Jeni Oliver - The Place of Creativity
Jeni Oliver is the Creative Industries Development Manager for Highlands and Islands Enterprise in Scotland. Jeni nurtures and supports businesses from hand crafters to games developers and connects them with the world.
She spoke to MTF Director Andrew Dubber at XPONorth in Inverness about the importance of place in the creative sector and in innovation - as well as why these sorts of creative businesses are now at the forefront of innovation for all of industry.
AI Transcription
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
creative industries, stories, region, creative, people, jeni, sits, expo, scotland, north, industry, film, businesses, innovation, distilleries, shetland, highlands, realise, happen, gin
SPEAKERS
Jeni Oliver, Andrew Dubber
Andrew Dubber
Hi, I’m Dubber. I’m the director of Music Tech Fest. And this is the MTF podcast. And I want to talk about place for a bit. One of the things we’ve found running MTF events around the world is that despite globalisation, connectivity and shared mass culture and the digital age, the uniqueness of place is still incredibly important, perhaps more so than ever. Innovation is not simply in response to technology. But it’s informed by tradition, by environment and by culture, got handcrafts and cottage industries, musical and other creative outputs that speak the language of the location, as much as they speak the language of internationally shared stylistic vocabularies and idioms. And so I really wanted to deep dive into this with someone whose job it is to identify, nurture and champion, digital and creative innovation from within a very specific geographic, cultural and economic context, in this case, that of the Highlands and Islands region of Scotland. Jeni Oliver is the creative industries Development Manager for that region. And I met her at Expo north, a creative industries conference, showcase and festival that celebrates local creative business and connects it to the world. And I was really curious as to what it meant to professionally create something that’s potentially both as universal and as culturally specific as music, film narrative crafts, textiles, games, internet startups, distilleries, innovation, and r&d businesses, Jeni as someone who has a vision for the creative and cultural sector, as the front line in all of industry innovation, and I have to confess to both a connection and an affinity to Scotland. My father was born there. And I also spent some years as a whiskey writer. So I spent a lot of time travelling around and visiting some incredibly scenic places, sharing a drink or two with some brilliantly creative and innovative people who are working with the latest scientific equipment and technologies, while being completely steeped in tradition. And as Jeni says, if you’re from there, whether you like to drink or not, whiskey is in the DNA, not the alcohol, but the stories. So I spoke to Jeni Oliver about how other sorts of businesses, big industries, manufacturing, agriculture, automotive telecommunication, how they can work with the creative industries can benefit from their agility and innovation, and what it means to do that locally. In an age of incredible connectivity. This is Jeni Oliver, Development Manager for Creative Industries for Highlands and Islands region. What does that job entail?
Jeni Oliver
Goodness, No two days are the same in that job actually. I work with musicians, I will work with jewellers and other craft makers, I will work with filmmakers, TV makers, writers, publishers, so and all of the questions very pretty much all of the time.
Andrew Dubber
Tell me about the region. Okay.
Jeni Oliver
The region runs from the very southwest of Scotland right the way through to the far far north, so right up covering Orkney and Shetland,
Andrew Dubber
okay, and and what characterises it as a region? What makes it different in this geography?
Jeni Oliver
I think what really characterises This region is the various stories that sit within it. And that really strong sense of place that seems to be coming through at the moment is there’s a confidence in people’s own personal region and their personal stories that sit within
Andrew Dubber
that, how does that sort of come out?
Jeni Oliver
Well, I think because I have the privilege of travelling through the different regions and sort of seeing them on a fairly regular basis. It’s not, I’m there for a period of time. I’m there for a few days, and then I’m in another part for a few days. And what I’ve noticed, because I’ve also been doing this type of work for about 20 years, I’ve seen this flow in this change in the region, where you know, the voices and the stories that are coming from Shetland are very much their own. They’re unique, they’re identifiable as their own. I’m a huge fan girl of the types of thing that Shetland wool week have done and how that they have developed that into this global story that they tell and this global vision that they have. Then there’s Orkney, Orkney is just going through this massive Renaissance with food and drink, tourism, with their creativity as well. But everything seems to be almost flowing together. So that whole community has this unique identity that sits within origami. You then come down and through Caithness and you can’t talk about Caithness and Sutherland without talking about the north coast. 500 Sean’s film that he has brought out this week has been fascinating. It’s just a joy to watch that and how he has captured that landscape so beautifully. Then we move over if we travel over to the west coast, and then over to the Western Isles. You can’t talk about Lewis and Harris. You without Talking about how to tweet and those hundreds of years of heritage and culture, and social infrastructure. That’s all tied into that. There is this confidence though that’s coming through where you have beautiful, beautiful artisan products, bottles of gin, or now bottles of artwork. They are amazing. There is whiskey that’s coming through in that region, brand new distilleries establishing in the Western Isles. And that you see just there’s a flow through this country at the moment, and by that I mean the country side rather than the whole nation. But the you almost feel that there is a sense of confidence, a sense of well being that’s coming through and what people are actually trying to achieve
Andrew Dubber
it because it doesn’t feel like this. I mean, there are obviously cities, but it doesn’t feel like an urban region, it feels very much about countryside, about tradition about people making things themselves and that kind of creativity, would that be a fair characterization? It’s not sort of about big cities. It’s more about, you know, I guess, cottage industry that we fear,
Jeni Oliver
I think the cottage industry is almost a little bit of a veil that sits over what’s going on actually behind that there’s, you know, people that the absolute top of their game at the top of their field internationally, and they’re operating out of this region. So if you were to sort of stand and look around you, you wouldn’t realise that there are major multinationals operating in the space. And I think, you know, this, the fact that we have this digital infrastructure that’s been put in place over the last few years, as well, as really made that possible, people are thinking, and it comes back to what I’m saying, but people thinking differently, and that is confidence that’s coming through in the region, people are realising they can do anything they want from this region of Scotland. They can operate as they want. Your office does not need to be in an urbanised centre. You can go there for meetings, but then you can come home at night.
Andrew Dubber
Absolutely. The digital infrastructure thing is interesting, because it feels like the creative sector sits on the cusp between innovation and particularly digital innovation and very, very old tradition. And and I wonder if those things work well together, if there’s a tension between those things, how’s that playing out locally?
Jeni Oliver
I think that there have been tensions in the past where people have tried to segregate. So where you have seen, technology and advancement being so those businesses have to be a certain style or certain type. It’s almost like stereotyping individuals. And that, whereas, and I’m biassed in this, the Creative Industries has always been innovating. And you know, it’s always been evolving, it’s always been adapting on almost a daily basis to meet the needs of its particular customer base, or to fit within a fluid infrastructure. And what we’re now seeing, I think, is innovation and r&d style businesses catching up with that way of working. So we’re now seeing that integration into that space. I think that the creative industries is very adaptive, I am a real believer that the creative industries is the front end for success for any product or service that any other sectors going to deliver. You know, these are the people that are professional, and how they use the words and how they frame up a vision. They are the professionals that do that. So anybody that’s operating in the service industries, anybody that’s operating in the development of product, how do you actually get somebody to choose your product over any other. And that’s all wrapped up in the creative industries in the story that you wrap around, whatever it is that you’re trying to take to market?
Andrew Dubber
Where’s a good place to start? I mean, not just in terms of all you should employ a copywriter, he should employ a video a videographer. But But how can like other industries, you know, big industrial sectors start to work with creative industries in a way that is kind of more integrated.
Jeni Oliver
And I think that other industries, we’re starting to see a little bit of a creep here at Expo north, and that we’re seeing more and more industries come into this space. It’s only been I’d say in the last two years that we have seen hotels, we have seen visitor attractions coming into the creative industry space because they are at capacity within their own understanding of how they engage with customers. And they’re thinking, Well, how do we reframe our thinking in this? And so the creative industries, maybe even this, think about the creative industries will work with anybody that they’re dead easy to find. They’re dead easy to engage with and talk to. The creative industry is really poor at selling itself is great at selling everybody else but it’s really poor at selling itself because the focus is always on where is the story? How do I drive that forward? And they don’t realise that their own story can be that compelling. But I think for me engaging with other sectors, what we’re finding is that if you were to look at a visitor destination, particularly one in the north of Scotland, you know, I liken that to the superfan within the music industry, who goes out and spends two 300 pounds on a vinyl record, it happens. But not everybody’s gonna do that. And it’s a bit like how many people are going to spend three 402,000 pounds, travelling to the far north of Scotland to go and see a visitor destination, maybe something that’s entwined with their past and their personal history, it may be somewhere that they’re just completely inspired, that they have to go and visit. And we do get our superfans come here. But we can’t expect them to come in their millions. We can’t accommodate them. But we can take those stories out to the world, we can take those narratives, and we can take those visuals out to the world and share that with them. And I think that’s where the creative end, that’s where people realise the creative industries is really good at making that happen.
Andrew Dubber
Fantastic. Now, you said we’re at Expo north, what’s Expo north,
Jeni Oliver
Expo north is a creative industries conference, this is me and my comfort zone there. And the conference evolved, it’s been going for around about 15 years in one way or another. Previously, it was known as go north, it was a music industry event. And the purpose of that was to showcase music talent from this region, and get it out into the market into the international markets find new routes to market. And slowly over time that has evolved. And in the last, I’d say seven years or so we’ve been slowly moving to this convergence point within the creative industries. Where we have our music is absolutely still there. But we have craft fashion and textiles, we have screen and I mean everything from small phone screen through to cinema screen games within that screen mix. And we also have writing and publishing that sits within that portfolio. Design is another element that we’re always keeping an itu because design is all part of that creative experience. I would absolutely fundamentally believe though that we have content at our core. And then it’s finding that commercialization platform for that content and finding that way to engage with your audience. That’s what Expo north is about, which is a really vague answer. But if we contain it, we contain the creativity and it then stifles the direction of travel for the future. It does
Andrew Dubber
kind of beg the question, though, where are the boundaries? So I mean, I was speaking to somebody once about the creative industries. And they said which ones aren’t I, which is I think, a really good question. And I mean, I guess it’s a case of self identification. But where do you draw the lines? What is in and what is out?
Jeni Oliver
It’s out if nobody has asked us to do it yet.
Andrew Dubber
Self selection? That’s nice. Well, I mean, on your website, you’ve got a whole list of things from advertising and atlantiques. Through to design a fashion film. There’s one that I find really interesting here interactive leisure software. What’s that? Exactly?
Jeni Oliver
Who wrote that?
Andrew Dubber
But also software and Computer Services, television and radio publishing. So it does sort of expand beyond you think the career is there a creative creep, that suddenly sort of telecommunications is going to be in there. And then manufacturing is going to be in there, or automotive is going to be in the creative industry, because it’s design.
Jeni Oliver
I think that the creative industries is in every other industry. Yeah. Every other successful industry is engaging with the creative industries. But what I would say is it’s less about what these other industries are doing. I fundamentally believe it is that for the creative industries, its content, distributors, platforms, they are looking new, they’re slightly different. I’m always interested in who’s generating intellectual property. And where are they taking that intellectual property? What intellectual property assets they have? How can we get that? keeping going. And it’s about keeping those stories moving, keeping those stories engaging, and evolving and relevant. That’s where the creative industry sits for me. We can wrap it up and all sorts of other industries, names, we can wrap it up in all sorts of different definitions. But fundamentally, I think that what sits at the core of all this and has for thousands of years is stories. Stories influenced the direction of travel for human nature, our economies, politics, everything, because
Andrew Dubber
that was gonna be my next question. Why? Why are stories important, but you think it’s because stories drive everything else? Is it our wildlife
Jeni Oliver
decision making that you know, when you find a story that you engage with, when you find a story that resonates with your value sets as an individual then you will migrate in that direction. Sometimes where your value sets are almost aligned, sometimes you can see a little bit of a nudge coming through on that. And you can you see people evolving in their own value sets and their own thinking. And that’s very clever creative industry strategies if somebody’s deliberately trying to do that. But I do believe that the story is at the core, and we can call anything we want going forward with anything we have in the past. Fundamentally, people are telling stories can be that through word of mouth, through film and television, through the shape of your glass bottle that you put your gin in. Right? There’s great games that you can play where you can, you will understand this, you look at the shape of a bottle of whiskey. And you know what that whiskey is without looking at the label without smelling the product that sits within I know what it means you know what it means. And that is, it’s just a bottle. It might be a green bottle, a brand bottle, a clear, it’s just a bottle. But there’s been a story that’s been slowly told over time that’s coming through on that.
Andrew Dubber
Okay, so what’s your story? Where does it begin for you? How do you become the person who is sort of driving these things in this place? Well, tell me about Tell me about the young Jeni, what’s she doing reading books, or making things
Jeni Oliver
young Jeni was usually curled up in a corner hidden away with a stack of books, that was me. Just all sorts of books. Not very good with the classical literature’s didn’t really do them. But you know, Robert Heinlein, Piers Antony, Philip K Dick, then there’s all of the old TV shows. And you know, I grew up in an area where the BBC was king, there was nothing else Channel Four hadn’t come along, even by that point. That’s how old I am. And, but the beauty of that meant is that you had film coming through on the television, and it was everything from Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin. And all of these old old films will come on at 6pm in the evening, and you would sit and watch them because it was better than watching the news as a kid. And then as time moves on, you know, I film and I’m just a constant consumer of stories. And, and that’s where my passion comes from. I was originally a librarian. So I think that’s where my belief is, I know nothing, but I can pretty much know where to find it. Right? You know, the more you know, the more you realise you don’t know in this life. But it was working with creative businesses with Highland science enterprise, that’s really where I found that I wanted to go, that’s where I felt I could make a difference. Even if it was something really, really small and not much that I was doing. It was making a genuine positive impact for somebody else within the creative industries. And that’s what drove me to keep doing more of that. And Expo North was emerging at that time, and I kind of fine girl that it was I just want to go and keep doing this. I want to keep working in this space. And so there was no prior planning. I just kind of ended up here. And there are days we were going to How did this happen?
Andrew Dubber
And you look back and go, Okay, there is actually a narrative thread that runs through these things. I mean, what what did you parents do? For instance, did that have any impact?
Jeni Oliver
Um, I probably did, actually, my father was in the forces. So I lived all over in random places over the years, and it was two years, then you move two years, then you move. So I lived all over, you know, Hong Kong, Germany, all sorts of places on the island. So I was hearing different accents, hearing different stories, I grew up with other stories and other cultures around me. And it is I think that stories are really the bit that sits at the core of what drives me as an individual, and the consumption of more stories and hearing more stories. And that’s the bit that is really, really compelling.
Andrew Dubber
And I guess in a way, what you are now is kind of an instrument of policy that you go out and, and I guess it works, both ways that what you go out and find shapes policy, but also policy that informs what you do, shapes what you take out to, to the different regions. But I mean, how much of that was kind of part of the DNA of where you’re coming up from this, this idea that it connects with how places are run.
Jeni Oliver
I’m going to say when you say policy that’s like an alarm bells. Somebody works in the public sector. But it’s kind of along the lines of, you know, the organisation that I work for. And the reason I have worked for them for so long, is it was about creating jobs, creating opportunities. It was about growing businesses and social enterprise. So these are organisations where any of the profits go back into the local communities. So those opportunities were the ones that really drove me. I am making a difference to the place that I live in. And I’m choosing to live in this place because I love it and I need to be able to directly engage in that way. And I’m also working with very creative individuals, very creative businesses at a time when they’re doing something really exciting. And that’s a real privilege. I get to work with them when I want to do something new, I want to do something different. And I get to work with them at that time. So it’s not after everything’s in place. Now, I got to keep doing this. I’ve got to keep doing this for another two years, or I’m not there at that bit. I’m not there for the hard graft, I’m there for let’s make this happen stage and then on to the next, let’s make this happen stage. So you get to be in permanent
Andrew Dubber
startup mode. With other people’s then
Jeni Oliver
yeah, I mean, I described it to you the other day, I think, you know, those around me that work within the Expo North team, call me Tigger. And it’s a really good description, because I bounce through things with very little knowledge, but tonnes of enthusiasm. And I don’t think that having tonnes of knowledge is necessarily always a good thing. Because you think, well, this is how you do it. If you know how you do it, you don’t question how we might do it differently enough. And I think that that’s a strength within the creative industries. As filmmakers know how to make films. We have designer makers, they are artisans, they are master craftspeople in their particular creative industry, I am not going to bounce in there and tell them, this is how you need to do it. Because that would just be a complete waste of everybody’s energy. And I would probably get a Batman the back of the kitchen is well,
Andrew Dubber
it’s part of the as part of the gig joining the dots, saying, uh, you need to talk to this person over here that I was speaking to last week, or, you know, and bringing people together like, Expo north, I guess as part of that. But is there very much a sort of, right, this is a this is a region, this is a sector? And we need to kind of connect things up a little bit. Oh, absolutely. It’s always about joining the dots. It’s always about as asked me, What is you want to be doing? what direction do you want to go? Who do you want to be speaking to? Who do you think may help you make this happen? You know, what’s missing? That means you’re not doing this now.
Jeni Oliver
And that’s the bit too, it is constantly joining dots. And it’s thinking a little bit outside of the box sometimes and thinking, well, you’re doing this, but I know somebody else is doing that and view to just start talking to each other, then both of you can benefit. They may be that they’re serving the same customer base, but they’re not competing, they’re just looking for people that share those same value sets. So it’s, you know, it’s the rum in your coke. You know, it’s that kind of scenario. And it’s about joining them together. And here at Expo north is great for that. And one of the reasons I completely fell in love with what Expo North the conferences is that you have musicians, talking to designer makers, and stylists and curators. And then they go, that musicians go, I need to stage I need to stand out on stage and you get to design to make this I can make that happen. Yeah. And then the design makers, I dress them. So both of them are winning through sharing that same audience, they’re sharing that same media space, they’re sharing that same marketing budget, which could be Hiho. So they’re doing that. And they’re working together for mutual benefit, but then they’re never going to compete against each other. We then will find that we have people that are, you know, making screen content, but they’re looking for the contents, great. You’ve got people going, I want to make TV want to make films. What’s the story that we’re going to tell within that. And so you introduce them to writers to publishers. And so they’re working together in that space. This region is really great for natural history content, it’s great for crime content, be that fict or faction. It’s kind of a strange scenario where Scotland is that dark sense of humour runs through things. And so we get these random questions you go. I know somebody who’s doing that I know where that’s coming from. And yet, so is joining the dots all the time and seeking opportunities.
Andrew Dubber
Let’s say there’s a band from here that does well, and goes to London and becomes super popular and stays in London. Is that a win for you? Or is it a loss?
Jeni Oliver
It’s not as big a win as I’d want to go to London, I’d like to think that they’re eventually going to come back, they’ll see the light, they’ll come back. Or alternatively they are now our ambassadors, right? You know, if they are in London, then as soon as they open their mouths, you know that they’re not from London. They give the game away. But they are ambassadors, you know, if we can operate in an isolated bubble, and if we see new bands launching from here, that’s great. I am really, really happy Even when people meet to Expo north, they’re not from the highlands. But they meet Expo north, those conversations start. And then businesses done, that business may never come back to the highlands. But they know that that originated by that serendipitous crossing of paths Expo north. And that means that those conversations continue that relationship with this region continues. And other opportunities may spin out of that down the line. We can’t expect everybody to come here and go, right. I’m only going to do business with people from the Highlands and Islands. that’s unrealistic thinking. But if people think I can come to the Highlands and Islands and do business, that’s great.
Andrew Dubber
There’s one thing I have to ask and it’s it’s a little off topic, but it’s it’s interesting to me, at least when you come here. One of the things I think of first is whiskey, but you get here and it’s gin a gin everywhere. what’s what’s going on?
Jeni Oliver
you kind of know the answer to this question. Gin is now whiskies patients. And I think that we are seeing a real food and drink Renaissance going on. I think that’s happening all across the United Kingdom. But for this region, particularly where whiskey is almost in the DNA, even people that don’t like to taste whiskey is in the DNA. You know, the stories that are wrapped around the distilleries, you know, the drink itself, all of the different elements that are attached to that the names that come through and that, but gin, and because you can create gin now, then you can get it out to market now. That’s where these gin distilleries are coming through. And some of them are gin and whiskey distilleries in the making.
Andrew Dubber
So right, so they’re working on the whiskey in the background. But now,
Jeni Oliver
they’re, you know, they’re putting the battles away, but the businesses are sustainable with the gin. And yet there are other companies and all they’re ever going to do is make gin, or that’s what they think for the moment. But I think, again, it’s with the gin is the I can see correlation, it’s a different story as they’re completely different drinks. You know, they taste different, they look different. But they have different narratives attached to them. But they’re both telling these really strong and compelling stories from here. And a lot of that is down to the botanicals that they’re using, which some of them are very, very unique to this region of Scotland. And some of the stories that they’re telling and the way that they’re wrapping that product up. It’s a modern Scotland, is what they’re particularly looking at, but not losing that sense of place and not losing that sense of how they have reached this place at this time.
Andrew Dubber
Is there any point where you’re going to be able to look around you and go right, My work here is done?
Jeni Oliver
Never. That’s never going to happen? That’s like asking the Scots Are you going to run out of stories? No, that’s not going to happen.
Andrew Dubber
Jeni, thanks so much for your time. Thank you. That’s Creative Industries Development Manager for Highlands and Islands enterprise, Jeni Oliver. And that’s the MTF podcast. Now, you can probably tell that I really enjoy talking to people like this. And I’m always interested in more stories, more interesting people doing interesting things in music, creativity, technology, innovation, policy, design narrative, and all sorts more. So if you know anyone I should be talking to that you’d like to hear on the podcast or that you think would be someone I’d really enjoy sitting down and chatting with you. Feel free to put them in touch or drop me a line to make a suggestion. I’m Dubber at Music Tech Fest dotnet. And of course, feel free to share, like rate, review and subscribe. Have a great week and we’ll talk soon. Cheers.
