INTERVIEW: Iain Hamilton, Highland and Island enterprise's head of creative industries looks back over the 21 years of XpoNorth's evolution in the week the conference returns online on Wednesday and Thursday
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IT’s hard to believe 21 years have gone by since the first goNorth, long morphed into XpoNorth which arrives on Wednesday for two days of online creative industries events.
Iain Hamilton, Highlands and Islands Enterprise’s head of creative industries, has a very clear memory as one of the co-founders of the first goNorth, a music event in Aberdeen for its first few years before shifting to Inverness.
Iain laughed: “It’s hard to imagine now. There was a blizzard and bands got stuck, there was a fire alarm – and in the middle of the first press call, Henry McLeish resigned as First Minister and a lot of the press disappeared to cover that. So just about everything that could go wrong, did!”
Then, goNorth had been planned to raise the profile of Highland musicians and bands.
Iain recalled: “At that time, and obviously things have changed now, we were really struggling to get bands from the area into showcases anywhere else and to get folk noticed.
“We weren’t basically getting a look-in because the attitude was you needed to move away and head south from the Highlands to get anywhere.
“In my wisdom, it just seemed like a good idea – why don’t we just create our own event?”
XpoNorth now attracts much bigger numbers, but has shifted focus to cover what is now called 'the creative industries' – music, screen and broadcasting, fashion, design and craft, literature and gaming. Now, XpoNorth is also embracing including heritage – museums and the way to present the past and culture.
Iain said: “It was certainly harder work to get folk to come up at the start.
“I think there were about 500 people, that was the scale of the event we were getting together.
“The last live XpoNorth we did, there were about 2000 people, give or take a few.”
Last year with the pandemic forcing the conference to go online only, the number of people looking at the XpoNorth sessions and events online reached 6,000.
At the start of goNorth, the event had two days of speakers, panel sessions, workshops and live showcase gigs both evenings so industry professionals could come and see a wide spectrum of bands, local and Scottish with some from further afield in exchanges with different international music conferences.
The change of name to XpoNorth reflected a shift in focus from music (and later film) to the other creative industries too, such as screen – TV and film, gaming, fashion and literature.
“We went from goNorth to XpoNorth when we thought we really had to make the change and make it clear we had moved on. And fortunately – touch wood – that has worked,” Iain said.
Other changes followed as the event became established.
“A couple of things are noticeable now,” Iain said. "You still have to do all the work to get the speakers and folk in. But particularly big-name international speakers, they want to be part of it. There is a general recognition of the event
"And the other thing is the number of panel sessions that have Highlands and Islands folk – or have all Highlands and Islands folk, has increased.”
One exciting example this week will showcase the Highland festival that Iain calls “a quality event as good as anything anywhere”.
Belladrum Tartan Heart founder Joe Gibbs will discuss how his youthful enthusiasm for rock festivals led to his own, now in its 16th year, with Stuart Galbraith, CEO of Kilimanjaro Live, which acquired the festival in 2017. They will discuss the festival's past, present and future.
Of the shift to digital – the live music showcases have not been able to happen for the past few years – Iain said: “I wish the pandemic hadn’t happened and it has been a brutal way of getting to some of the improvements we have made, and some of the changes that have happened
"But some of those changes have been good – I just wish they hadn’t had to happen the way they did.
The shift to digital and online down to the pandemic and lockdowns is significant.
“We had started, but it certainly speeded up that change," Iain said.
This year remains online only, prompted by fears that Covid had not gone and may still impact on a hybrid event, and also the worry that the logistics of getting people travelling to the event – and now the last few months seeing the impact of challenged-airlines – was more accurate than anyone could have predicted six months ago.
“Now as we carry on, we haven’t decided exactly how it will work, but there is going to be more hybrid stuff," Iain outlined hopes for next year's event. "There will be a mixture of online and live and everything will be recorded so it will be available for folk to go back to. Just to have that resource there means you can go anytime and check out the stuff that you would maybe have liked to have seen, but were watching something else during the event itself – or couldn’t attend at the time.”
XpoNorth is also trying to make sure they support people needing to learn new skills for working in the creative industries.
Iain said: “It has been quite interesting as well, even before the pandemic, this way of engaging online more closely with consumers, that change was already happening, and has speeded up.
“It’s great telling folk ‘This is what you need to do’, but we have to be able to deliver it ourselves. We’ve got podcasts running we’re doing work with other folk on them, putting blogs up and video content and all sorts of things.
“That’s why we have things on our website like how to get a podcast together and to get video content done. If you were looking to do something in your house – if you don’t have a whole studio. We know that not everybody is in the position of learning all that themselves.”
Sync – where agencies source and sell on music created by musicians and composers to accompany adverts, TV and film – is an important source of income that means music written in the North can be heard across the world. It is something that XpoNorth has talked about and explored with guests and speakers for many years.
“Recently we did a sync bootcamp – Alex Smith [project management executive for LevelUp! And Ironworks training, as one of his roles] pulled that one that together.
“It was a two-day course, it was the music team from Skye, and an agency that provides music for Adidas and Netflix, for those looking at writing music for TV, advertising etc.
“One thing that became clear was that the people on the course were all really good and I think most of them are getting regular work now, but it was also good seeing the number of musicians who have a decent home recording set up and have taken the time over the pandemic to learn how to use it properly.
“There’s work coming in for folk that they would probably have struggled to do a while back, but they have all the resources at home now and can use it. They can write something, record it and get it sent in within the time scales that these companies need.
“So there are opportunities coming up, but it still requires you to go and find out how to work it. And it is not always very obvious.
“You are looking at things that may be obvious to an 18-year-old, but may not be quite so obvious to me,” Iain laughed.
“We have spent a lot of time on that, to show what is possible on the digital side. It’s not going to go back.
“You never know what folk would have done anyway, but I think we have at least given a hand in shifting people and helping them along, I don’t think there is any doubt about that.
“Would they have achieved it on their own? Probably, because folk are talented. But I think it has certainly helped.”
In 21 years, there are many homegrown success stories that point to how having a career in creative industries for people from and living in the North is a reality.
“There are people who have gone on to do really well. One of the most obvious ones is Beatrix A Wood in South Uist. She is a one-man band but has 25 folk who work with her regularly so it is keeping a whole lot of jobs going. All her work is international co-productions. She has a wee studio space and lots of editing facilities there.
“The One Show spent a week based out of her offices not so long ago. She is solidly working and doing well.
“ I guess on the music side you have folk like Willie Campbell who is making a decent living writing music and getting work, and sync stuff is coming in for him. Again, there is an actual real living being made, it is not just dabbling in it.
Also Colin Macleod, also from Lewis, has a great lifestyle, spends his time fishing and surfing, then puts out a record with Sheryl Crow and then goes back to his farming and surfing again!
“And the singer songwriter Tamzene [from Cromarty], we did a lot of work with her. Tamzene has gone from being a busker in Inverness to being signed with EMI Universal!”
Writers have benefited from the simple but effective XpoNorth project to ask writers to do a Twitter pitch for a book they hope to write – and some high-profile success stories picked up by publishers have been boosted by that. Leonie Charlton with her memoir Marram Grass has been published by Highland-based publisher Sandstone Press – and Inverness-based writer Barbara Henderson, also a columnist for our Highland News & Media titles, was partly noticed through her Twitter pitch.
Highlands and Islands Enterprise has continued to support XpoNorth as it has evolved.
Iain said: “One of the things that has made XpoNorth different is that it has managed to keep going this long. Very rarely does anybody get that time to build, so you can see where it could go to.
“If the plug had been pulled after the first few years when 500 people were going to the goNorth conference ... ?
"Whereas now, the companies and the people involved and the access they can get is to Paramount, Universal, Sony, you name it, they are there, or are involved.
“Without having longevity, you just couldn’t have built up that kind of network.”
It has also helped people dreaming of a future career in music, design, screen and broadcasting, digital, gaming or literature, the reality that it is possible to have that as a working life in their own area.
Iain said: “I remember Skills Development Scotland did some research before the pandemic and they were looking at schools in Moray. There were something like 60 per cent of pupils wanted to work in creative industries, in some shape or form.
“And you look at the number of students, even just those going through UHI, who are on creative-related courses, and there are huge numbers.
“Hopefully what we are seeing is more and more of these young folk either choosing to come back or stay because they are realising that the Highlands and Islands has something to offer that is unique.
“And that there are folk around them involved. You are not on your own. I think it does have an impact, there is no question.”
Iain points out that wider issues of these times, sustainability, protecting the environment, are often also tied up in the word of those in the creative industries.
“There is a whole ethos that goes with it that people tend to have, similar interests. And I don’t think it is any great surprise that all these people – designers and people working on fashion, for example, are often concerned about sustainability and environmental issues too and that these things are important to them – and to their customers.
“That has always been prioritised in XpoNorth and is not a recent thing – and it is great for communities.
“A lot of the small creative businesses really are embedded in the communities they are in – they are part of things there. And, boy, does it raise the profile and get folk noticed and it also means that people see what can be done.
"With cultural knowledge – it might be contemporary, it might be traditional, but there is a real interest from customers in that – and provenance, the history of things, the stories behind them. These all matter.
“I think adding heritage which we did in the past few years, that has been a real eye-opener at what the opportunities there are there. It’s just huge. With this, there is such a global interest and demand.
“Often the least accessible thing at a museum, say, is the museum itself. Only a certain number of people can be in the building because of the physical size of it, but there’s a global audience you can get hold of online now which is interested even if they can’t necessarily come to the building – and you can earn money from them.”
Looking at how digital and developing presences online can work for heritage resources, such as museums, has been a developing strand of events at XpoNorth and, to an outsider, has felt innovative and exciting.
Iain said about that – and the individual events XpoNorth aims to offer each year: “I think that we are ahead of anything else that is being offered in Scotland. And, in truth, we are pretty much ahead of anything being offered in the UK.
“It doesn’t mean that every individual session we do is ahead of everything. But in general I think we have managed to stay at the cutting edge and slightly ahead of the mass in being able to provide that information ahead of where most people would be getting the help.”
Talking specifically about the heritage events, Iain said: “What has been really interesting is seeing the museums, they have particular challenges around digital development – a lot of them are dependent on and manned by volunteers and they have challenges how they approach this.
“But you can see the way it is being taken up and changing what they are doing, and that is just going to continue to develop. There has been an amazing change in how they are working. I think over time we will begin to see real benefits and real returns coming from that and it has already started and that will continue.”
And that development may well benefit from a tie-up with younger people with digital skills sharing those with the heritage sector in the North.
Iain said: “One of the things we have been doing is the LevelUp! training we have been doing with UHI for the creative industries students.
“We have a lot of young folk sitting on all these digital skills and they just don’t know that they are amazing business skills.
“The way they use social media and the way they communicate and do stuff online is really different to the way that I would do it and now all businesses need these creative skills – it doesn’t matter if they are in creative industries or not, they require those skills – the storytelling!
“It’s absolutely the core to everything! And in your company, that may not be your strength, but you need it.”
Iain has returned the conversation to the central theme of this year’s XpoNorth digital conference storytelling.
The Scottish Government has named 2022 the year of storytelling and there is a huge focus on it across the country and in many different ways.
XpoNorth has had it as a theme running through over many years at the conference.
Iain said: “We thought it was a good idea to make that really obvious and have it at the core of XpoNorth this year.
“One of the things that I have found was that – yes, storytelling has been at the heart of what we have been doing for years – but we still found that a lot of folk didn’t really understand what storytelling meant in the context of a business.
“There were a lot of people who still thought it was just marketing or sharing a bit of craic.
“Those things are part of it, but it’s about making sure that everybody in a business understands what the core values of the company are and giving meaning to products and services so that people want to engage with them. And I think when you look at all the ways that you can engage with people, the story is so important.
"Years ago, if you wanted to give meaning to a product, for example, why would you buy thing over another? it’s about the core values, the people at the company, anything that distinguishes you and your product.
“You can give your products meaning that can cause people to want to buy. Again, one of the things we have been finding over the past few years is that you learn provenance and quality are really important.
"Selling something cheap and cheerful isn’t really the answer. People are willing to spend the money if they feel they are getting something authentic and real.
“It is something we have always been talking about, but this seemed a good year to make it clear what storytelling actually means.”
Continuing to support diversity is a big commitment for XpoNorth, also making it accessible for everyone as they try to support those working creatively and trying to make businesses from their passion in their home area.
Iain said: “The main thing for us is that we have managed to stay ahead of the game, we have managed to keep going.
"The real target is we want to be able to provide as much help as we can and to keep doing that and I do think the Highlands and Islands is somewhere really special.
“Genuinely, everyone who is involved in Xpo believes that and it makes the whole thing worth doing.
“I do think there is something genuinely unique that can be offered from here that is globally in demand.”
Register to attend online conference XpoNorth on Wednesday and Thursday this week (June 15 and 16): https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/xponorth-digital-conference-2022-tickets-271970911317?aff=sitecta
Find the full programme here: https://xponorth.co.uk/conference-programme
