalised it eloquently. Take a read of this presentation given last week. Thanks Mr. Harris.

Snappy little typeface

iQ font - When driving becomes writing / Full making of from wireless on Vimeo.

Forum for ideas and social enterpreneurship

The Ideas Project

Jan Chipchase

Researching for Nokia, Jan Chipchase has the enviable job of travelling the world to discover how people live, and how technology is used and accommodated internationally. The future perfect blog... a collection of insights, thoughts and snapshots from those trips.

Studio Verbarius

Their website looks like a default 'fake' site, but swallowing the doubts, there are some nifty bits of design here. Let me know if this is a spoof!

Your own social network

Ning seems to have a lot going for it: a merge of facebook, flickr, blogspot, online chat and events calendar ... As a private version of facebook, this is clearly the future for social networks: we are many people and many worlds at once.

On Memory and remembering

Lately, I have been reconsidering the use of a reflective diary. Up to now, for me, it has been hand scribbled notes in a book made in binding class, or a little black moleskine, or sometimes typed into project notes or generally left to sent email archive. These remain unfiltered and unaccessible, and frankly, very old-school ineffective. I then stumbled on rememble.com which is a lovely MA project by Gavin O'Connell and developed to a web 2.0 site last year. Its fun to play with. Alan Sekers wrote in a blog there: "A memory is not the same as what is being remembered." This spun me into the whole area of blogging which hasn't been on my personal radar up to now, but which would be an ideal way to set up a relevent diary: searchable, digital, organised, outward facing and spacious.