Yue's first day of internship @ CIDA

Hi every one, this is Yue and today I started my first day of internship at CIDA! I am studying my master degree in Cultural and Creative industries at King's College London and this experience will enable me to gain more hands-on experience and knowledge about how SMEs within these industries work. Moreover, though my dissertation will focus only on fashion bloggers in China, I am always interested in cultural entrepreneurship and cultural entrepreneurs.  I would like to start my own company in a few years. Therefore, I believe this internship would be valuable experience to my future career.

After settling all the things down, I began to read through all the cases that CIDA has been working on in the recent ten years. These materials give me a clearer idea about what CIDA is and what is has always been focusing on. From these leaflets and booklets, I find that helping potential creative entrepreneurs to further develop and complete their business ideas, teaching them how to get more loans in order to expand their business, creating opportunities for them to setting up networking which is valuable for the future growth of companies within CCIs are the main themes of CIDA. In the early years, it seemed like there have been a lot of events focusing on the music industries while in recent years the focus has been shifted to the whole CCIs which would engage more people including politicians, academics, creative artists, senior managers within creative companies etc. I think this is a positive shift because this enables more people be involved in the events and get inspired, which would be beneficial to the whole industries.

There are two other things which impress me most. First is that CIDA even provided events (such as the ‘GET CREATIVE DAY’ in 2006) for children--- the future cultural entrepreneurs. There were different events designed for all ages: from 3 to adults and older people. I used to think that CIDA would only deal with creatives, academics etc. I have never heard of events like this before in my country because in our culture, children have nothing to do with business. However, I find that some of the guest speakers in the past lectures were only teenagers. This made me realise that in CCIs, age and experience is not the determine factor of success. I kept thinking maybe we should start programme like this to cultivate entrepreneurship in children so that they can become more creative and independent. In this way, maybe there would be more cultural entrepreneurs in China in the future.

Another thing that impresses me is the ‘Overlay – Brick Lane’ programme in 2009. CIDA sent out a call for artists to cover 54 m2 of builders hoarding around the grade 1 listed building the ‘ Jamme Masjid’, which was closed to traffic, between the junction of Fournier Street and Princelet Street. 13 creatives from different artistic backgrounds including painting, drawing and even graffiti were selected to take part providing them with a fantastic opportunity to promote their work as well as developing a sense of ownership and involvement of local people in the development process of the area. I am interested in this because I have written an essay about whether graffiti should be considered as crime during my pre-session course. I believe that graffiti should be viewed as art while the artists should paint them in legal places. Thus I find this programme meaningful because it on the one hand promotes graffiti, on the other hand suggest artists to cultivate a sense of ownership.

After finished these materials, I feel excited and energetic about the coming days. I am ready to make my own contributions to this organisation!

CIDA Creates its Page on Sina Weibo

Hey there everyone,

It is Mo. How is this week going? I have good news to share.

CIDA had its Sina Weibo page created on this Tuesday. If you don’t know what Sina Weibo is, let me have a brief introduction to you. Sina Weibo is a Chinese microblogging (weibo) website. It is one of the most popular sites in China with 503 million registered users as of Dec 2012. Weibo is a Chinese abbreviation for ‘microblog’, which adkin to Twitter. More and more British organisations are paying attention to the Sina Weibo in terms of expanding overseas companies or organisations’ influence in China.

I am operating our page now, authorized by Mr. Toks. What I do is to make more and more Chinese users know what CIDA does for the development of cultural and creative industries. I will mainly translate the updates on our official websites, Twitter, FaceBook and even the videos on YouTube. I plan to create a CIDA channel on Youku, which is the Chinese version of YouTube. Let the world hear CIDA now!!!!! So our address needs to be highlighted:

weibo.com/cidauk   

Do you have a weibo account? If not, join us as soon as possible!!!!!!

Have a good day!!!

Have a Good Weekend

Hey there, this is Mo again.

I’m going to finish my second week working at CIDA.

When it comes to London transport, I got to know what is called the peak time in the morning. Queuing from the entrance, I have to wait for at least three trains passing by before I really get on it. To be honest, I should not be this surprised because London is so Beijing this time. As in Beijing, anytime it should be like this, let alone the peak time. Anyway, like I always said, the pedestrian is the most beautiful scenery of London and I am always curious about the story behind them.

I’ve known that what I will focus on for the upcoming weeks, which is a music project called the Blank Rocket project. Music brings joy and gives the power to all of our hearts. It's one of those emotional arts. It is good to hear that CIDA would like to help someone with dreams to be a singer, especially for that Japanese lady Naoko. She could sing, dance and speak English well.

Oh just for your information, Toks just knew that the Chinese cannot get access to those popular websites such as FaceBook and YouTube.  It’s been for a while since 2009, but I think it won’t last long. I don’t like talking about politics too much, especially when it comes to the CCI. We are living in the moment and should enjoy the most of it. Furthermore, I hope the music market in China could be like 30 years ago: people buy music, rather than download it for free. The intellectual property should be protected anytime anywhere.

Have a good weekend everyone!!!!

Mo's First Day at CIDA

Hi! This is Mo.

It is time to look back on my first day at CIDA, with joy and pleasure. I chose the Brick Lane on my way to CIDA, being immersed in the atmosphere that full of street arts, different ethnicities and stylish people. Now that I’ve been studying in the Northbank and West End, living in the Southbank, working in the central of East London would be a totally different experience for me. On a typical Tuesday, sitting in a nice office and working with great people, what else could I ask for? I am starting my internship now!

I am currently completing a master's degree in Cultural and Creative Industries at King's College London. As a MA CCI student, the modules I have had taken would be extremely helpful to start this internship at CIDA. Contested Culture and Analysing the CCI have taught me how to think critically with different issues and group seminar help me further practise this skill, as well as how to communicate with different opinions. Meanwhile, I have got a deeper understanding of contemporary debates about the nature of work in the cultural and creative industries from the Creatives: Working in the Cultural Industries course, which aims to situate the understanding of cultural work in broader frameworks concerned with globalisation and transformations of contemporary capitalism. Furthermore, Digital Industries and Internet Culture course has explored role of social norms and cultures as central components of digital industries in relation to internet cultures. Management of Art has presented to me how aesthetic knowledge and being ‘artful’ can foster better organisations.

As for my dissertation, I aim to focus on creative clusters, which comprise creative people, creative economy and creative policies. Creativity is something that divides the world, which has led many clusters to advance either economically or politically and, to some extent, spiritually. Here I want to discuss about London West End and Beijing 798 Art Clusters with an emphasis on creative people, who can be called as creative class. Human capital and talent are becoming the driving forces to achieve economic growth in the knowledge and creative economy. Besides, Creative people and talents are attracted to environments characterized by openness, a diverse and inclusive community and the existence of abundant and vibrant high quality experiences. According to my research, I expect to gain a better insight into creative clusters that linked to the economic and social life. Since I’ve read the copy of a speech by Dr Richard Florida given at Cr8net last year, I am sure that working in CIDA would be the best choice I have ever made for CIDA is doing everything that can support those working in the CCI.

In terms of my task preference, I would like to take part in as many activities as possible, from brainstorming to practicing. Moreover, Toks briefly talked about considering expanding career to China by opening a Sina Weibo account in my interview, I am quite interested in it.

CIDA is such an outstanding agency that keeps pace with the times, so it is my honour to be here with you. London is such an amazing city that the longer I stay, the more I love it. I’ve been here for a summer when I was in high school, and this summer, will be the memory I cherish forever. Finally, have you heard that ‘when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life’ by Samuel Johnson? It is definitely true!