Keeping Manchester’s creative talent in the area and building a thriving digital economy for the future – two of the issues exercising the minds of the movers and shakers across the city at the moment.
As the most recent research from the Manchester Independent Economic Review revealed (full findings slideshow here), the city has particular difficulty keeping hold of the graduates of its universities.
With this issue to the fore, a gathering of representatives from universities, the city council, the digital development agency and arts organisations got together yesterday to look at the possibilities offered by the online community Jotta.
And, in a welcome first, they also invited me along to participate and then blog about it with the aim that a wider debate might be sparked across the digital community.
Jotta has been operating in London for the past five months. Its creators describe it as “an online and offline community for artists and designers and communicators across all disciples.”
In brief it answers two needs;
- A place to showcase work – members can upload a portfolio which can additionally be shared through social networking sites.
- Provides online tools to network and collaborate. Groups, discussions forums where members of the community can comment on each others’ work.
It seemed to me that one of its strengths is in being so tightly focussed into niche disciplines, the website provides potential employers and businesses looking for talent with a very targeted pool – after all, if a digital games animator is what you need, looking through portfolios of fashion designers will lead to a frustrating experience.
It’s attracted 4,500 registered users and had 17,000 pieces of work uploaded – some of which has already been provided by northern practitioners have already found their way to this platform including artist Kev Dawson from Manchester and printmaker David Hand from St Helen’s.
The creators say that providing practical assistance to members of the community is high on the agenda – whether this is to assist in getting commercial opportunity or simply to provide tools for showcasing – and the organisers have already held offline events such as the curation of a space at St Martin’s College.
So, would it work in Manchester? Your thoughts, as ever, most welcome.
A pre-requisite would seem to be a buy-in from the commercial sector as well as the educational institutions not just to to help create the community but also to actively promote their students’ talents into the hard-nosed business world.
Is the city better served by joining an existing community or by developing a stand-alone offering? Can any online community truly reflect our diversity of talent? Is there an advantage in size or in exclusivity? These are just some of the questions it prompted for me and I’m looking forward to the debate continuing in the future.
Dim Sum Digital 