Dave Harte: In love with committees
Jun 24 2010 By Dave Harte
Everyone loves a committee.
Perhaps it’s the promise of free coffee or the thrill of finding that for once there are pastries rather than digestives. Whichever way, we love them.
In fact committee-love is European-wide.
I spent some time in Berlin last week listening to representatives from a range of European countries talk about their own committees related to the creative industries.
It struck me that the more hip the city (Berlin and Amsterdam for example) the more intricate and voluminous the committee structure.
Just at the point Amsterdam felt it had enough groups meeting and deliberating on creativity or culture or “digital” it went and invented a new ‘Creative City’ group causing general confusion.
Berlin, like Birmingham, splits its focus on creative industries between the economic affairs and the cultural affairs departments in the city council. Committees abound.
That’s not to mention Berlin’s industry sub-groups that meet at a regional level or as part of the Chamber of Commerce.
You might think that so many committees end up merely duplicating each other and become a bit of an echo-chamber.
True enough but they also serve two important functions.
One, they do that boring but essential stuff of gathering data and shaping policy.
Without them we’d still be putting 14 year-olds down mines rather than sending them to dance classes. Secondly, they get on with that most essential of creative endeavours, finding money to do stuff.
The head of Berlin’s Economic Affairs department spoke with pride of her ability to find all manner of funds in odd places to make lively and exciting things happen.
Given the level of art projects and activity that we witnessed on our visit she seems to be doing a good job. In fact there seemed to be a little internal competition between her and Cultural Affairs about who could bring in the most cash.
So I’m all for committees, Birmingham has its fair share of them (I would list them but that would be the entire column).
Let them meet and deliberate and debate. If the European example is anything to go by, the more we have, the cooler we become.
* Dave Harte is award leader for the MA in Social Media at Birmingham City University.
