Jim Armitage on artists and nerds uniting
Bristol, now dubbed Silicon Gorge, has been turned into a hub of media, tech and SMEs
A crisp and sunny Monday took me to Bristol’s Arnolfini art gallery, where a panel of academics and entrepreneurs were trying to thrash out how the local poly – ahem, I mean the University of the West of England – can better serve the community.
As well as being vibrant and generally beautiful, Bristol and the West Country suffers from that wider British and European disease: high youth unemployment. While the centre of Bristol is abuzz with bars and cafes, like most of our cities, there’s what one of the local delegates described as a “doughnut” of deprivation in parts of the outskirts where worklessness is entrenched.
The assembled speakers at our gathering applauded UWE’s sterling efforts in reaching out to these neighbourhoods and, in many cases, showing local kids that uni is not just the preserve of the wealthy elite. Several times it was said that, while young people in poor estates might never dream of applying to the University of Bristol (where you’re more likely to hear the braying of public schoolboys than a Bristol burr), UWE was increasingly seen as an option.
It’s not just getting kids to enrol in places like UWE that can make such a big difference to a population’s employment prospects. Colleges and businesses need to work far more closely to offer internships and jobs for students throughout their time studying. A good few of the entrepreneurs present had done just that with UWE, but, clearly, more could be done.
Bristol’s become transformed in recent years into a hub of media, tech and general SME activity. Now dubbed Silicon Gorge, it’s got one of the biggest collections of video games developers in Europe, just one new cottage industry that’s sucking in talent from across the UK.
Shaven-headed tech entrepreneur Mark Paney has been building businesses in the city since he started running warehouse parties aged 15. I wondered how it was that Bristol’s tech scene had taken off so dramatically. His answer was simple: “It’s all about the mix. You can have nerds, and you can have artists. But the good stuff only happens when the two get together.”
It’s the surreal thing at Standard Life
From sea level in Bristol on Monday, Tuesday took me 30-odd storeys up the Gherkin in the City of London for an offthe-record chat with the new(ish) boss of the Scottish fund manager Standard Life, Keith Skeoch. He’s quiet and thoughtful, but has surprisingly radical ideas about business, politics and the City. Indeed, the Chatham House rules were rather a frustration.
Despite his Scottish name, Skeoch hails from south of the border, although an ancestor was a Scottish watercolourist. He clearly knows his art, too. On the wall was an expensive-looking print by the Barcelona surrealist Miro. Standard Life bought it to reflect the fact that this glass box of a meeting room was called “Seve”, after the late Spanish golfer Ballesteros. All the rooms on the floor have a golfing theme, you see, reflecting the company’s sponsorship of the Ryder Cup.
Miro’s extremely hot property in the auction rooms these days. Don’t be surprised if that print turns out to be one of the fund manager’s best investments.
If you can’t afford the bills you can burn the dead trees
There can be few examples of so much wealth being transferred from so many (the general public) to so few (the private sector corporations) as the rip-off supply of gas and electricity since privatisation 14 years ago.
So it was bitterly disappointing to see the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) this week not only refuse to intervene meaningfully on prices, but to relax the previous rules severely limiting the blizzard of tariffs used to bamboozle the public.
Instead of intervening with an order on companies to automatically put customers on their cheapest deals – first promised, but never delivered, by David Cameron in Parliament in 2012 – the CMA proposed to hand over to the sales teams of 37 rival energy firms a database of all households who haven’t switched recently. Venting my anger in print about this on Thursday morning, I predicted that householders would be bombarded by cold calls until they caved in. Wrong! The CMA pointed out that the list can only be used for marketing by post. So you’ll be junk-mailed into submission, not cold-called. Well, that’s alright, then.
Hytner gambles on the new with Tower Bridge theatre
Having been lucky enough to catch a few of his hits over the years, I was starstruck chatting to my theatrical hero, the director Nicholas Hytner, about his new business.
A 900-seater in a Berkeley Homes development by Tower Bridge, the London Theatre Company will follow a producerowner business model not tried in London for perhaps 100 years.
Hytner and his old stablemate at the National, Nick Starr, will own the property and put on solely new plays. The site, opening late next year, will be a modern theatre with the flexibility to do more innovative stagings than the West End.
The duo and their backers are confident they can break even. But the real megabucks will flow if they can find another War Horse, which will travel to theatres around the world, bringing untold royalties.
That’s why Hytner’s decided to do only new plays, rather than putting on old classics with a big star in the lead. As he explains, you can get bums on seats by hiring Benedict Cumberbatch to play Hamlet, but when the star leaves, so do the bums. Hytner’s plan is to make the show the star, so the crowds keep on coming.
“I can’t pretend this is not a risky venture, and our investors know that. But the risk they’re taking is on our experience, perspicacity and our nose for what works.” I reckon that’s a risk worth taking.