Birmingham handed branding and marketing challenge
the hundreds of ideas generated at the workshop.
Attendees at the Creative Republic-organised evening were asked to imagine they were part of team of people working underneath a Birmingham creative director on ways to improve life in the city.
It seemed like Mr Wolff, the man who caused such a stir last year when he said Birmingham lacked creative direction, was almost an adjunct to the event.
But his previous comments arguing that Birmingham should have a creative director along the lines of Peter Saville in Manchester put him firmly centre-stage in a heated debate last year over whether the city should embrace the idea.
Birmingham City Council and Marketing Birmingham came in for a few harsh words from Mr Wolff who accused them of not doing enough to enhance Birmingham’s image as a creative place.
He described the “b in Birmingham” logo as “like a bus stop without the details of the bus service” and claimed creativity was more important than healthcare and education.
But this time around, the debate was much wider than whether or not the city should have a creative director and went far beyond how to “brand” Birmingham.
“Should Birmingham have a creative director?” said Mr Wolff. “I don’t think that is the point of this event. We could have about 80 creative directors - as many as it takes to make things happen.
“I’m more interested in this workshop motivating creative people on how they can contribute to Birmingham and look at all the strands of the city in terms of culture, the arts as well as things like violence and crime.
“Whether there should be a creative director at some point in the future is another question.
But with or without the figurehead role, Mr Wolff believed the public sector should be at the heart of any drive to embrace creative solutions to everyday problems.
“We need the council to say “we control finance and stimulate commercial activity, we should also be stimulating creative activity.”
“In other words if the council manifests creativity in everything it does that in itself will act as a catalyst. It’s about looking at all the things you could do, in terms of things like security, health and education.
“It’s more about doing things with imagination so again and again, as you deal with the city, you see things which make you feel that somebody thought about that.”
When pressed for an example of what he means by a local authority manifesting creativity, he gives the example of prisons.
“Prisons really are a sad thing because crime itself is already a failure of our society. But at the end of the day prison should be about learning to be a more effective person so put a university campus in the prison, make the prison about education.”
