BOP is continuing its recent expansion – we are now looking for an economist/consultant to join us. A full description of the job can be found here, while the equal opportunities form we ask you to fill in is here.
BOP is recruiting an economist/consultant
17 May 2013
Helping to shape the cultural education agenda in London
16 May 2013
In this post Callum Lee reflects on the way BOP is working with our client, A New Direction, to bring some continuity to the cultural education policy debate in London.
Do creative businesses foster innovation in the wider economy?
15 May 2013
It is often assumed by writers (and consultants) on creative industries that creative firms foster wider business innovation, especially in the cities in which they cluster. Yet there is relatively little empirical evidence for this belief. In a new working paper for Nesta, Neil Lee of the Work Foundation (brother of BOP’s Callum Lee) and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose of the LSE have sought to explore the question in more depth. Their findings are intriguing. They suggest that it is people working in creative occupations more than creative businesses that drive innovation. Among their conclusions:
A more 'holistic' approach to valuing culture?
13 May 2013
Dr Claire Donovan, who was the AHRC Placement Fellow at the DCMS in 2012, has just published a paper summarising her year’s work. The fellowship was part of the Measuring Cultural Value programme, and followed on from the Phase 1 fellowship held by Dave O’Brien.
Arts Council puts the case for the economic contribution of the arts and culture
10 May 2013
Earlier this week Arts Council England published a report it has commissioned from the business consultants, CEBR, looking at the economic contribution of the arts and culture to the national economy. [We should say at this point that BOP bid for this contract.]
Heritage and culture at centre of Britain's new tourism strategy
07 May 2013
The Government recently launched a new tourism strategy. Entitled Delivering a Golden Legacy, it aims to build on the success of the Olympics by increasing the annual number of international visitors to the UK to 40 million by 2020. Heritage and culture are seen as central to this: on VisitBritain’s website the first goal of the strategy is summarised as:
Round-up of reaction to Maria Miller's arts speech
03 May 2013
Last week Maria Miller, the Secretary of State for Culture, gave her first major speech on the arts, in which she called on the sector to make its case for support in economic terms, as that would be more likely to persuade the Treasury. She declared:
BOP is looking to recruit a Finance and Administration Officer
30 April 2013
As part of our continuing expansion, BOP is looking to recruit a Finance and Administration Officer to help us deal with our ever-growing paperwork. We are seeking a part-qualified accountant (ideally studying for CIMA qualifications) with at least three years professional experience in a finance/accounting role and/or as an administrator. Here is a fuller job description, including details of how to apply, and an equal opportunities form that we would also like you to fill in.
A report from Cr8net: a sector trying to reinvent itself
29 April 2013
Last week’s Cr8net conference found the creative sector in a state of flux. With a less starry line-up of speakers than in previous years (Richard Florida and Natasha Kaplinsky in 2010, Deborah Bull and Ekow Eshun in 2011) and a ‘grittier’ venue – Village Underground in Shoreditch rather than the Royal Institution – the prevailing mood seemed to be re-invention. From the hosts CIDA, who having seen cuts to their public funding are now focusing more on event organising, to the Guardian, which with its Culture Professionals network is trying to find new ways to offer value to its readers, to the British Library emphasising its offer to businesses, the sense was that the ground has permanently shifted beneath the sector’s feet, and that new responses need to be found. Yet the mood of the conference was not as pessimistic as some recent, more arts-focused, conferences have been.
BOP's impact assessment of AV Festival 2012 published
26 April 2013
The AV Festival is a biennial celebration of contemporary art, film and music held across the North East of England. Last year BOP was asked to estimate the economic impact of the 2012 edition of the festival (we did the 2010 evaluation too). We completed the work last summer, but failed to spot that AV had posted the report on its website in November. Anyway, in the spirit of Maria Miller’s plea for the cultural sector to produce more evidence of its economic value, here are our findings. AV Festival 12 has: