"The main difference between Belfast and London is that London values young people, Belfast doesn't..."The above was said to me recently by a good mate who's lived in London for a few years and was a stated reason as to why he isn't ever going to return home. It was one of those statements that immediately had resonance. It might not be entirely true, but there's a lot of truth to it and in my own experience I can see why he thinks that.
Perhaps it's part of our national mentality but one thing we don't do well is praise (outside of a church anyway) while we're masters of the critical assault for the most part, as various message boards and social networks based here will stand as testament.
With more young people than ever before now staying at home in Northern Ireland since the ceasefires and the subsequent semi-normalisation of the place this is something that we need to change. If we want to retain the obvious talent that is all around us and not break the spirit of those with outlandish and weighty ideas we're maybe going to have to learn to think differently.
We liberally sponsored and went to
UnConvention Belfast a couple of weekends ago in the Black Box in Belfast. It was a music based event where people got together to discuss the way forward in the music industry in Northern Ireland and beyond in a room full of their peers and industry folk. It was certainly more relaxed and slightly edgier than other events of this type and got quite lively at times.
It also managed to attract quite a few high profile guests from the UK and further afield. It paid for itself and allowed the public in for free. On its own modest terms it was a success. And the lessons from this year will be carried on to Manchester and other places where more
UnConventions are being planned, before it returns to Belfast at some point a more fully realised entity with ideas and concepts from elsewhere appropriated and recycled as people see fit. Its strength is the truly free exchange of ideas, innovations and contacts across a wide range of people and territories. The very idea is made to be copied and reappropriated. There's no trademark or copyright on this, in fact at its core it opposes such ideas. This is its beauty.
And similarly in digital media there's
OpenCoffee where people meet up freely to chat about what they've got going on that's now got spinoffs in Newry and Lisburn.
BarCamp, a more evolved version of
OpenCoffee with speakers and such will return on the 25th April 2009 at the Black Box, Belfast while there will no doubt be another
CreativeCamp, there's a
Linux Users Group, an
XCake meetup and all manner of super techie stuff too. Most of this stuff can be found at the
Digital Circle website and at other sites such as
NI Creatives. The recent Belfast Twestival managed to raise £500 for charity:water in a single night.
Between all of these events and the others that we either don't know about or have omitted from this list hundreds of people are meeting on a weekly basis to share thoughts, problems, ideas, work and ultimately their lives with each other. Friends are being made. Mad ideas are spawned and forgotten while some are followed through. And the entry criteria is simply showing up.
There's no owner as such, no board of directors or need to know basis. It's as open as some of the titles say. Although much credit should go to people like Andy McMillan, Phil O Kane, Matt Johnston and the many other creative folk behind these happenings. They're not asking for praise, how very Northern Irish of them, but they deserve it in droves for working so hard and for being so infallible in their spirit.
This is also true of people like Lee Munroe and Paddy Donnelly whom you might have heard of as founders of the well publicised
Big Word Project, that was such a success that it was mercilessly ripped off and plagiarised, the greatest form of flattery. Lee's been finishing his Masters while working for a bunch of clients and his latest creation is
www.lookaly.com, a website that allows people to review and rate places, businesses and more in Northern Ireland. It's wonderfully executed as all of
Lee's work is. The fella's an inspiration in terms of following through with the big ideas, long may he continue to keep churning out such great work.
And so I'm not too sure that my friend in London is right with his appraisal of where Belfast is. He might be right in saying that those with a few shlocks of grey on their temples are suspicious and unsupportive of the young in this city but that will hardly matter as long as the young people are supporting each other.
And the Big Word Project we mentioned above?
Seemed appropriate to buy
Labels: barcamp, belfast, clapping, creative camp belfast, kudos, lookaly, opencoffee, praise, take a bow
