Nottingham's hidden creative heritage

A few weeks back I blogged about the potential for a serious creative quarter in Nottingham, dwelling on remarks made by venture consultant and commentator Lucy Marcus, who suggested this wasn’t something that state intervention could manufacture.
In short, her point was that a creative quarter would happen only if the creative industries in Nottingham had enough momentum to make it happen - money can help, but it can't invent it.
In view of the fact that Nottingham City Council wants to use part of its £60 million City Deal to develop a creative quarter, this is an important question.
Nottingham's creatives are certainly trying to deliver an emphatic answer. And it may be that there’s more of a heritage of creative and technical achievement in the city that conventional analysis suggests.
Outside the realms of industrial classification, most people will tend to see the creative industries as either something artistic, perhaps wandering into fields of design, or 'tech’ – which is stuff like computer programing, isn’t it?
That’s not wrong. But it doesn’t come close to doing justice to the breadth and depth of creative, technical, research and scientific activity which takes place in the city right now.
Or, more importantly, of acknowledging how long it’s been happening for and understanding where its strength really lies.
In design terms, our creative heritage is epitomised by Sir Paul Smith. And this was, once, an international centre for the textile trade. Through Nottingham Trent, it still produces graduate talent in this field. It's a tough game to make money in, though.
Nottingham’s right to a place at the top table in life sciences and pharmaceutical discovery is well-established, based on the discovery work that used to be done by the likes of Boots (Ibuprofen was discovered here) and the research carried out by the University of Nottingham in particular.
But something else has happened since then that might not be as well recognised. Thanks to the emergence and growth of businesses like Experian and the arrival of the bank Capital One, we now have the best part of a 20-year track record in a field known as data analytics.
This is the story of Experian, founded here and now a global leader in the fields of forecasting and analysis around consumer and business financial behavior. Its multi-faceted demographic tool, Mosaic, is almost a map of the way we live now.
It's the story, too, of Capital One, the US bank which set up its European headquarters in Nottingham. It is very much a can-do corporate, all the way from being a regular in the great places to work charts through to giving its own analysts time to indulge new ideas.
The end result of their presence can be seen and felt in three areas: in other financial services businesses, like Ikano, tapping into a talent pool; in start-ups like HD Decisions, launched by people who found their feet in the two biggies; and in knowledge graduates - people whose degrees deliver skills suitable for programing, analysis and software tools and apps - deciding to stay in Nottingham.
Along with the existing science research, these firms have become another reason for specialist legal and accounting expertise to maintain a presence here.
I was chatting last week to Mark Onyett, the engineer and ex-Capital One exec who co-founded the credit and risk software and services firm TDX (on course to be the city's next £100 million business).
Onyett's journey and his entrepreneurial outlook put him in a strong place to understand the kind of message the city needs to be giving out to the students, start-ups, businesses and backers who might drive the creative and tech sector here.
Again, this is a knotty issue. Identifying a distinctive message won't be easy in a world where local authorities everywhere are fixating on their own mini-me of Shoreditch and Silicon Roundabout. But Onyett thinks we're more plausible than most.
"I'm not sure I'd go for Maid Marian Roundabout!" he says. "It's got to be about the future. How about something like 'For the next generation, come to Nottingham'?"
Next generations don't just appear and you can't invent them, even with a wodge of money. They evolve from what's already been happening.
And that's the point about Nottingham: creative and tech has been happening here for longer than we think. Only now are we beginning to realise what we've got.

Same old survey, same old problem

Nottingham's status as a retail destination faces some significant challenges.
But yet another survey from the Local Data Company claiming a third of shops are empty isn't one of them.
To repeat, LDC's assessment of the shop vacancy rate has always run ahead of trading reality because it uses a one-size-fits-all counting method.
It's version of Nottingham's retail core is that provided by a Government map. Very convenient for a survey which wants to say it applies the same standard everywhere, but also risky: for Nottingham, the boundaries are out of date and reflect neither the reality nor the dynamism of a trade like retail.
LDC includes streets distant from the centre which long ago ceased to be viable retail locations. Some of the 'empty' units it counts aren't even being actively marketed by their owners.
Those owners include retail giants like CSC, which isn't even pushing some of the empty sections of Broadmarsh because they await redevelopment.
Surveys by the property consultancy FHP and Nottingham City Council suggest the actual vacancy rate may be somewhere between 12 and 17 per cent.
That more shops are empty in a prolonged downturn isn't a Nottingham issue. It's a national issue brought on by the fact that there was too much retail space during the boom.
Retail is not only finding it's level, it's changing because of the impact of online shopping.
This doesn't mean Nottingham doesn't face some significant challenges as a retail and leisure destination. It has to get the future of its two shopping malls sorted, it needs retailers like Apple and Hollister sooner rather than later, it needs a compelling tourist destination to enhance its appeal as a place to come and spend a day.
LDC's survey is almost certain to keep heading in one direction.
But it may not be the same direction as retail reality in Nottingham.