By Camilla Zajac
“There’s not much going on in Nottingham.” Strangely, this is actually something I hear every once in a while. It’s as mistaken a view as the suggestion in the national press that nothing of any artistic or cultural interest occurs outside London.
Look around Nottingham and there are unique and interesting events happening in visual art, gaming, dance, music…etc etc. Nottingham is the setting for events and activities that range from the surreal to the sublime (I still have flashbacks of a man in a lion suit dancing to Britney Spears’ Toxic…). This new blog has grown directly from a desire to highlight that and to bring it all together. Right now there are plenty of separate channels out there to communicate what’s happening – dedicated websites, listings sites, one off flyers, quirky DIY pamphlets – and more.
This isn’t about reinventing the wheel, but linking all the cogs together. It’s about having a first place to share and to find out about initiatives and projects. With information being the first step on the road to discovery, this blog aims to make it a smoother and potentially more interesting journey. We know there are all kinds of projects developing out there. So tell us how you think this new blog could help highlight yours. What do you want from a new blog for Nottingham’s creative communities?
What I want, for what that’s worth:
I want you to not worry about being THE hub that links everything together. One of them, maybe, but there are already others trying to cover that beat in different ways and different directions – LeftLion, Nottingham Visual Arts, EG for that matter, and so on. I’ve no doubt there’s things you can do which none of them can, and you can also draw your scope as widely as you like, which some of them can’t. That said, it’s better (and treads on fewer toes) to concentrate on being a cog yourself – a big one near the middle hopefully – than taking responsibility for being the thing which links all the other cogs (which are already pretty well geared up with each other and spinning nicely) together.
What I want from a Notts creative community blog is a quixotic devotion to total coverage, a team of bloggers with distinct and recognisable styles, obsessed with knowing everything that’s going on, going to see all of it, and writing about it as soon as it happens (while it happens, even, if that’s appropriate). I’d like massively subjective writing with little to no snark, and a gossip’s curiosity and eye for detail without any navel-gazing scene watching.
But what do I know? Whatever you want to be, I wish you luck, and hope this site becomes the first address I look for in my feed reader.
Break a leg,
Nathan
Hatch
Comment by Nathaniel J Miller — July 27, 2009 @ 9:43 pm
Hi Nathan,
Great to hear your thoughts. Thank you. I think I can safely say we are obsessed with what’s going on and with making this blog something that genuinely reflects all the good stuff that’s going on out there. Keep in touch.
Cheers,
Camilla
Comment by Camilla Zajac — July 31, 2009 @ 8:31 pm