And in my experience there are two different types of Doer. All Doers turn up to the meeting, have useful opinions, make the right kind of noises, and offer to get involved. But it’s still a relatively small number of Doers who actually “Do”! It’s a small number who actually do what they say they’re going to do. It’s a small number who can be relied upon when it comes to the crunch and there’s a crappy job to be done.

It’s the real Doers who drive change, make things happen, create exciting things, leave a legacy and inspire those around them.

Which one are you?

The main worry is that Google’s offering of free sites is going to take business away from local web agencies. But I don’t see how promoting a free service that was already globally available (alongside a million and one other free website building services/platforms) is going to detract from Welsh agencies. The type of businesses that are being targeted by this offer aren’t companies that would be looking to pay for a website anyway. They’re traditional or micro-businesses (florists, plumbers, carpenters…) that haven’t considered paying for a website before. But once they outgrow the inevitable limitations of a free site, they’ll be looking to upgrade to paying for a bespoke site. This initiative will increase the market for local agencies in the long term. Here’s some similar thoughts from local designers/agencies/marketers @joel_hughes, @brandnatter & @lobsterdm.

The second complaint is that Google should be using local agencies to deliver this. Well, they are. They used local agencies when they ran this scheme in Liverpool a few months ago, and the same is happening here. I believe four local agencies have been tasked with job of helping local businesses understand the offering and helping them build the sites. Those local agencies now have the opportunity to build relationships with these businesses and hopefully will be the first port of call when a bespoke site is needed in the future.

I agree that such a campaign could have been run locally along with someone like SubHub, instead of a multinational. I believe SubHub are probably the only local company that can honestly feel aggrieved at this campaign, being a Cardiff-based website-building platform. But sometimes it takes someone with Google’s PR clout to get such businesses thinking about going online. Sadly using SubHub, great as they are, wouldn’t come with the impact and column inches that Google brings. SubHub’s criticism of the campaign is understandable, but with their business model being “freemium” (i.e. give your customers something for free in the hope that they’ll graduate to a paid plan in the future), they’ll naturally understand the potential benefits to local agencies of this campaign. The businesses are being given something for free, and will hopefully pay local agencies for better, more bespoke, sites in the future. And while Google are using the South African based Yola as the host for the free site offering instead of a local company, I’m amazed that anyone is surprised that a multinational company of Google’s size has a long-standing agreement with an overseas company. Even if they could get out of their agreement with Yola, and were willing to go through the lengthy, arduous process of renegotiating and working with a new provider for every region in which they run their Getting British Businesses Online, I’m not convinced there’s a Welsh company that has the resources to provide a platform to Google’s specifications as well as offer a free domain to anyone who wants to use it. I could be wrong about that, but it seems like a huge commitment to me.

Another concern is that companies are being run out of the Welsh Government operated digital incubator @Wales to make space for the temporary Google “Juice Bar”, where free advice will be dispensed from. This is just 100% untrue. The fate of that building was decided long ago. It’s half empty (as it has been for the majority of its life-span), the Welsh comms & marketing agency Culture Group that is running all this is based there (and also ran the campaign from Cardiff for the Liverpool leg of Google’s Getting British Businesses Online, incidentally) and there’s space there for a Juice Bar. So it makes sense for them to be in there. Why there is space, and why the building is being shut down, is another issue altogether. I think that incubator model failed, and there are better ways to encourage digital business. But that’s another discussion for another time.

While Google’s campaign could theoretically take some customers away from local agencies (although Google Sites is available for free already, so any of those small business could be using it or any other free site creator now, regardless of this campaign), surely having more businesses aware that they can showcase their business online is a good thing. Those businesses that go on to use the Google Sites platform almost certainly won’t have been using SubHub, an agency, or any other free platform anyway. There may be a minute handful who were on the verge of employing an agency, and fewer/none who will migrate away from a Cardiff agency/platform to use Google Sites, but I’ll bet my bottom dollar that almost all of them will be businesses who hadn’t considered being online before. So it’s not business lost, but a future market opened up.

Lots of people complained about the arrival of the Millennium Stadium in the early days, saying that retail takings were down on match days. And while that may be true, there’s no doubt that it’s been one of the key elements to the long-term improvement of Cardiff’s international standing as a city of note. There’s been a 50% increase in tourism visitors to the city since it was built, for example. And my international travels have certainly thrown up lots of people who are more aware of where Cardiff is in relation to London, due to a mix of the stadium and Doctor Who.

Edit: I’m not trying to suggest that Google’s presence will have the same effect on Cardiff/Wales as the Millennium Stadium. Just drawing a comparison, showing how some people were initially sceptical about the stadium but in the longterm it’s been proved to be one element contributing to a thriving, growing city.

And while I do agree that maybe the WG missed an opportunity to work closely with local web firms like SubHub instead of Google, I can’t complain about the lack of the local tech startup scene, as I have been doing for months, and then bemoan the presence of the world’s most successful web company in our city. It’s things like this that will hopefully build towards a long-term successful web and tech culture in Cardiff.

Wales is a brilliant, small country, full of exciting, talented people. Let’s take a long term view and build a culture of web and tech saviness that can drive this talent to achieve wonderful things. Rather than fear the presence of large multinationals, let’s take advantage of them being here. Ride on the coat-tails of their massive spending power and build a population that is ready and willing to engage with the web in all its forms.

Full disclosure – I’ve been asked to be a Google Local Champion, but much of this post is copied and pasted from a LinkedIn discussion (to save time!) which started before I was approached. I held these views long before I had any involvement with the campaign. I’m not being paid in any way, of course.

So, what is it?

I’m planning to build a “human windchime” at the underpass between two parts of St David’s shopping centre on Hills Street, the thoroughfare between The Hayes and Charles Street. My primary objective is to provide an experience that will inject a little bit of joy into the day of anybody who interacts with it, whether they are aware of their interaction or not. By walking under a row of sensors they will trigger different sounds. In this way they will act as a human breeze that creates a wind-chime of beautiful sounds. The busier the underpass, the heavier the “breeze”.

I plan to install a line of discrete sensors across the thoroughfare between the two parts of the shopping centre. Depending on the directionality and sensitivity of the sensors available, I will place between 11 and 16 sensors in a line, each of which will be assigned a sound, probably using a major pentatonic scale, so that every note will sound pleasant and harmonic with every other. The green lines on the picture below display the possible locations for the sensor row.

As someone passes under a sensor, it will trigger a particular sound, the tone of which will differ depending on which end of the sensor-row they pass under. Passing on the far right would trigger a high note, and passing on the far left would trigger a low note, for example. I plan to incorporate a light with each sensor that glows when the relevant sensor is triggered. At busy times the windchimes will be constantly playing as shoppers pass continually underneath it. In the dead of night, maybe a single solitary note would quietly ring out as a weary clubber triggers it as they weave their way home.

As well as it being a seemingly random set of sounds being generated, I hope that some people would take the opportunity to “play” the installation, even if only briefly. I would love it if we could encourage “flashmobs”, site-specific dance or theatre pieces, or any musical activity that could incorporate playing it as an instrument.

Through a dedicated website, I plan to stream a live feed of the sounds being created over the internet. This would allow anyone to tune in and listen to the human windchime anywhere in the world, perhaps watching via a webcam. I anticipate that some people would tune in to use these random windchimes as a means of relaxation, or re-connecting with Cardiff.

To increase the public participation with the installation (which is really important to me) I would like to encourage musicians and creatives to submit their own banks of sounds that would be applied, say, monthly. One month may be a local vocalist singing those particular notes, the next may be bird song recorded around Cardiff, and December could feature jingle bells! Different global partners may be particularly interested in this. Perhaps sounds sent from Cardiff’s twin cities of Stuttgart or Xiamen might be featured. This public participation could feature a social element, maybe with a Twitter hashtag and Facebook voting, making the piece constantly fresh and shared on social networks.

I also believe there may be an opportunity for mobile phone apps as part of this, again increasing public participation. I don’t have a definitive idea as yet, but believe there may be a great opportunity for someone on an iPhone, for example, to download the last 30 seconds they just heard. Or perhaps to have their own mini-version on their handset. Or maybe to be able to have some subtle influence on the volume or pitch of the notes.

I would love this installation to excite and inspire people to interact with it actively as well as passively, and bring a moment of joy to all those that come into contact with it. I’m currently looking for people with the relevant skills to help me bring it to life, so get in touch if you think you have the necessary skills.

First of all, let me say that this doesn’t mean I don’t think all the other designers and photographers I know aren’t any good. I count lots of them among my friends, and they are universally brilliant. It’s just that the ones I recommend here are ones I have direct experience of working with. Also, my second caveat is that although I highlight certain aspects of their talents here, that doesn’t mean they aren’t equally talented in other areas. Although I may say that one is a brilliant club flyer designer, it doesn’t mean that they couldn’t handle a re-brand for a big governmental organisation. I’m just highlighting the things that I’ve happened to notice they have particular strengths in.

Firstly, photographers.

Mei Lewis – Mission Photographic

If you’ve ever been to a launch, public reception, or any major event in Cardiff there’s a really good chance that Mei will have been there, capturing the ambience without making you feel self-conscious or wary. He’s also great at portraits and live gigs. Check out his blog for loads more cool pics and videos.

Alex Mills – Burning Red

Alex is a great creative mind, taking portrait pics that have a real impact. He even managed to make me look pretty good so he must be talented, even if he did have me standing in a bush with a massive lampshade on my head.

And now to the designers. Thankfully they all have names that start with “M”, which is why I call them “the three M’s”. I bet nobody else does.

Marc Jennings

Marc’s great skill is being able to take on potentially boring, corporate or public sector work and make it look beautiful and just the right amount of edgy.

Matthew Miles

Mr Miles does really lovely work on logos, branding, and turning superheroes into fantastic posters. He’s a talented DJ/producer, and designed the logo for my company, too.

Marc Heatley

Last, but not least, is Marc “The Heat” Heatley. A staple on the Cardiff creative scene for many years, Marc’s been creating fantastic motion graphics, web and design work for years, and I’ve been lucky to work with him on many occasions. A true all-rounder, and super lovely guy, whose work will be familiar to most Cardiffians who read this blog.

One thing about all of these guys is that they’re all genuinely a pleasure to work with, and I’d happily recommend all of them any time. Who you choose to use is just a matter of perseonal preference. Just remember to mention me when you employ them, and I’ll make sure they buy me a pint.

I’ve always been a keen advocate of small, creative businesses, and indeed I’ve been paid by governments and other organisations to help them engage with the large networks of creatives that I’ve worked with and run events for. But it’s only since starting to seek investment for my own startup that I’ve realised how few “peers” we have locally, when it comes to similar scalable web-based companies. I have hundreds of friends who I can discuss the basics of business with, and the challenges of running a small enterprise. But who was out there that could teach me about acquiring tens of thousands of users? Who could I turn to when I needed some advice on getting investment for growth? Where was my peer network to chew over our business model for ideas?

And then I spoke to a friend in Boulder, Colorado, about the startup scene there. Most Europeans would struggle to pick it out on a map, and yet it was named by Business Week as America’s top city for startups. Heck, I’ve been to the States about 6 times (including Colorado) and I’d struggle to pick it out on a map. And no wonder, as it has a population of just 97,000. To put that in context, GILLINGHAM is bigger than Boulder. Yet this small town in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains had, for example, 11 startups that raised $57 million in the first quarter of 2010.

So, given that our city is 3.5 times bigger than Boulder, why did I struggle to find 6 founders of scalable web startups when I organised a startup dinner earlier this year? Either they don’t exist, or nobody knows they exist. But both of those scenarios are a problem. There’s lots of comparables between Boulder and Cardiff; they have mountains and lakes, we have big hills and the sea; they are only a few hours’ flight from their country’s biggest concentration of startups, and we’re only a few hours drive from London; the average temperature and rainfall in Boulder is, erm, well, let’s just gloss over that little fact….

I won’t go into what is perhaps a lengthy comparison, and the success of Boulder has already been much analysed by more qualified people than me. And none more so than Brad Feld, a tech investor in Boulder who writes extensively about startup culture. He is currently writing “Startup Communities: Creating A Great Entrepreneurial Ecosystem In Your City”, which sounds like the kind of book I want to read. On his new dedicated blog for the project (Startup-communities.com), he links to an open letter from Bala Kamallakharan who wants to do his bit to improve the Icelandic startup community. It’s an inspiring read, and gave me the nudge I needed to get all these ideas I’ve been having down on paper.

EDIT: Brad’s since kindly written about this blog post on his blog.

So, I’m happy for this to be a collaborative document of sorts. I’d like anyone involved in the Cardiff startup scene, or the ecosystem surrounding it, to be involved in helping drive whatever happens next.

Here’s what I’ve done so far. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

• An open Facebook group for more generic startups, and a private LinkedIn group very specifically for scalable web startups.
• I’ve hosted a private dinner for founders of web startups. I want to do more of these. Maybe inviting investors and other relevant parties along.
• I’ve had meetings with the Welsh Government’s Minister For Business Edwina Hart, and key staff members of Finance Wales (thanks to Walter May), pushing the agenda for web startups and passing on the message that government backing is usually too outdated and inflexible for our types of companies.
• I’ve asked questions.

Here’s what I think could be done next. You’re invited.

• A “Startup Council”. Or a board of sorts. Basically a group of likeminded individuals who meet quarterly (?) to discuss the issues affecting our companies, and maybe communicate this to government and other relevant parties. Maybe this board could help with the organisation of some of the following.
• Startup Accelerators for Cardiff & Wales – These are intensive programs, typically a few months, in which entrepreneurs and their startups are put through a business bootcamp of sorts, at the end of which they are hopefully investment-ready.
• More startup dinners.
• Meetups.
• Invite speakers / experts from outside Cardiff.
• We also need relevant mentors.
• Want to be involved? Just let me know in the comments below.

What Cardiff has going for it.

• Great quality of life. Mountains and sea within a short drive.
• Two hours from London.
• You can cycle from one side of the city to the other in 15 minutes.
• A world renowned university, and several other fantastic higher education establishments.
• A brilliant, talented, young, vibrant and creative population of over 300,000 people.
• Low cost of living (compared to London or Bristol).

What are the barriers?

• Too few of us? No excuse. If we always think like that then everyone will always leave for Bristol or London. There may only be a handful of relevant startups in Cardiff right now, but we can build a culture here that attracts more.
• Tech naivety of investors here. Cardiff has a strong creative & SME culture, but there are few investors I’ve met who have the knowledge or desire to get into new, disruptive business models.
• Welsh government support isn’t flexible or innovative enough to support these business models. I wrote about one such example just a few weeks ago.

Questions

• Is there a brain drain – is the entrepreneurial & coding talent leaving Cardiff?
• What can we do to retain it?
• What can we do to attract it?
• LinkedIn, Apple, Paypal, Twitter and others are setting up offices in Ireland. Why isn’t this happening 75 miles east in Wales? This is a serious question – I honestly don’t know. Is this a tax break thing?
• If so, what can the Welsh government do to encourage such companies to come here. How can they help?
• How can the universities etc be involved?
• Are there physical/geographical/infrastructural things about Cardiff that help/hinder things?

The fact is, even if everything goes perfectly and we get support from every angle, this isn’t going to happen over night. We have to do it ourselves, and can’t rely on support from the public sector. It will probably take years, if not decades, to make Cardiff a great city to create a startup. But we have to start somewhere, right?

I’m currently seeking investment for my company, and working ridiculously long hours already, so like everyone else I don’t have huge amounts of time. But I think a few hours a month from a few willing people and we can really start to make a difference.

Let me know below (or tweet me) if you’ve got ideas, or want to be involved. Whether you consider this a rallying cry, a discussion piece, a call to arms, or a scream in the wilderness, I firmly believe in doing something.

Some more reading. Articles/blogs I’ve collected recently:

Guardian article about London’s Silicon Roundabout

Irish government spends 10m euros to encourage tech startups

Is Austin or Boulder better to start a startup in?

Has Tech City in London wasted £1m?

Why Berlin is poised to be Europe’s tech startup hub

Cambridge’s “Silicon Fen” shows off its wares

“Silicon Gorge” – the west country’s tech scene

NESTA – Who will promote Accelerators in the UK?

Why an investor abandoned a startup fund in Chile

What makes accelerators work

Edit: a few more links

The history of Canada’s Technology Triangle (thanks @Keeran)

Estonia’s flourishing startup scene

How Israel built its tech startup scene (thanks @GregBednarski)

How to be Silicon Valley (“nerds and rich guys”)

Build the ecosystem and they will come. Ireland’s success.

As my company is currently seeking investment for about that amount of money it seemed like a perfect solution for us. An opportunity to get the cash we needed to help us grow, but without giving away a sizeable chunk of equity in our business. I applauded the government for access to this kind of funding. I read through all the press associated with the launch of this fund, and the relevant page on the government site. It seemed ideal.

However, when I finally had time to go through the documentation in detail I got to the bottom of the second supporting PDF, only to find that the grants were conditional on you already having between 50% and 80% of the project funding already in place, depending on where you are based.

In other words, if I want to apply for the minimum £100,000 for my Cardiff-based business (where funding is only up to 20% of a project value), I need to have £400,000 already available to me from another source. In the few days since discovering this, I’ve spoken to four people who were considering applying, but who had no idea that they would need to find the majority of the money themselves from elsewhere.

While I completely understand the restrictions often placed on the spending of public money, I think that the government need to be better at communicating the exact nature of the funds that they are distributing. The wording of the documents just wasn’t clear enough, and that important detail was tucked away at the bottom of the second document. It took 2 emails and three phone calls to discover exactly whether my company would be eligible. The indistinct map, and public-sector-buzzword documentation, made it nigh on impossible to work out what the exact financial and geographical criteria were.

And this doesn’t even begin to address the fact that this is clearly not a fund for small growing businesses. Which small business can spirit up the minimum £100,000 to match the £100,000 from the government (assuming they’re in an area where they only have to find 50% of the project value) in the 2 months between the fund being announced and the deadline. Raising investment privately is a lengthy and time-consuming business, and finding that kind of money in that short space of time is incredibly difficult. This is a fund which will only be able to be exploited by those companies who happen to have money in the bank already. It’s not going to help small, smart, agile companies who are trying to grow.

I’m happy that the government is attempting to improve the access to finance that is sorely needed by many SMEs, but they need to be better at communicating exactly who it is for, and how best to take advantage of it. The Digital Development Fund is another welcome addition to the funding landscape too, but with a maximum application of £50,000 and only being for as-yet-started projects, again it’s sadly not fit for most ambitious startups with an eye on growth.

First up, I think we’d all agree that we’d want this theoretically perfect band to write their own music. We don’t want a Jedward or Steps, trotting out forgettable pop nonsense that will be forgotten as soon as it drops out of the Top 20.

And we want them to be real musicians, having spent years honing their craft, practising long into the night. Their talent and hard work should be rewarded, of course.

They should play live at every opportunity, right? We don’t want some miming automatons. We want to hear that real sound of instruments before all the organic warts and all have been compressed and post-produced out of it.

We’d want them to act appropriately. We all like a rock and roll badboy, but in general we’d want them to act with humility and good humour, and use their position of influence for good, right?

So, with that in mind, and assuming you’ve agreed with most of what I’ve written above, why are Coldplay one of the most hated bands in the UK?

They tick every box, and yet they seem to draw much more hatred than bland, pre-packaged pop like Boyzone. People like to paint them as humourless and pious, when they’re often humble and joke self-deprecatingly about their charity work. I always wince a little when I hear people say “I hate Coldplay”. I just don’t understand it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Coldplay fan. I’ve never bought a Coldplay CD, and I’ve never seen them live. But I’m amazed by the outpouring of genuine bile for a band that seem to, on paper, be the perfect band. It’s as if their success, having gone from a small band to a massive band playing their music to millions instead of a few, is something inherently evil. Surely if you don’t like a band’s music, then it’s a simple matter of not listening to them.

Many of us just seem hardwired to bring a massively negative emotion to front of our minds whenever we’re confronted with anyone or anything hugely successful.

“Obscurity is not a f***ing badge” – Hidden Track, McLusky

When Andy Murray was comprehensively beaten in the final of the Australian Open earlier this year I saw a flurry of tweets saying that Andy Murray should give up because he was “s**t at tennis”. That’s the Andy Murray who has been one of the top handful of players in the world for the last few years. He may not be the most lovable character, but to say he’s “s**t at tennis” is astonishingly stupid.

And Tim Henman, a man whose career winnings totaled over eleven million dollars, and who spent an entire decade ranked as one of the top 10 men’s players in the world, was constantly labelled a “plucky loser” because he could never quite win a Grand Slam.

We’re a nation that loves the underdog. And that’s no doubt a good thing. But I think it’s often at the expense of supporting those who’re achieving great things at the top of their game. Our default mode is to have a negative stance towards anyone successful. There seem to be very few people or organisations that we champion unreservedly.

And this reflects a lot in our attitudes to entrepreneurship here. It’s only recently that the word “entrepreneur” has stopped being a dirty word in the UK. But I still hesitate to use it when describing what I do. There’s still a residual sense of you being either a “bit of a wheeler-deeler, Del-boy type,” and if you haven’t succeeded yet (or worse still have had a failed business behind you) then you’re demoted to the status of failure.

Compare this to the US, where being an entrepreneur is a badge of honour, and where a failed business seems to be regarded as a necessary stepping stone to reaching your inevitable success. A mantra in the Silicon Valley startup community is “Fail often. Fail fast. Learn.”

For a bit more insight, this short video from an American who appraises the transatlantic differences in entrepreneurial attitudes is worth watching.

I think this attitude to success, whether in the fields of sport, entrepreneurship or music, is quite odd.

We seem to turn to the negatives, and even hate, when confronted by someone achieving great success which doesn’t exactly meet with our approval. And without wanting to come across as some massive hippy (I cut my long hair off a very long time ago), I think that actively hating anything is such a massive waste of energy. Music you don’t like is so easily avoided (or at worst will be over in 3 minutes), and that energy could be so much better utilised. I’m not proposing we can change a national trait overnight, and there will always be curmudgeons who moan and whinge about stuff that isn’t underground or cool enough, but I strongly believe we may need to foster a more positive attitude to our success stories as we enter this new phase of increasingly global competition.

“It’s easy to spot a purist. They’re the ones without any skin in the game”. – Hugh Macleod

Read this post on Plastik, where it was first published.

1 – Make an impression

You only have one chance to make a first impression. Get their attention. Get them excited. Don’t overdo it though. It’s easy to be more style than substance if you’re not careful.

2 -Rehearse

This one is a no-brainer. We’ve all seen people dry up in excruciatingly embarrassing style on Dragons Den. So to make sure it’s not you next time – practice, practice, practice. Rehearse in front of a group. Know your figures inside out, and if you’re demonstrating a product make sure that nothing can go wrong. Prepare for every eventuality. Then take a sip of water, stand up straight, take a deep breath and begin.

3 – Don’t Offend Your Audience

Be polite. Listen to feedback. Don’t be over-confident (i.e. arrogant). Don’t offer business lessons to people who are clearly more successful than you are.

4 – Be Passionate

If you don’t believe in your product then it’s unlikely the person you’re pitching to will believe in it either. But it’s a tricky one to get right. Over-enthusiasm can result in putting off your audience and make them think you can’t separate what’s going on in your head and heart.

5 – Be honest and credible

Don’t try to be something you’re not. Don’t oversell. Be direct. Be honest. Don’t lie, don’t embellish, and don’t wing it. They’ll know. Your future investor must be able to believe in you, and trust you. The second they suspect you’re not being honest with them the deal is off.

So, if you have a solid business plan, and present yourself with these 5 tips in mind, you’re sure to make a good impression at your next pitch.

The perfect pitch?

Wondering which pitch the Dragons considered to be the best? It’s this pitch from Kirsty Henshaw of Worthenshaws Ice Cream.

As a start, I’ve created a group on Facebook that’s just for entrepreneurs who run startups, or anyone involved with them, in Cardiff and the surrounding area.

It’s just a quick and easy way to get everyone together to begin with. I’m not 100% convinced by the functionality of FB Groups yet. It’s the first one I’ve created, and I’m just getting my head around turning off receiving every notification!

If you think it’s worthwhile switching to a Facebook Page, or another platform entirely, then let me know. I’m just keen on Facebook for now because it’s easy, requires little maintenance, and most people will be able to access it with one click.

Also, I’m keen for this to be a true community, and not just a group run by me, so if anyone wants admin status just let me know.

Join in here.

Any thoughts?

I’ve lived in Cardiff for half my life. I’ve steadily fallen in love with the city since I first arrived and have been lucky enough to live everywhere from Cathays to Penarth and worked from Fairwater to the Bay. And as a result it’s the only UK city that I can ever see myself living in. Berlin, Tokyo, Melbourne and San Francisco all appeal to me. But I’d take Cardiff over London, Manchester, Birmingham or Edinburgh any day of the week.

It feels like a deeply creative, positive, ambitious city. I don’t want to anthropomorphise it too much, as a city is a complex mix of psychology, geography, sociology and history. But whatever it is, it’s working. Cardiff is a city that feels like it’s going places.

But at the same time, this recession is hitting the high street hard, with PricewaterhouseCoopers announcing 20 stores are closing every day in the UK. And Cardiff has shared as much of the burden as most. A wander around the first floor level of the Capitol Centre on Queen Street is a perfect example of this, with more empty units than occupied ones. But with ThinkARK doing a brilliant empty shops project last year, the Cardiff School of Art and Design using an empty space in Morgan Arcade for their degree show, and obviously the empty shop project by the ATRiuM, it seems clear that there’s scope to be using these spaces for something positive.

You can read the rest of this article at Plastik, where it was originally published.