Creative Lewisham

So today we took our precious baby ideas out into the real world and shared them with someone else.

We had a meeting with Andrew Carmichael, of Creative Lewisham, at the Old Laban Centre in Laurie Grove. Since 2001, the Creative Lewisham Agency has, in their own words, "sought to develop, in any way appropriate, the scale and level of activity of the creative sector in Lewisham." Lewisham Council itself recognises the value of the 'creative sector' of the borough, in urban development and culture. This can be no bad thing.

Having prepared a small booklet, with a brief introduction to us and to our philosophy, we turned up for the meeting expecting to be brought down to earth a little. Right now, it seems like we're thinking really astronomically - shooting for the stars, if you will - and it'll gradually narrow down to specific projects with specific people with specific outcomes. 

Andrew was able to point us in the direction of plenty of existing organisations in the area who we might find useful/be able to make ourselves useful to. The main points we took from the meeting, aside from all of these really useful contacts, were:

• We need to be clear about exactly what we're offering. If we go to an organisation such as Voluntary Action Lewisham, for example, and present ourselves and our variety of technical abilities, then we are much more likely to get a response taking us up on our offer. We should think of ourselves as a package; we are four designers willing to work for three months. That's about 500 hours at least, and at a modest rate that's about £5000 of design time, we're offering free of charge. 
• Expectation Management. If we were to collaborate with an existing organisation, we need to be clear at the outset about what it is we're going to provide. Similar to the first point really, but for example, if they think they're going to end up with a fully printed brochure, and what we provide is just the design for the brochure, they might feel we've not delivered what we promised. 
• It could be a good idea to approach existing not for profit organisations in the area (there are plenty of them!) and find aspects we can contribute to/improve. For example, there are plenty of organisations out there with really good messages, but those messages are not being communicated very well, because it's just not something they can afford.
• The Stephen Lawrence Centre would definitely be a good organisation to get in touch with regarding some kind of studio space.

Ultimately, today's meeting was a gentle dose of realism. 

But even if we left feeling a little deflated, we expected to be. And actually on reflection, there are a lot of really exciting opportunities out there for us to really make a difference with design.