is 2008-12 cultural olympiad a business opportunity?

The Cultural Olympiad – a programme of arts and cultural activities which is being set up to showcase British talent and innovation to the world - will run for the four years leading up to the 2012 Olympic Games. It starts next August, immediately after our athletes return from Beijing. For many local companies, the Cultural Olympiad will be first real chance to benefit from the preparations for 2012. But at the moment the plans are rather vague, the funds are in short supply, and there is not much focus on the involvement and opportunities for local businesses.

So far, very few Hackney firms have managed to become suppliers to the organisers of the Olympic games. McGrath Brothers in Hackney Wick, who are helping with demolition and rubble disposal, are a notable exception. A number of local businesses have actually shut down due to land purchases and road closures near the construction site, including nine out of thirty nine pubs that used to be in the E3 postcode near Bow. The Lighthouse pub in Wick Lane, near the now virtually unused Pudding Mill Lane station, says that it has lost 70 per cent of its trade this year.

So the Cultural Olympiad will be the first major Olympic business opportunity for local companies, and perhaps the only one for the many cultural and arts businesses in Hackney. The plans include regional celebrations and showcases of local talent, thousands of community events, contracts for film and video makers, a World Cultural Festival, an International Shakespeare Festival, and an international Museums Exhibition.

Last week the Hackney Enterprise Network took part in a discussion about the content and purpose of the Cultural Olympiad with Baroness Lola Young, a cross bench member of the House of Lords, and Keith Khan, the Head of Culture for London 2012.

“Barcelona and Sydney used the cultural events associated with the Olympic Games to reposition the host city and host country in the eyes of their own communities and of the world,” says Baroness Young. “The Cultural Olympiad is a chance to boost regeneration and employment in London, to develop skills, to widen participation in the arts, and to discuss Britishness. Perhaps we can come together for this one moment, healing our divisions and overcoming our lack of social cohesion. But to do that a clearer, more precise vision for the Cultural Olympiad is required.”

“These aims are important, but too many people see the Cultural Olympiad as an opportunity for handouts to minority arts,” says Marek Simon of Digital Sport, an online gaming company in Shoreditch. “If the benefits are to be long term, the arts and cultural sector will have to become more businesslike, setting up partnerships around the themes of the Cultural Olympiad with enterprises from the private sector. The funds for performances and exhibitions should come from satisfied paying customers, not government sponsors. The Cultural Olympiad should help the arts to pay their own way, not foot the bill.”

There does appear to be a gap between the aims of the scheme and its ability to pay. Arts organisations nationwide have pointed out that government and lottery cash for the arts has recently fallen by £300 million as funds have been reallocated to preparations for the Olympic Games.

“Financially, things will be very tough for the culture and arts sector,” Baroness Young admits. “But we can’t let this once in a lifetime opportunity to celebrate our diverse cultures pass, so we must do what we can with the funding available. Large scale projects are important, but I’d particularly like to see more small organisations helped to do local events with small amounts of money.”

“London is going to integrate the Cultural Olympiad with its plans to regenerate the East End, improving education, local life, skills and employment,” says 2012 Head of Culture Keith Khan. “The Cultural Olympiad is central to turning our communities around, and making London a world class city once again. It is a major opportunity for the cultural and creative sector, and for young people, and it will leave a strong legacy.”

In the division of tasks between the five Olympic boroughs, Hackney Council was given overall responsibility for cultural activity related to the Games.

The Cultural Olympiad will be discussed at a Hackney Enterprise Network Christmas event on Tuesday 11 December from 6-9pm at the Old Ship in Hackney. Cllr Guy Nicholson will be talking about the prospects for local business in 2008 and Mike Mulvey, the Chief Executive of the London Business Network, will be talking about Olympic opportunities. For further details email events@hackneyenterprise.net or call 020 7553 3024

shoreditch hairdressser in religious discrimination case

Sarah Desrosiers, a hairdresser living in Kingsland Road, Shoreditch is being sued by a muslim woman who wears a traditional headscarf. Bushra Noah failed to secure a job as a stylist in the fashionable Kings Cross salon Wedge in March. Sarah Desrosiers says for her business to succeed her staff must embody the values and image of the salon, which provides urban, funky haircuts, and an individual wearing a headscarf cannot do this. Bushra Noah claims that this is an example of religious discrimination.

"The essence of my line of work is the display of hair," says Sarah Desrosiers. "To me, it's absolutely basic that people should be able to see the stylist's hair. It has nothing to do with religion. Ihave never discriminated against muslims. My name is being dragged through the mud and I feel victimised."

Bushra Noah is suing the salon for £15,000 in a case that will be heard in January.

"Wearing a headscarf is very important in my religion and non-negotiable," she says. "It has always been my ambition to be a hairdresser but I have given up now after being rejected twenty five times. It is always because of my headscarf whether they say it or not."

hackney designer kits out kylie

Mare Street based fashion designer Emma Roach has been meeting regularly with singer Kylie Minogue, who has commissioned her to design and deliver a costume which the Australian superstar will wear during An Audience with Kylie Minogue, a programme which will be broadcast in late November, coinciding with the release of X, her tenth studio album. The unique garments have the appearance of body armour. Emma Roach has just been awarded a grant from the Hackney Enterprise Network to purchase computing equipment for use in her fast growing design practice.

future of television takes shape in hackney

Television is being transformed by internet TV channels, audience participation and voting, new programmes for mobile phones and other portable devices, and the introduction of links to online communities, information services and shopping services. A large number of the small, innovative companies involved in this work can be found in Shoreditch, in the south of the borough.

More than twenty local media companies attended a forum on the future of television at the Innovatory last week to discuss the new business opportunities which are opening up in the sector. The event – jointly organised with the Hackney Enterprise Network – brought together buyers and commissioning editors from major channels and fifteen Hackney-based documentary, video and film companies.

“The market for television and related activities is growing very rapidly, by almost twenty per cent a year,” Kevin Davey of the Innovatory told the audience. “At the same time, traditional broadcasting is coming to an end. The new wave of television expansion is interactive. The new programmes sought by commissioning editors are cross-platform - linking television, radio, and the internet - and in many cases they are also participatory, featuring viewer feedback and questions, viewer voting and the growth of online communities.”

“The companies which will succeed are those who can take existing genres and formats and flip them, transform them, or subvert them with something more edgy,” said Jo Taylor, the manager of 4Talent, the Channel Four outreach team which searches for new suppliers and fresh ideas for programmes “Creatives should identify the participatory, cross-platform potential of their ideas right from the start, and like all media start up companies, work with stronger partners who already have a track record if they can’t deliver it themselves.”

“Channel Four has no in house production of its own,” she told the forum. “So we need new companies to pitch strong new ideas to us all the time. We’re actively looking for a new generation of talented programme makers to come up with proposals which are right for our viewers, who are younger than those watching BBC and ITV. And we are opening our doors to smaller production companies. We are determined that 20% of the new work we commission next year will come from businesses with turnovers of less than two million pounds.”

Channel Four encourages production companies to place sixty second and three minute test programmes on the Microdocs and FourDocs areas of its website. These are continually reviewed by commissioning editors and fees are paid for the best, which are then broadcast. The channel also offers a professional summer school and regularly assesses new movie scripts through its Extreme Cinema scheme.

Rishi Sankar, an Eastenders producer at the BBC, has just been appointed as the commissioning editor for Ability TV, a new channel which will launch next year. He explained that the new channel was looking for companies to make radical new programmes that would actively involve young viewers through web cams, blogs, audience stringers, and citizen media.

“Choice and opinion are highly valued by young viewers,” he said. “In order to be successful, soap operas, dramas, comedy slots, music and magazine programmes all need interactive and multi-platform components that will involve and retain them as viewers.”

“Imagine watching a show which includes a review of a computer game you’re interested in,” said Alestir Waller, the head of channel for Ability TV. “The kind of programme we intend to buy will offer you a trial run of that game in a separate window on your screen while you’re watching the show, then let you comment on the game via a web cam, and see your views broadcast before the programme ends.”

Other east London channels taking part in the event included Greenzone, a shopping channel for environmentally friendly products, and YourkindaTV, which transmits an interactive stand up comedy programme that allows the audience to heckle and vote online. Rarekwai, Hackney’s street art and underground music channel, Glocal films, which is developing a video exchange linking young people in the UK with the Third World, and the ecommerce software company Coublis also took part.

“In television today, the old divisions between creatives, technologists and audiences are being eroded,” says Patrick Nicholson of the Hackney Enterprise Network. “To win commissions in the fast-changing media business, creatives must start to work with technology, telecommunications and web experts who know how to bridge formats, deliver participation, and build online communities. South Hackney has exactly the right mix of companies for that to happen.”

two years of success for London Bites theatre business

The Hackney-based company London Bites, which brings writers, actors, and theatre directors together for informal public performances of new work every month, has a lot to celebrate on its second birthday, including a pat on the back from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a grant to help build the business over the year ahead, and a new franchise in South Wales.

A glitzy anniversary party was hosted by comedian Shazia Mirza – who has been described as the “Lenny Bruce of female stand-up” - at the Top Floor Bar @Turnmills in Clerkenwell. Talented actors performing new work on the night included Martin Miller, Esther McAuley, Karen Osenton and Andrew McGillan.

For the last two years London Bites has been helping scriptwriters to secure commissions, actors to get work, and London’s theatre directors to book the best new talent in the capital.

For one evening every month, up to twelve performers - who have been selected by audition - perform five minute sets of new drama and comedy onstage in front of directors, industry professionals and the public.

Organiser Claire-Louise English has exactly the right background and connections to make the gatherings succeed. The Hoxton-based manager of London Bytes is the daughter of the actor and comedian Arthur English, probably best known for his role as Mr Harman the maintenance man in the TV series Are You Being Served?

“We are always looking for new talent for our show,” she says. “We audition every month and we’re looking for five minute monologues and ten minute duologues. We welcome new writing. If you have a script that you would like to see performed, this is the place to do it.”

“I am doing great since my appearance in Superhero at London Bites,” says actor Dylan MacDonough. “I got a show from it, which led to an agent, which led to a job in television. It’s an approach that works.”

“London is a world centre for performance and composition, but the opportunities for professionals to meet and perform with other actors and writers are actually few and far between,” says the founder of London Bytes, Melissa Leigh. “We provide an informal atmosphere in which performers and writers can demonstrate their work, free from the normal constraints and pressures of a conventional showcase.”

The theatre world has begun to sit up and take notice. A report from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival recently praised London Bites for “introducing excellent new theatrical acting and writing talent to audiences and the media via high quality and compelling shows.”

London Bite’s networking and performance events have also won sponsorship by Spotlight, the main casting directory for stage and screen.

Work is now underway to franchise the pioneering arts business out to theatre professionals in other cities in the United Kingdom, with the support of a grant from the Hackney Enterprise Network.

The first of these new ventures, Cardiff Bites, is already up and running in South Wales, and holding auditions. Its first shows will be held in November.

“It is notoriously difficult for new writers and actors from east London to get onto the radar of the theatre establishment,” says Patrick Nicholson of the Hackney Enterprise Network. “London Bites opens doors and makes introductions that matter, as well as laying on a very good night out for everyone involved. It is a theatrical innovation that has begun in Hackney and I will believe it will be replicated across the country.”

To contact London Bites, email clare@standupdrama.com or call 02079232295.

hackney-china trade is growing

Half the world’s computers, clothes and digital electronics are made in China, and more than three quarters of the childrens’ toys distributed around the planet come from its huge factories. Clothes, toys, furniture and shoes that used to be manufactured in workshops in Hackney now come from assembly lines in Chongqing, Shandong and Huangzou. So it’s no surprise that Hackney’s small businesses are starting to reach out to Chinese suppliers and share the benefits of low labour costs and high volume production.

Local regeneration expert and executive coach Chris Hadley has just returned from his third trip to China in three years. Earlier this week he briefed the Hackney Enterprise Network on his tour of Wuhan, Jinzhou, Yichang and Beijing, during which he visited commercial ports - including Han Kou, a major centre for the transport of coal and aggregates – as well as temples, and the monastic centre of Tai Chi culture at Wu Dang Shan, accompanied by inward investors and science and innovation specialist Julia Knight of the British Consulate in Shanghai.

“Even China’s smaller cities are now highly developed and entrepreneurial, with good road and river-based transport systems” he says. “New office buildings are going up everywhere. China now has a huge middle class. Life at every level is commercial, with traders and shops and small factories everywhere you go, and evidence that the peasants are beginning to prosper too. It’s an extremely enterprising society, and this gives rise to a huge contrast between the urban bustle, and the transport of raw materials and manufactured products through the countryside and along the rivers, and the scenic beauty of the mountains and rural areas.”

Chris Hadley travelled with the north London-based Meridian Society, which has devised an innovative way to teach Chinese using the Tian Di Ren (time, place, person) system based on the Chinese sentence structure. The society is also planning a summer school in a village outside Beijing, where visitors will teach local learners English in the mornings, and the be taught Chinese in the afternoon.

In Beijing Chris Hadley also met with Matthew Kelly, who helps local businesses trading with the Chinese capital on behalf of the Innovatory on Old Street. Mr Kelly links Hackney businesses with Chinese manufacturers, exporters, and freight forwarders, making introductions, assisting in negotiations, and ensuring that goods reach shops and businesses in the borough on time and in good shape.

“We’ve been opening doors for Hackney firms for the last two months, with interest mainly coming from the garment, print and construction trades,” Matthew Kelly reports. “We’ve also been helping to provide interpreters and translation, to source samples and prices, and to arrange shipments, helping small firms in Hackney avoid the many pitfalls which exist in international trade. There’s a growing appetite for goods from China in the borough.”

“The price and quality of the MP3 music players we’ve from Beijing beats anything we were able to source in Europe,” says Hackney Wick electrical wholesaler James Wilcox.

“We’ve been importing reclaimed building materials,” says Alan Davis of Redecor in Homerton. “Even with the transportation costs factored in, they cost only 25% of the going rate in Britain.”

On Tuesday night Michael Sinclair, the chair of the Stoke Newington Business Association, launched yet another service which will help Hackney businesses overcome the barriers to trade with China.

“ChinaOnecall is an interpreter in your pocket,” he says. “It provides a twenty four hour telephone link to Chinese staff who are fluent in English and Mandarin. The interpreters will speak over your phone to hotel staff, taxi drivers, business managers and ordinary people on the streets of Chinese cities.“

“There will be no need for a business to feel friendless and misunderstood in China again,” says Mr Sinclair. “One call to us and you’ll be on speaking terms with everyone around you.”

To contact the Meridian Society email mecs@meridiandao.co.uk To contact Matthew Kelly email Beijingoffice@theinnovatory.com For more information on ChinaOnecall visit www.chinaonecall.com

hackney hairdresser goes to broadgate for growth

Opera star Jordene Soprano swapped the Royal Festival Hall for Hackney last week to serenade VIPs from the beauty business at the glitzy opening party of high fashion hairdresser IDENTITY UK's brand new salon close to the foot of the new Broadgate Tower in the south of the borough.

IDENTITY UK, which was recently awarded five stars in The Good Salon Guide, has trebled its workforce and increased its overheads as a result of the move from Kingsland Road to Shoreditch High Street, but award-winning stylist Tony Hegarty and his business partner Mikey Varellas are both confident that their business will grow rapidly in its new location.

The thirty five storey Broadgate Tower, just a few steps from IDENTITY UK’s front door, is still under construction but once it is completed in the summer of 2008 it will be the workplace of up to 15,000 people.

Currently the tallest building under construction in the capital, the fast-rising tower already blocks Hackney’s old view of the Gherkin in St Mary’s Axe just behind it.

Fashion and beauty professionals from L’Oréal, IZANI and KMS packed the two storey salon for the launch party to hear singer Jordene Soprano, who was drafted in from the South Bank where she is currently performing in the musical Carmen Jones.

They were also treated to a spectacular live show in which models sporting innovative modern European, Afro and mixed race hairstyles paraded in front of champagne-sipping guests.

“After outgrowing our original premises in Kingsland Road, where we were based for six years, it took a long time for us to find a larger location with new opportunities to reach more customers,” says Mikey Varellas. “But now we’re in our new home, business is booming.”

Architects, managers and builders working on Broadgate have been among the first customers visiting the Shoreditch High Street venue.

The ultra modern salon has ten styling stations, a L’Oréal Colour Lab, a MIZANI consultation area and two beauty rooms offering a wide range of beauty treatments, manicure, massage, reflexology, thermostraightening and AromaSteam.

"This place is a sanctuary, giving the best haircuts in London,” says customer Hope Harriott.

“Our stylists are highly skilled professionals who have won many awards,” says Tony Hegarty. “But every client leaves our salon with a first class haircut that hasn’t broken the bank.”

“The relocation of IDENTITY UK is part of a clear trend for successful retailers, restaurateurs, software developers and providers of professional and personal services to move to the south of the borough, where more affluent customers and business clients can be found in larger numbers,” says Kevin Davey, the senior business advisor at the Innovatory on Old Street.

“Hackney’s most ambitious entrepreneurs are prepared to take the risk of the higher rents charged on the fringe of the City, and the cost of providing higher quality goods and services to clients in the area, because the rewards are much higher too. For this reason the push towards the south is likely to continue even after the tube line is extended to Hackney.”

The change of premises and expansion of IDENTITY UK was assisted by a grant from the Hackney Enterprise Network which helped to pay for the salon’s new shopfront.

designer kelly shaw wins river island fashion award

Hackney fashion designer Kelly Shaw has won second place and £2000 in this year's River Island awards for her 1950s style womenswear. Victoria Beckham is rumoured to have purchased three of her dresses. "I've been trying to push the boundaries of fashion, rather than just staying inside them," Kelly told the Hackney Gazette, adding that the work of photographer Martin Parr is an inspiration for her designs.

three million pounds for shoreditch software pioneers

A Hackney company has won three million pounds from American investors to boost sales of a groundbreaking piece of software called SONAR, which will revolutionise the way in which businesses manage their information.

The deal is the first major investment in a new generation of business software, known as Enterprise 2, which has taken place anywhere in Europe.

Trampoline Systems, based in Old Aske’s Hospital, a former almshouse in Buttesland Street, Hoxton, has signed up to the deal with the Boston-based Tudor Investment Corporation, which specialises in new internet infrastructure and information technology companies.

Trampoline’s software transforms the way in which news, knowledge and ideas circulate and are used in businesses. The software uses the results of personal research into how small communities pass on new information – which Mr Armstrong carried out for twelve months in the Scilly Isles – to change the way in which emails, documents and data are distributed in large organisations.

“When I completed the research, I saw that most business software today works against the methods humans have evolved to distribute information,” says Mr Armstrong. “We have built the SONAR platform to support human instincts rather than disable them. It pinpoints centres of expertise, recognised and unrecognised, in a social network or organisation, and it relays new and incoming knowledge to where it is needed.”

“SONAR brings the statistical processing of natural language and social network analysis to the problem of browsing and filtering large archives,” chief technologist Craig McMillan explains. “We permit users to see who is talking to who, how much and about what. There are applications in areas including the discovery of expertise, compliance, forensics, searching and alerting.”

Trampoline was formed in 2003 with seed finance from funds and private investors in San Francisco, London and Tokyo. The company was helped in its recent search for funds by the Gateway to Investment service operating from the Innovatory on Old Street.

Over the last twelve months the business has gone from strength to strength. The SONAR system has been snapped up for use by the global defence and aerospace company Raytheon, as well as by the Foreign Office and Channel 4 Television. And in February Trampoline brought the Oracle UK Innovation Award back to Buttesland Street from a glitzy ceremony in Canary Wharf.

The company will be using the £3million investment to strengthen its sales activity, particularly in the United States, and to boost the company’s software development.

“It’s been an amazing experience coming from research on a remote island to being a successful technology start-up,” says chief executive Charles Armstrong. “The next stage of the journey is going to be even more exciting.”