Creative Cape Town held a successful Creative CT Clusters on 8 September at the City Hall. Creative Cape Town Clusters is an information sharing and networking programme in which three inspiring creatives are given the space to talk about their projects. The talks are archived on You Tube. Networking follows spurred on by the great Woolies food provided by one of the events sponsor. By introducing people to each other and to people in the city with inspiring stories of successes, Creative Cape Town hopes to stimulate a more dynamic environment in “town”. There
have been five Creative Clusters to date – one of which was a bumper session of 12 speakers.
This clusters was a very special one since Creative Cape Town Annual in partnership with Bell-Roberts Publishing; the Explore Creative Cape Town map published by A&C Maps (with designs by Design Infestation); and the new Creative Cape Town website designed by Beanbag Media were all be made public. These products have been made possible with the support of Cape Town Tourism and the Central City Improvement District. The products establish the key communication channels of Creative Cape Town into the future and add to existing channels like its monthly Creative Cape Town newsletter, the busy Facebook Fan page and a growing selections on videos on our .
These products are a response to an extensive research during which Creative Cape Town assessed that there were 1000 entities in the central city in the Creative and Knowledge economy, with around 18 000 people active in the city and 35 regular significant events. It also discovered that the sector was quite hardy with more than 85% of the entities being active for more than 3 years and almost 50% of them being micro enterprises. The research discovered that much more was needed to be done for marketing cultural tourism in the city; and that Design was a key area of support for its strategic connection with creativity and innovation and therefore for economic growth.
The Creative Cape Town Annual provides a summary of the report and some of the recommendations in a creative format. The Explore Creative Cape Town map is a perfect vehicle for promoting cultural venues and sites in the central city – ideal for locals and tourists alike. The Creative Cape Town map has a number of google maps that document most of the 1 000 creative entities in the central city.
As always there were three dynamic speakers at the Clusters. For this Clusters, each of the speakers had some connection with the new products. Michelle Matthews who edited the Annual and wrote for the new website spoke on words and creativity showing some vibrant ways in which publishing is taking place through cell phones while Jason Bagley who designed the new Creative Cape Town website gave a hilarious talk on the power of social networking and brand building. Phillip Todras of A&C maps and Christo Maritz of Design Infestation spoke on Cape Town, maps and design, presenting a range of maps they have created from arts and crafts, design, food, green issues, and even a map on Charles Darwin’s
visit to Cape Town.
Great enjoyment was had by the more than 150 people who attended the event. Watch the video to see a glimpse of the event.
