Portfolio 2011

St.Wilfrid’s Enterprise CentreRoyce Road

HulmeM15 5BJ

info@mcc-hub.org

manchestercreativecollective.co.uk

Contents:

Introduction To Manchester Creative Collective (MCC)

Bring Back The Bee

• Marbella

• Grub

Ideas Factory

• Spring64

• Vox Box

• Sewing Box

• Spraycan

• Pumpkin Patch

Summary

Introduction:

Manchester Creative Collective (MCC) was founded in March 2009. It is a community interest company (CIC) made up of several projects working towards building a sustainable network across the city.

MCC is committed to open data and open source practise. We seek to improve data access and transparency across all forms of communication, civic engagement and self-organisation. We see the need of a knowledge network for communities, co-operatives and corporations to collaborate on mutually beneficial projects and designs for our city.

The company wants to eventually help local communities and local government in creative and cultural social development and policy design. We aspire to being a communication hub providing qualitative and quantitative information that is directly generated by the public to those governing the city.

MCC has several strands of activities and projects:

Bring Back The Bee

Bring Back the Bee’s aim is to be an organic network for regeneration, sustainability and civic action in Manchester. Investigating grass-roots networks, community interest companies, corporate social responsibility and local government goals. The final objective is of improving the local economy, making people more community focussed and reliant on resources and services in their own area, creating vibrant places, greener spaces and healthy neighbourhoods. Our current social hubs Marbella and Grub are working towards achieving this.

Containment City

Redundant shipping containers are the basis of Containment City, a scheme which aims to provide young talented creatives the possibility to “start-up in a box” with their businesses. The purpose is to concentrate on working on the creative elements of business whilst having full business support. It provides a template for a company structure, cost effective ways of working alongside like-minded individuals, and a system of open-book management. We currently have 3 shipping containers based at St.Wilfrid’s Enterprise Centre in Hulme.

Ideas Factory

Ideas Factory has grown out of the initial Containment City activity. It is a hub of artists, designers and crafts-people sharing skills and ideas, developing projects independently and together. The project has bred artist led workshops for local youth groups, web development and programming contracts, craft fairs, music events, and is developing further through a website of creatives who network in an online community. Our current Ideas Factory projects are Spring64, Vox Box, Spraycan and Sewing Box.

Bring Back The Bee

Bring Back the Bee’s aim is to be an organic network for regeneration, sustainability and civic action in Manchester. Investigating grass-roots networks, community interest companies, corporate social responsibility and local government goals. The final objective is of improving the local economy, making people more community focussed and reliant on resources and services in their own area, creating vibrant places, greener spaces and healthy neighbourhoods. Our current social hubs Marbella and Grub are working towards achieving this.

Marbella

Introduction

Marbella specialises in delicious dishes for catered events, special days and business or community meetings. We are very flexible and cater for all different diets and tastes offering wheat, lactose, sugar and gluten free options as well as allergies specific in all of our catering.

Marbella Café is a work in progress, an autonomous space for cooks, bakers and artists. A community company set up to facilitate catering, decor and entertainments for one off events from festival big-tops and tea-tents to pop-up themed restaurant nights, and local food workshops and demonstrations.

Workshops

We run workshops in the local community on Basic Cooking and the Nutritional Value of Food. We give an overview of kitchen practise and good hygiene. We discuss food categories and a balanced diet ratio for simple cooking techniques with example recipes and meal options. We also run workshops on:

• Local Food Mapping/ Access • Bulk Buy Storage and Preservation • Alternative Diet Nutritional Workshop • Food Reusing – Consignment Cooks

“We are a small artist led cooking collective, who organise creative catered events, bake cakes and generally have

a lot of creative passion for locally sourced sustainable food.”

marbellacupcakes.com

The Future

Marbella Pop-Up - Underground Dining Scene

Marbella pop-up is a work in progress, and is an autonomous space for cooks, bakers and artists. It facilitates catering, decor and entertainments for one off events. From festival big-tops and tea-tents to pop-up themed restaurant nights, local food workshops, demonstrations, speakeasies, supperclubs and other community-based alternatives for dining and entertainment.

Supper Club:

A network for foodies who offer pop up style suppers, an out of the ordinary setting the host has access to and where the exact location is only revealed at the last minute. Meeting Once a month to meet other foodies and plan own culinary adventures.

Ghetto Gourmet:

Dining Adventurers creating and taking part in ‘out of the ordinary’ dining events in the most unlikely and improbable places. Open to paying guests for a limited time as pop up restaurants and supper clubs!

marbellacupcakes.com

Growing, Redistribution and Urban Boxes ‘locally sourced fruit and veg delivery’

GRUB

Introduction

Fresh supermarket produce is often over packaged, overpriced and of lower quality, having flown thousands of miles to fill shelves. Much of this is food that could reliably be grown in our country. We want to give people access to food grown near to where they live, at the time of year when it is at its best, with the whole service being provided by people who care.

Sustainability is our focus. That is why we always choose produce from our locality and why our veg boxes are just that – boxes of vegetables with no unnecessary packaging, why our deliveries are made for free by bike trailer, and why we recycle and redistribute our surplus. We aim to increase healthy food access through our veg box scheme, whilst operating ethically to reduce the overall environmental impact, save our community money and support local businesses.

A typical veg box costs just £5 and contains broccoli, kale, cauliflower, beetroot, potatoes, parsnips, leeks, and swede. Bought from the supermarket, the same items would cost up to £10.

As well as being incredibly good value our veg is healthier and better for the environment, having cut out a lot of time and distance between field and fork.

grub.mcc-hub.org

The Future:

Customers

We currently have 43 customers and want our delivery service to grow rapidly in 2011. We are planning to target local housing associations and sheltered housing schemes to generate interest in the veg boxes. Links have been made and we have various potential large scale deliveries across South Manchester.

Community Allotment

We are working on the development of a community allotment site on Bethnall Drive using permaculture principles. We will be running a series of workshops and practical sessions on site.

Farmers Markets

We held a Harvest Market in October 2010.The market will return in April 2011 atSt.Wilfrid’s, however this time we will be selling seeds & seedlings. The aim of the event was to create a platform in which local growers could trade their surplus produce with each other. This was done by establishing a complementary currency. Using this complementary currency we purchased surplus vegetables off growers in the local area, to sell on our market stall for either Pounds Sterling or Ms (the complementary currency).

grub.mcc-hub.org

www.ideas-factory.co.uk

Ideas Factory has grown out of the initial Containment City activity. It is a hub of artists, designers and crafts-people sharing skills and ideas, developing projects independently and together. The project has bred artist led workshops for local youth groups, web development and programming contracts, craft fairs, music events, and is developing further through a website of creatives who network in an online community. Our current Ideas Factory projects are Spring64, Vox Box, Spraycan and Sewing Box.

Spring64

Spring64 is a small dedicated design & development team. Working with local clients creating content and technology our work connects people and ideas globally.

We use recycled materials, prints with non-toxic inks, paper from sustainable sources and we promote sustainable methods of communication for our clients.

Web Design & Development:

We have a team of graphic designers and fully qualified programmers who create websites for companies. We also help with integrated technology services such as e-commerce, publishing audio and video content and create private social networks.

Branding Design:

Using company’s aims and values we work alongside marketing teams to create the right brand to communicate products and services across print, web and experiential marketing, making sure companies are always communicated and received in the right way.

Print & Packaging:

People still have a vast amount of print work despite being in the age of technology. Our designers make sure branding looks good across stationary and promotional materials.

Spring64

“Design & development with a conscience”

spring64.co.uk

Voxbox

The Vox Box studio project is based around around the construction of a fully functioning professional studio within a 20ft x 7.7ft shipping container based around designs by Mark Paltridge (Australia) and his hugely successful Spark 1 Studio. The plans for the container incorporate a vocal/live recording booth and a control room fitted with state of the art recording, mixing and mastering equipment.

The aim of the project is for the studio to be available to members of the public, youth and community groups and established musicians and producers. Coupled with this is the ability for the studio to be transported to festivals, gigs and other events for demonstrations and live recordings. The studio will be staffed by producers and technicians with a wide range of skills and capabilities with a diverse background in the local & national music scenes.

The ethos behind the project is to bridge the gap between professional and community based music within the Manchester music scene and give opportunities for people who would not normally have access to a professional studio the chance to learn and improve their production and recording skills.

Vox Box will be working closely with a number of established artists, producers, sound systems and club nights which will create opportunities for live performance as well as providing excellent advice and guidance with regard to production, DJ’ing, MC’ing, singing and sound engineering both studio and event based.

Community Radio - We plan to set up a community station within the studio. The running of a community radio station will offer a chance for local artists/youth groups to broadcast their material to a wider audience.

“A recording studio in a shipping container.”voxboxstudio.co.uk

Sewing Box

Sewing Box is a 8ft by 20ft shipping container, as part of an exciting new Project with Manchester Creative Collective. The shipping container has been completely refurbished, redesigned and recreated into a beautiful sewing studio/boutique.

The Sewing Box has a beautiful contemporary mix of nostalgia and great design. Engaging with the community to ‘up-cycle’ old clothing into stylish, unique, one-off pieces through the use of creative workshops filled with fantastic visual candy, hand-made accessories and one off pieces. The workshops teach people how to recycle and ‘upcycle’ clothing and material to create clothes that are exciting, expressive, inspiring, ethical and personal.

“A sewing studio / boutique.”

“Spraycan promotes local artists, giving young up and coming artists the chance to showcase their talent

alongside those more established.”

Spraycan

• Spraycan creates and maintains a vibrant network of creatives through events at the ‘Ideas Factory’ multi faceted creative space and the ‘Ideas Factory’ website. It

provides the means to kick start project ideas formed as a result of this network.

• Provides a complete art commission service to individuals and businesses who wish to distinguish their homes / business premises with custom made art and murals.

• Provides opportunities to young people to learn and take part in exciting art projects at

our studio and in the community.

• Organises and hosts a range of art events designed to make art more accessible to the public. In a move away from the traditional gallery setting we plan to utilise vacant spaces around the city by way of ‘pop up’ exhibitions which will include ‘live art’, where people can see art being made, workshops, art in public spaces and the chance for people to get involved.

Future Projects:

• Spraycan would like to get permission and funding to graffitti the Hulme roundabout uderpass in Spring/Summer 2011.

This would involve holding workshops in local schools and youth centres and getting the young people involved in creating a permanent piece of artwork in Hulme. The project would have a launch event in Summer which would involve live music, streetdance, food stalls etc.

Future Workshops:

• An 8 week art workshop with the young people at the Procter Youth Centre in Hulme.

• A 5 week graffiti project based around the Oldham riots 10 years ago with the young people of Peace Maker in Oldham.

We are looking at further contracts for art workshops over the summer, utilising the mobile shipping container art studio in various places across Manchester.

‘A sustainable solution toscreen printing.”

Pumpkin Patch

Pumpkin Patch are an organisation that constitute part of Manchester Creative Collective. We formed to help provide a sustainable solution to screen printing.

We are a new project in the set up stages. Our team are accustomed to working with each other as we are involved in a band together. Our own experience has shown us that ethical choices in clothing and merchandise for bands and artists are not always easily accessable.

When attempting to source ethical merchandise for our band we found that the options available were not cost effective, hard to come by and not always good quality. We felt that we had adequate experience from a consumers perspective to provide an efficiant service both ethical and financially.

Our products include t-shirts, posters and patches. We use eco-friendly soy/veg inks, fair-trade/organic cotton and cotton t-shirts.

Summary:

In 2011 Manchester Creative Collective will continue to strengthen it’s relationship with the local community in Hulme and surrounding areas. We aim to secure contracts and grants to enable us to deliver services alongside partner organisations.

Since launching MCC has secured the following contracts:

• Adult Learners Week• A pop-up cafe for Wates Construction• Funded work for Beacon Construction• Manchester City Council Farmers Market

We have had a presence at and an input into the following events:

• ‘EASA’ Architecture Conference• ‘MADF’ Manchester Architecture and Design Festival• ‘CING’ Creative Industries Networking Group (Event Partners)• ‘Future Everything’ Exploring Open Data

This year we will be involved with:

• ‘Great Places’ Housing Association• Regeneration based work• Hulme Festival

We have workshops booked with:

• Loretta High School• Peacemakers Youth Leadership Institute• Proctor Youth Centre• City South Housing and Greenzone

As a relatively new CIC we feel we have engaged well with the community and have helped to improve the local economy. As a grass-roots project, we have encouraged people to access more services in their local area. We feel our work is valuable and we will continue to turn our ideas into positive actions in 2011 for the mutual benefit of the community.