Bikenomics & Manchester

Here's a presentation I gave a few weeks back at the launch of Love Your Bike's manifesto for cycling in Greater Manchester. As ever, the subject of Middle Aged Men in Lycra (MAMILs) was covered...

Cycling manifesto

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Solar spill

Love this - Pattison Outdoor has denied Greenpeace Canada the space on one of its billboards in downtown Edmonton – and handed them a stonking PR opportunity.

Where's Manchester up to on climate change?

I've just been pulling together a presentation on climate change action across Manchester as part of my job as chair of the city's climate change steering group. All suggestions for other projects very welcome!

Stateofthe city2012

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The ten keys to responsible communication

At Creative Concern we've been busy setting up a European network of like-minded agencies called 'Do Not Smile'; we've got good friends and colleagues now in Paris, Bonn and Brussels and we're actively scoping out more creative agencies with a penchant for sustainability so that we can swell our ranks even further.

As well as sharing ideas and insights, the network means we can collaboratively pitch for international accounts knowing that we have the reach needed to work alongside the bigger multinational agencies.

Anyway - to the point of this posting. I wanted to share one of the many useful nuggets of learning that I've gleaned from our continental friends: the notion of responsible communications. Established by a book of the same name and by a set of guidelines adopted by the French Advertisers Association, responsible communications is all about honesty, transparency and an end to 'greenwashing' particularly on the part of larger, more polluting corporations.

There are ten keys to the concept, scribble them down and apply them next time you're planning a campaign:

1. Make sure that the represented behaviour is responsible and ethical.
2. Use an appropriate register and do not exaggerate.
3. Be honest.
4. Use arguments that are placed in contact and reflect reality.
5. Use vocabulary that is clear, precise and easy to understand.
6. Provide sufficient, transparent and easy-to-access information.
7. Make sure that what you say is based on reliable, verifiable data.
8. Use creative/design elements that have a direct, logical connection with the reality being discussed.
9. Follow the riles of rising logos, acronyms, symbols, trademarks and labels.
10. Involve service providers such as agencies, copywriters and photographers.

So there you have it... ten steps to more ethical, responsible communications.

The eleventh step? Well you could always join our network.

(With thanks to Gildas and the comrades at Sidiese.)

fab // graphene

Am more than a little obsessed about the opportunities offered by graphene and Manchester's very own Nobel prize laureates. Now it looks like they may be the anchor of a global R&D hub which I suspect will also be dead important for Manchester's low carbon stuff. Anyway here's the story:

£50m boost for University of Manchester's Nobel prize-winning work on 'wonder material' graphene | Manchester Evening News - menmedia.co.uk

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET

Greater Manchester signs off 48% carbon target

Imagine that - kicking off a blog posting with a headline that references percentages, targets and an admin process for signing off a strategy; stay awake at the back there!

It's pretty fundamental this one; Britain's second city (Greater Manchester to you and I) has signed off a climate change strategy that sets a pretty ambitious target of 48% carbon reductions by 2020 against a baseline level of 1990.

It doesn't stop there. The strategy covers all the bases, including mitigation, adaptation, green jobs and the need for a cultural shift (low carbon hegemony anyone?). The other cheeky bit lurking under the tarpaulin is an emerging measure for the thrillingly entitled 'Scope 3' emissions. To anyone who doesn't doze off at night with a copy of 'advanced carbon footprinting' clutched to their bosom, these are the emissions that we usually try and ignore: the stuff we buy, the flights we take, the food we eat.

Here's the first glimpse of our 'consumption-based' carbon footprint

The strategy as presented to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority can be downloaded from here. It's still in a stripped down, word-processed, no-frills format, but is well worth having a gander at. The headlines, in essence, are:

 - A rapid transition to a low carbon economy

 - Collective carbon emissions reduced by 48%

 - Be prepared for and actively adapting to a rapidly changing climate

 - ‘Carbon literacy’ will have become embedded into the culture of organisations, lifestyles and behaviours

There's some progress already, with a number of low carbon buildings, a domestic retrofit programme, emerging heat network plans, a green deal project and the introduction of an electric car charging scheme already well underway, but it's only the start.

The other issue for me is that it is a solid step towards getting all ten Greater Manchester authorities onto the same track on climate change. I chair the steering group for Manchester's own plan - 'A Certain Future' - and I know that we could achieve so much more if we all worked together, better, to cut carbon and adapt for the changes that lie ahead.

Headlands to headspace

Earlier this year we (Creative Concern) were lucky enough to work with the Morecambe Bay Partnership and our good friend and collaborator James Rebanks on the Partnership's Heritage Lottery Fund bid 'Headlands to Headspace'. Today it's been officially announced that they've won the bid and have been allocated £2 million through the Landscape Partnership programme.

The aim of the scheme is to help local people come together and maximise the opportunity offered by the inspiring views, landscape features, heritage and wildlife of the Bay. This will include projects to celebrate the Bay's unique cultural heritage and stunning landscapes, restore and reconnect wildlife habitats, protect the tidal islands, develop the railway stations as hubs to access key sites and support support education projects and oral history looking at the traditions of fishing in the Bay.

It's this last bit - the area's social history - that unearthed a real gem for me, an old bit of documentary footage of shrimpers roaring across the Bay in the 1930s, their carts (and horses) at some points almost completely engulfed by the sea; amazing.

Morecambe Bay is rich in heritage of this sort, but it's got a slightly left field side to it too. There's something about the patterns of the sand, the windswept trees, the slightly unexpected art projects and the toppled, incongruous gun emplacements that makes the whole package totally distinctive. The best bet is to get up there and check it out for yourself, starting with a cocktail in the Midland Hotel would be a good idea.

Humphrey Head by Jon Sparks

Finally, the Headlands to Headspace project wouldn't have come off unless it had been steered by the awesome force of nature that is the Partnership's co-ordinator, Susannah Bleakley, or if it hadn't been given a glorious shove by the likes of the Mersey Basin Campaign, Regional Parks Exchange and the Northwest Regional Development Agency.

It's projects like this that should remind us that when it comes to big, connected and beautiful landscapes, regions work; someone might like to mention this to Mr Pickles.

Vertical farming in Manchester

I've just emerged from chairing the sold-out Vertical Farm event at Manchester International Festival. We officially unveiled the 'Alpha Farm' project which will seek to transform a disused office block in Wythenshawe into a fully-functioning vertical farm.

Supremely exciting and there are loads more details on our Alpha Farm blog.

The star turn today though, was the amazing and inspiring Dr. Dickson Despommier, the godfather of Vertical Farming and the author of a seminal tome on the very subject. He was brilliant - and braved a very windy and rainy Manchester to be with us from NYC.

Here's his presentation which will give you a little glimpse into what you missed if you couldn't make it:

Mcr_Despommier

And we've made a little film about the whole Alpha Farm thing:

The future of everything...

Have promised our good chums at FutureEverything that I'd post up what they've got planned this year onto the blog. Alongside our vertical farm plans with Manchester International Festival, and the opening of the Brockholes 'unreserved reserve', this is the 'other' high point of the year.

FutureEverything, 11 – 14th May 2011

Arriving in Manchester in May for its sixteenth year, FutureEverything transforms 4 Piccadilly Place into its Conference venue and Art Hub. Meanwhile Umbro Design Studio in the Northern Quarter becomes the ‘living lab’, mixing up live music DJs, workshops and music events across the city, from concert halls to backstreet gems.

Conference

The FutureEverything conference leads our Ideas strand, where visionary speakers explore the interface between technology, society and culture. The FutureEverything Conference continues to bring you the latest debate and visionary ideas around New Mobilities, Open Data and Emotional Computing, brought to you by forward thinkers such as Meg Pickard, Bill Thompson, Kars Alfrink and Sue Thomas. With over 30 events across the city, Showcase is the place to discover the sounds and stars of tomorrow, with emerging talent from across the city and beyond.

Music

The music strand profiles musical pioneers and ground-breaking talent. Acts confirmed to play the festival include Steve Reich, Rob da Bank, Beach House, Warpaint, 65daysofstatic, Gang Gang Dance, Black Heart Procession, Das Racist, The Radio Dept., Star Slinger, Dark Dark Dark plus many more.

Arts


The art programme features world premieres and urban interventions, including new work by Me and The Machine.

Main exhibition 

The Data Dimension, features artists exploring the flourishing field of data visualisation. Manchester citizens are invited to participate in the OurCity mass participate experiment by Adam Nieman. And the most inspirational digital innovations are celebrated in the FutureEverything Award 2011.


For more information click here.

Yuri Gagarin in Manchester

It’s fifty years since a plucky and rather diminutive Yuri Gagarin shot into space, cooped up in a contraption with the computing power of your average remote control, and what I really love is the fact that during his victory tour, he made a major splash in Manchester, only his second stop outside the Soviet Bloc, following the flight into space.

The stop-off had a lot to do with the fact that Yuri was a former foundry worker, and so the Amalgamated Union of Foundry Workers in Manchester decided to invite the now world-famous cosmonaut to come and visit Manchester in July 1951.

As he emerged from his RAF plane at Ringway Airport, it was raining (I know, I know) and he apparently asked for the car’s top to be rolled down, saying: “If all those people are getting wet to welcome me, surely the least I can do is get wet too!”

He was pretty much mobbed on his arrival by a crowd that included the then ‘Mayor of Stretford’. He then drove through Moss Side to the Union’s HQ, where his car was reported showered with ‘red roses, poppies and carnations’ and, this is my favourite bit, was presented with a specially designed medal that to my eye could have been the early work of Comrade Saville, if he’d been around at the time. It included the slogan ‘Together Moulding a Better World'.

He also stopped at Metros works in Trafford Park and was lunched by the great and the good at Manchester Town Hall, where he met Sir Bernard Lovell, who said: “He will become one of the historic figures in civilisation because he is the first man to live in a new environment. There are lots of things I would like to ask him, but probably he would not answer them.”

There are two pieces of press copy surrounding the visit that I like. First of all the Manchester Evening News which wrote how ‘Major Gagarin is above the tedious enmities of politics. His was a human achievement; a victory for man's spirit and courage’, but there was an even lovelier line in Pravda, which makes me a little weepy: 'Manchester's toiling masses accorded Major Gagarin a reception unsurpassed in its cordiality. Never over the past many tens of years has Manchester met anybody with such an embrace’.

Manchester's Vertical Farm

Goodness me it's been hard keeping this one quiet. We've been very, very lucky at Creative Concern HQ to be working with the Manchester International Festival on a proposed vertical farm, right here in Manchester, housed within a transformed office block.

We've worked on the feasibility with sustainable food expert Debbie Ellen, Capital Relations and, naturally, our brilliant friends at Urbed.

More details eventually... but for now, here's Urbed's visual schematic as a 'taster' and I suggest you all book your tickets for the awesome Dickson Despommier!

iManc*

NOTE: email digitalmap@marketingmanchester.com if you think you should be on our next map of Online Manchester!
__

There’s an urban myth about Manchester and computers that I am utterly beguiled by.

It goes like this.

Alan Turing, University of Manchester academic, father of modern computing and closet homosexual took his own life in 1954.

The myth has it that the cyanide he used was in an apple, which was then left, with a bite taken out of it, on the stand next to his death bed.

Fast forward to the late 70s and Steves Jobs and Wozniac are busy in a garage, building what will become the Apple computer. They need a logo for the company. After an early flirtation with an Isaac Newton cartoon they go for an apple, with a bite taken out of it.

And there you have it. Apple’s homage to Turing as they half-knowingly created a leading global brand of the future, complete with a hardline back to the original modern city of Manchester.

None of which is true of course, but as memetic messages go, it’s one that spreads the second you tell it. It’s irresistible, I hereby dare you not to mention it to someone.

I like to think it is true, in fact I insist it is, as I love to see my favoured brands united in some way. Manchester plus Apple is a kind of dream combo for me; if I could see brand collisions of Monocle Magazine and Paul’s Tofu, or maybe Bourgeois Boheme and Rapha, I’d be a very, very happy man.

But back to memetics.

How ‘stuff spreads’ is on my mind as I ponder the next phase of our work on Manchester’s digital map. Last year we researched, and then depicted on an interactive map, a cross-section of the websites and blogs that collectively make up our city’s online presence – our pixelated tendrils if you will.

We did the research, created the map, and now we’re asking an elite cadre of bloggers and tweet-happy social media types to comment on the notion of ‘online presence’ and more specifically, tell us and Marketing Manchester, our client, where the project should go next. 

It seemed the right way to go about it really. It means we want you, dear reader, to tell us what YOU think.

In the process we’d like to uncover some more things we didn’t know about Manchester online, generate some insights into how cities should approach their digital ‘brand’ experience, and maybe we’ll even see some more urban myths, spreading out through the ether, next up from me, the one about how Manchester invented dance music.

*As well as the title of this blog entry, this is also the slogan emblazoned on the best selling T-Shirt at Manchester Airport. You can buy one here.

Postscript: Makes you proud to be a BritGeek. In September of last year, following a frenzied campaign on the Internet, the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown  issued a public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turing was treated after the war.

Global effort needed to feed the world

What's missing from this statement from Nina Federoff, professor of biology at Penn State?

“We need to expand our ability to farm on land not considered farmable because it is eroded or desertified, using water not considered suitable for farming because it is wastewater or saltwater.”

Er... the fact that we should be using our existing land differently, and not squandering resources on meat and dairy? Argh! Anyway the rest of the article is worth a read.

Global effort needed to feed the world

Robo Rainbow

This is lovely... a man, a bike and some very clever spray cans.

robo-rainbow from mudlevel on Vimeo.