Creative Mind Meets

While Aberdeen never assumes it can compete with the sheer volume of creative activities hosted in the central belt, it can boast a blossoming of networking opportunities for folk — professional or aspiring — with energies focused upon expressive fields of work. Creative Cultures originally started as a web portal for visual and performing arts, crafts, design, media and enterprise bodies, or individuals, to list contact data and promote upcoming schedules. Coordinator Phil Thompson, assisted by Cultural Enterprise's Jim Ewen, has now progressed the service into bi-monthly briefings around the city, with each free event providing major insight into business experiences, product development and company strategy from Scottish-rooted delegates. Last time, speakers' topics included intellectual property, artistic curation (see Project Slogan) and funding opportunities in experimental music (see FOUND).

Meanwhile, Open Knowledge Networks, a collaboration between Peacock Visual Arts and East Coast Interactive, have just hosted a second gathering "aiming to bring together New Media artists, musicians, filmmakers, designers, programmers and anybody else who works creatively with technology to share experience and exchange ideas". More specifically, and following on from the Creative Cultures mantra, the format showcases introductory tutorials to tech programs such as Ableton Live, Reason, Yahoo Pipes, MaxMSP, After Effects and Flash — all by working pros in a snappy fifteen to twenty minutes. Again, it’s free to attend, with a few beers part and parcel. There's even been a presentation by the local STV team on TV commercial production. Expect to hear designers and artists working with more traditional methods and means too. Running on a monthly basis, and from within the Peacock compound, the large cross-aged turnout at January's edition was testament to the need for a bigger arts base in Aberdeen and the north-east of Scotland. Watch this space.