Neil is an entrepreneur, startup mentor and former music industry A&R. He founded the organisation Cardiff Start, which is aimed at promoting and growing new tech startups in the city, co-founded the TEDx Cardiff series, and is on the boards of Ffilm Cymru Wales and the Welsh Music Foundation. He is an arch networker and connector and has always been very generous and open with his thoughts on community building and engaging with the creative community.
Neil writes:
Imagine you live in a tiny village in the dense jungle, with no means of reaching other villages around you. You, as a village elder, have to choose between spending all your available money building facilities in your village, providing entertainment and resources for your villagers, or building roads through the jungle between you and the other villages?
The initial temptation might be to build a cinema and doctor’s surgery for a village cut off from the rest of the world. But surely if the cause of the isolation can be removed, that’s better: solve the problem rather than providing a distraction from it.
Very often, when building communities it’s easy to end up creating projects, events, and funding pots, that serve an immediate need, but don’t necessarily address a wider, long term, more important issue of opportunity, and how to facilitate it.
It’s why in recent years, before using any sort of resource for community building, my mantra has become ‘build pathways, not stuff’.
‘Stuff’ can be fun. ‘Stuff’ can be useful. ‘Stuff’ can make it look like you’re doing something of value.
But the real value comes when you clear a path for someone, point them in the right direction, or even carry their bags right to the doorstep. You can’t control what happens when they get there, but you have ensured that they don’t arrive exhausted and dispirited.
I’ve been at the heart of Cardiff’s tech startup community for years and, before that, its creative community through founding events like TEDxCardiff and Ignite Cardiff. But these events weren’t the end point themselves. They were a method for bringing everybody together, to discuss, form relationships, and forge new partnerships. It’s what has always impressed me about Creative Cardiff. As a team they understand that it’s the quality of the connections (the pathways) that count. They’re not just ticking boxes.
With the abundance of technology at our fingertips, it’s easy to create something because it’s simple to do. But we often overlook the important question of how it serves the wider community. As community builders we should all be using tech to improve our lives, and those of our community, but let’s ensure that we use it to build pathways, not ‘stuff’.
