Alex Jeffers is a freelance digital project manager. He founded the digital creative agency, Glue Digital Studio, in 2016.
Can you tell us what you do?
So I am a freelance web developer that also does a bit of design, quite a lot of teaching and education. I’m starting to do some work with Newport College to write their digital prospectus for the coming years which is quite cool. A lot of the projects that I work on are the interactive parts of websites – I wouldn’t say I was a brilliant coder but I do a lot with how people interact with websites and putting more thought into what happens after someone clicks the button.
Why have you chosen to work in Cardiff?
I was born in Essex and moved to Bridgend when I was five, grew up there and then when I was 19 some friends of mine moved to Cardiff and had a spare room, so they asked me if I wanted to come to Cardiff. Then I met my girlfriend and now we live together so I literally have no reason to ever leave.
What inspires you about being here?
How close everything is. If I need to visit anyone that I’m working with I can get to them easily – I cycle a lot. It is really handy, very flat and easy to get around. All of my friends are here and there is just a nice community, everyone is really friendly. It’s not like living in Bristol where everyone has got a point to prove or living in London where you can’t get to know anyone for very long. There is a lot of people doing really cool stuff at the moment and there is always new stuff happening. Everyone is nice and you get to do stuff like this!
What challenges have you found in working in Cardiff?
I think people in Cardiff aren’t great at putting themselves out there, they don’t really like to shout about their skills and there isn’t one central location to find out about things. Creative Cardiff is brilliant but a lot of people don’t know about it and so don’t know where to look – they like it to be right infront of their faces. There needs to be better promotion of creative activity and circulation of creative news and opportunities in Cardiff.
How successful do you think Cardiff has been at making itself a creative capital, particularly in your area of work?
In terms of tech and digital, Facebook groups such as Cardiff Start have been a massive help – it is a main resource for promoting great things happening in Cardiff. Neil Cocker has done a brilliant job at promoting Cardiff as a tech, creative space and a lot of other people have done quite a lot of good work but Neil has definitely been the driving force behind it. I think creativity lies more in people than in things.
In your opinion, which three things need to happen to make Cardiff a more creative city?
Better publication of events and more people talking about what is happening in the city already. The Roald Dahl City of the Unexpected event was amazing - apparently, I missed it because I had to wait in for the repair man. He turned up at 5.30pm. I missed the whole thing. Sat in my flat all day with no internet or tv. Stuff like that has been really important but at the end of the day that was just one event that happened in Cardiff and it wasn’t brilliantly publicized. We need more large scale events like that which show people inside Cardiff and throughout the rest of the UK that Cardiff is a creative city, which I don’t think they know at the moment.
What do you think Creative Cardiff should try to achieve?
Really it is just building even more of a community. And teaching people that they are a creative when they might not think of themselves as a creative person. Personally, I think everyone has something creative about them – I think Creative Cardiff should educate people more on what creativity is and make them feel more involved in the scene. Get more people involved in the creative scene in the city!
Describe your favourite creative place to work in Cardiff.
I’ve made quite a lot of new friends through working at Tramshed Tech – not just new colleagues but actual friends which I think says a lot about the space. I mostly work on my own so it can be quite lonely if you’re not in a creative space or a hub.
Can you pick one creative person in Cardiff who we should go and find out more about?
I’m not sure I can pick just one – there are so many creative people in Cardiff! Russ Morris is probably one of Wales’ leading experts in games development online and he is a really lovely guy too, so you should talk to him.
What’s next for you? What projects are on the horizon? What new ideas are you working on?
Having a baby in June! We’re really excited, lots of emotional moments. I’m going to take a month off and then me and my partner will split our time, I’ll take two days off a week. So I’ll continue running the business and bring up the baby – hopefully it will work. Who knows!
