General Features

Pete Ashton is one of the UK's few professional bloggers.

His weblog, CreatedinBirmingham.com (CiB) has just been recognised as one of Britain's best. It has been named as the joint winner of the 'Independent Blog' category, in the Guardian newspaper's prestigious MediaGuardian Innovation Awards.

The award is for CiB's work in "Proving that there is life beyond London’s metropolitan hub, this blog focuses on Birmingham and the West Midlands promoting the work of creatives in the city and surrounding areas."

CreatedInBirmingham.com

Early days

CiB grew from a conversation Pete Ashton had with Stef Lewandowski, from Creative Republic (West Midlands) - a body that promotes the creative and cultural industries in  the region.

It launched in January 2007 with Pete blogging and Stef handling the technical and financial sides.

Pete: "There will be bloggers covering other cities, no doubt... For the creative industries [CiB] might be an original. Definitely one of a very few.

"I think the blog is unique regarding the funding. It's certainly unique in that it's an independent blog that gets financial support."

Why blog?

But why is CreatedinBirmingham.com needed? Pete says it has, broadly, two aims.

"There’s a lot of talk about how the creative industries are at the heart of the new regenerated Birmingham and if that’s so it’s necessary not just for the city to know about them but for them to know about each other.

"A secondary motivation is to show people inside the community how things like this blog can help them, to move from an array of portfolio websites to engaging in a conversation. I’d like to see a wide network of blogs out there from independent artists to government funded projects and the best way to achieve that is by example."

CiB's example is being followed. The many comments of congratulation left on the blog include:

"Hey Pete and Stef well done - you’ve inspired me to blog and flickr and i’m looking forward to seeing what you’ll inspire me to do next!!! Congrats on the good news it’s most deserved!"

Pete will accept the joint award at a ceremony at the O2 Arena, London, in March. His fellow winning bloggers are Regine DeBatty (we-make-money-not-art.com) and Vaughan Smith (fromthefrontline.co.uk).

"For me", says Pete "it's part of a bigger plan to get Birmingham blogging properly - a nice symbol that we're getting somewhere with that".

By Ciarán Ryan

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