On Tuesday 17 October Peter Saville’s Original Modern workshop took place at the Manchester Digital Development Agency’s offices on Portland Street. This workshop was aimed at people in the digital industries sector. The previous one was aimed at the creative industries.
Peter Saville was there to introduce the concept. The attendees included many familiar names in the area of New Media, digital industries and PR in Manchester.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, never having been to anything like this before. Would this turn out to be an outpouring of pretentious twaddle, like so many meetings, focus groups and training sessions I’ve been to in the past.
I’m glad to say it wasn’t.
After reading so much about Peter Saville’s Original Modern concept in the local media, in press releases, on internet forums and on the letters page of the Manchester Evening News, it was refreshing to hear the concept explained by the man himself.
He had already given quite a few workshops, was visibly tired and even paler and more wan than usual. He jokingly talked about how it was all starting to get rather tedious, but once he launched into the explanation, it all began to make very good sense.
Manchester in the 21st century, he said, needs to mark itself out from other cities. What can it claim to have as its unique characteristic. Not palm trees and sun soaked beaches. It’s not the capital city, and it’s not located at the hub or Europe, but in the north of England. What true claim can it honestly make for itself?
It all went back to the Industrial Revolution, he said. Manchester emerged from obscurity precisely because it was a powerhouse of industry, a place of technical innovation, the birthplace of the modern city.
Can Manchester call itself original, that’s to say a place of innovation and creativity? Yes it can. It’s modern in that it is a place focused on contemporary times, and the future, rather than a somewhere that lives on historical triumphs.
That’s where Original Modern came from. It’s a summing up of the key factors that made Manchester what it is.
Now the words are formulated, what to do with them? Go out and tell the world, using an expensive advertising campaign? Create a new branding for the city to be reproduced on everything from banners to council tax bills? Actually, no. There is a problem, he said, with branding. He should know, having created quite a few himself in the past. A city that has to brand itself must have problems. New York, Paris and London have no branding.
Instead of being a message addressed to the outside world, the concept of ‘original and modern’ should be a call to action directed at people living and workin in Manchester, especially those involved in the creative industries.
The future prosperity and success of Manchester lies in the hands of those people. If they try their best to live up to Manchester’s principles of originality and modernity, the things that made it great in the past, then that should help to secure the success of the city in the future.
Already Manchester has many exciting projects that can be described as ‘original’ and ‘modern’, though the world may not be aware of them. And that’s the second element of the plan, namely to make sure that these innovative and world-class projects are given full publicity, not by advertising but by skilful use of PR.
By getting the local, national and world press to write about them, the word will soon spread that Manchester is a happening place, a city that’s at the cutting edge of many disciplines and technologies, a knowledge capital and a centre of creativity.
The question of so-called exemplars came up in previous press releases, and I have to admit to being a bit non-plussed by the term when I heard it first mentioned.
But it all came clear when Peter explained what an exemplar is. It’s, simply put, an example, or an outstandingly good example of good practice – actually Peter used a rather stronger word than ‘outstandingly’!
In the session we looked at some exemplars from the digital sector. These included Eastserve, the innovative and groundbreaking scheme to wire up communities in East Manchester, also the Mapchester project, as well as the state of the art centre for new businesses, Central Park off Oldham Road.
Two further organisations marked out as ‘exemplars’ are Manchester Digital and the Manchester Digital Development Agency, which incidentally are two separate though interrelated organisations.
There are many ways, he said, in which Manchester was quite obviously NOT being original and modern. I mentioned public transport, though because it’s outside the digital sector, I wasn’t able to rant on about it to the extent I would have liked.
At the end we had a much clearer idea of the original modern concept and what is expected of us.
And that was it. The workshop was in my opinion, a success. It was also a good networking opportunity and there was plenty of food and drink. The facilities, and refreshments were provided by the Manchester Digital Development Agency.
I chatted to Peter Saville afterwards. As part of his brief, he now visits Manchester on a regular basis. London is getting more and more difficult as a place to work due to rent and business expenses, transport and many other reasons – That’s an opportunity where Manchester has something to offer, he said.
In the opinion of EOM, the success of the Original Modern campaign will depend on the quality of the events used to expiain and promote it. I’ll be following the roll out of the concept over the coming weeks and months. Keep visiting Eye On Manchester for updates and photos.
