What with fancy-dan London trend forecasters paying their own way up to We Love Technology, then declaring that Huddersfield is "the digital centre for the north of England", last night was as good a time as any to ask whether we are a creative* town.
What I enjoyed about the discussion was that it didn't really touch on the arts or the "creative industries" at all (they are blooming, so maybe Huddersfield is in the lucky position of not having to worry about that).
It was much more about how creativity can be part of the fabric of the town, and extend into its government.
And that is trickier, because the definition of creativity used for the evening was risk.
Risk is safe(ish) for artists. If the process doesn't feel dangerous in one way or another you are probably not doing it right, and everyone is always at risk of not being able to pay the rent.
And those risks are taken where they can't do the real world any harm.
But if you are a manager in, or a leader of, a local council, risk is what you are meant to minimise to nothing.
Which is why the bureaucrat who cut down his city's byelaws from twelve volumes to one paperback was only able to take the chance because "I'm sixty two. I retire in three years. No one is going to sack me."
And why I thought Charles Landry's Creative Bureaucracy movement was a lot more exciting an idea than Paul Chatterton's Latin tinged eco Marxism. That rhetoric seemed to stir a few hearts, but for me it's still too associated with the kind of wallowing failure that allowed towns and cities similar to Huddersfield to be devastated in the first place. Let's say I enjoyed his political to-do lists more than his speechifying.
So that was the challenge of the night. How can the arts and creative industries help the people who govern Huddersfield to take more risks?
That's a decent challenge.
*everyone was suitably wary of that word
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