York - Reigniting the UNESCO City of Media Arts Designation.

The following is the text of a talk given at York’s first Reignite event — Reignite the Future. The Economic Impact of Creative Industries in York — held at The Radisson Hotel, North Street, York on 14th September 2023.

If we talk to an ambitious and talented kid who wants an alternative, one that values community, lifestyle, and liveability, without compromising on career opportunities, the quality and prestige of the work, or job satisfaction, we want York to be the UK's number one alternative to London for Media Arts (Film, TV & Games).

Viridian FX is one of a growing number of companies based in the heart of York that work on globally significant creative projects. The UK's film post-production industry is predominantly located in London. We are one of the very few companies based in the North of England and the only one of its kind in Yorkshire.

We don't see our location as an anomaly. We don't see York as a staging post on a journey towards bigger things. We have no ambition to move from the city. Instead, we see ourselves as being in the vanguard of a change that could see many similar organisations forming and relocating here in York.

We are only as good as our employees. Visual Effects (VFX) is a highly specialised market, and Viridian's potential employees have extremely niche skills. Only a few UK universities supply the industry with suitably qualified graduates, who typically work in London because that's where the work has been.

Of course, many young people dream of heading to London for reasons beyond work. If we interview an applicant who'd ideally like to be there, we encourage them to go. York can't and never should try to compete with London on London's terms.

But if we talk to an ambitious and talented kid who doesn't want to join a megalithic company, doesn't want to commute an hour each way through the rush hour, or work from their remote bedsit, wants an alternative, one that values community, lifestyle, and liveability, without compromising on career opportunities, the quality and prestige of the work, or job satisfaction, we want York to be the UK's number one alternative.

The winds of change are blowing in a favourable direction for us, too. York has had the advantage of a fast rail link with the capital for many years. Now, accelerated by Covid, Zoom calls and remote working have shrunk that distance even further.

At the same time, and for the same reasons, large London office spaces are becoming underused and redundant. An increasingly disembodied community of remote workers is further loosening the relationship between company and employee. Many skilled workers hop from one company to another without ever meeting their coworkers in person.

This is all at a time when the cultural conversation around work/life balance has never been more animated.

I contend that working together, in person, towards a shared end is a vital component in assuring the quality of life for most of us. The more remote, in every sense, we are from the purpose of our endeavour, the more transactional and grim life becomes.

After decades of ‘streamlining’ the human experience in the name of efficiency, we have mechanised too much of our culture. It only takes a call to a bank or utility company to be caught in a script in which sentient human beings (through no fault of their own) are forced to behave like machines.

More efficient..? Perhaps.

Only now we have AI, which, moving at rapacious speed, will soon be infinitely better than us at performing any of these mechanised tasks. So where does that leave us humans?

Predicting the future has always been a mug's game, but I can't help believing that value in the coming decades will shift away from efficiency, scale, and mechanisation towards environments that emphasise human interaction and encourage innovation, collaboration, and mutual support.

The human qualities that we value so highly at Viridian are common to many of us in the city. It's why we choose to live and work here, and it's why, moving together into an uncertain future, York is so well-placed to succeed.

The city's size, beauty, heritage, top-class universities, and cultural festivals combine to make it an extraordinary place. Unsurprisingly, York is frequently ranked as one of the best places to live in the UK.

Of course, putting my bias aside for a moment, I have to acknowledge that there are other similar-sized cities in the UK. Norwich, Bath, and Exeter immediately come to mind, and any of them might make very similar claims.

That's where the UNESCO designation comes into play.

York is one of only 22 cities worldwide that UNESCO selected because of its outputs in media arts.

Media Arts encompasses film, TV, and games, as well as digital art and culture. Stuff that touches most of our lives every day.

York, as we all know, is an extraordinary heritage city, overflowing with and informed by references to other times and places. However, its designation as a UNESCO City of Media Arts, along with cities like Toronto, Sapporo, and Austin, places its gaze firmly toward the future.

So, in that spirit of looking forward, what might a successful York City of Media Arts look like in ten years' time?

Beyond attracting talented individuals from around the world to live and work in York, the designation has to be relevant to every citizen so that, when a taxi driver picks up someone arriving at York Station, they are likely to talk with pride about the city's status.

That happens because the kids living on that taxi driver's street are all offered opportunities to engage with and develop within the media arts sector, whether their interests are in computing, fine art, physics, costume, electronics, carpentry, literature, hair and makeup, or writing for film, games, and TV.

All of this might be possible if we considered city-wide, inclusive educational pathways that led from preschool through secondary education to higher education and industry.

Media Arts encompasses a broad range of skills that draw equally from the humanities and sciences at every level. However, storytelling (which is at the heart of Media Arts) doesn't require significant academic achievement. The required ingredients are simply creativity and ingenuity, whether as a writer, performer, costume designer, lighting designer, or makeup artist.

I'd like to see York use the UNESCO designation to help create a national and international story about a city that thinks and behaves differently. A city that offers all its young people — irrespective of their academic prowess — access to a globally expanding industry, not simply as consumers, but as makers.

It means working together and sharing a vision across local government, schools, universities, and cultural institutions, including the city's football and rugby clubs, to create a compelling story that will not only help retain and develop York's citizens but also attract bright young minds into the city from across the world.

Even today, Viridian employs a diverse group of young people who speak eight different languages. All of them have settled here and are building their futures in the city. They, along with the employees of all of the city's other media arts organisations, add immeasurably to York's cultural life, the future of which Cherie has so eloquently described.

It may come as no surprise to those who know me that the drum I'm banging here is one I'm not qualified to beat. Many people in the room have far more advanced and nuanced thoughts about how this jigsaw might be painstakingly assembled. I recognise that the vision of an educational pathway from early school years through secondary school to college and beyond is ambitious, and it's for others, far more qualified than I, to begin to bring this to fruition.

Chris Walker from Bright White will add some more detailed thoughts about this in a moment, and I know that he is keen to take an active part in the citywide conversation.

Before introducing Chris, I'd like to leave you with some real-life experience pointing to the economic and cultural value of purposeful and creative learning.

Back in 2010, I was endeavouring to make an experimental feature-length film entirely on a green screen on a minimal budget. This enterprise required huge quantities of visual effects, something typically only attempted by productions with significant resources. Between us—the film's producer, another colleague, and I—we had very little relevant experience, but just enough that, after two too many pints, we could see little impediment to our plan.

When reason returned, or perhaps the beer wore off, we regrouped and hatched a plan with the University of York, who, at the time, were running a Masters in Post Production.

To cut a long story short, we ended up hiring six of the graduates from that course who, while having extraordinarily bright young minds, were only slightly less clueless about VFX than we were.

Together, we shot the film, then purposefully made and remade it using an experimental visual language, learning all the time as much about how NOT to do things as how to solve the many seemingly intractable problems the shoot had created.

Four of those six 'clueless' graduates are here tonight and remain at the heart of Viridian. Although the company has grown, we've never employed anyone more senior than them. After years of looking wistfully at the giant London VFX houses, we've now developed the self-confidence to continue doing things our way with assurance.

We regularly receive feedback from showrunners at major studios and streamers that they find Viridian's proactively 'different' approach distinctly personal and refreshing.

With every ounce of my being, I believe that the purposeful, experimental learning process that began our journey is still at the heart of Viridian's success and underscores our commitment to building new and strengthening existing relationships with educational institutions in the city over the coming years.

Perhaps, one day, we'll be able to employ a young woman or man who first became thrilled by film at a City of Media Arts event at their local junior school and who was nurtured by the city throughout her education all the way to our door. And if she arrives there, I hope we'll have convinced her to come to us rather than one of the many competitors we hope to have in the city by then. Either way, she'll join a cohort of brilliant, creative young minds from the region and around the world who have chosen to make York their home.

I asked an AI image generator to suggest to me what this future York might look like and it came up with this...

...which I hope we can all agree is NOT a vision we share for the city's future.

But, if we can collectively - collaboratively - seize the opportunities before us, we will be able to create an economic and cultural legacy in the city that is every bit as dramatic.

Only far more beautiful, far more significant, and far, far more human... 

Thank you.