Jeremy Keith

Aberdeen City Council is commissioning research to map the Creative Industries and their sub-sectors across Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. This is an important opportunity to gather solid data that can shape future support and help position the Creative Industries as a key economic driver for the region. Full information at the link below and interested parties will need to register on Public Contracts Scotland; https://lnkd.in/epCmMkDw #NorthEastCreatives #AberdeenCreatives #creativeindustry #culturalpolicy #datamapping #creativeindustryresearch

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Today I ran a deep-dive workshop on the new B Lab UK Purpose, Stakeholder & Governance (PSG) standard, and it’s fair to say this one changes the game. Nine of us B Corps gathered at the Hewett Recruitment | BCorp™ offices in Worcester with one big question: What does “purpose” really mean when it becomes the backbone of your governance? Most people assume purpose sits in brand or messaging. But the new PSG standard makes something very clear: Purpose isn’t cosmetic. It isn’t a marketing strapline. It isn’t positioning. It becomes the operating system your organisation runs on. Get it wrong, and you either box yourself in or drift towards “charity mode.” Get it right, and it becomes one of the most powerful strategic tools you have. To help us unpack it, I developed three practical frameworks: 1. The Purpose Triangle A simple approach to crafting a great purpose statement. It should be: • Connected to meaningful social or environmental outcomes • Rooted in your real strengths • Grounded in stakeholder reality Not fluffy. Not generic. Not superficial. Just true. 2. The Client / Decision Criteria Framework Purpose only becomes real when it guides all your decision-making. • Which clients you take on • Which clients you say NO to • Where you invest your time, money and attention • How you make these decisions 3. The PSG Loop Purpose → Decisions → Outcomes → Learning → Refinement A rhythm, not a one-off. A way to pressure-test and strengthen your purpose again and again until it works across your whole business in every real operational context. One thing really clicked for everyone: You don’t “write” a purpose statement. You discover it. You start with a first version. You run it through real decisions that affect your business. You refine it. You iterate again. You learn. You sharpen. And at every turn, your governance, culture, strategy, operations, and communications begin to align around something that truly matters. Everyone in the room left with a working draft - not perfect, but alive. Something they can now stress-test in the decisions they make tomorrow, next week, in the coming quarter. It was a great session. Everyone leaned in. A room full of purpose-driven peers, learning together, supporting each other, and wanting to raise the bar. If you’re recertifying under the new standards or looking to certify for the first time, PSG is foundational. Get this right, and the rest of the standards become easier to implement, measure, and live by. If you’d like support shaping your purpose statement, running the frameworks with your team, or embedding PSG in a way that actually works across your organisation, feel free to reach out. Happy to help. --- Thanks to everyone who took part. Be Inspired Films | Certified B Corp OLPRO | B Corp Certified DRPG Oakland International Limited | B Corp Certified Bespoke- Advice| B Corp Certified | Chartered Financial Planners Optimising IT | B Corp™ Hewett Recruitment | BCorp™

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This made me pause because visual arts funding still tends to be justified as a nice extra, rather than something fundamental. What often gets lost in these conversations is how much of what we call “rigour” relies on the same underlying skills. Pattern recognition. Spatial reasoning. Interpretation. The ability to sit with ambiguity without panicking. These are not marginal skills. They sit right at the centre of how people solve problems, including in mathematics. When creative subjects are treated as enrichment rather than infrastructure, education systems quietly narrow the range of thinking they allow to flourish. Over time, that narrowing shows up in who feels confident, who persists, and who decides that certain spaces are simply not meant for them. Systems don’t just teach content. They signal belonging. Read more in the comments...

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Does the relationship between AI and disabled people interest you? With the help of incredible, insightful contributors such as Paul Ralph, I have just launched a website that is very meaningful and - hopefully - insightful. It's called 'Access to AI', and it delves into the many ways in which AI is impacting the lives of disabled people in the UK. From inclusive chatbots to accurate depictions of disability via AI-generated art, there are certainly some promising developments. To counter this, there are more worrying aspects such as neurodiverse musicians facing potential job losses, as well as nationwide legislation discussions which face delays and insuffifient conversations regarding accessibility. To discover more, pmease check out the website - it offers videos and articles, with me having spent the summer creating everything as part of my Masters production dissertation at University of Strathclyde. Link: https://lnkd.in/e4AYstfG

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When can we admit that some of our current use of #AI is actually just sucking us dry? So far it’s: 🌊 Using water like there’s literally no tomorrow 🧠 Making us all a bit less intelligent  🎓 Putting graduates out of entry-level roles 😈 Resorting to ‘misaligned behaviour’ when it feels threatened (aka blackmail) I know it’s here to stay. I’m not averse to it as a tool but that’s the point – it’s not just a tool that enables us to be better or do better. It’s making us lazy, taking away our critical thinking skills and original thought. When you use AI LLMs in particular, everything written or created has been rehashed from content that already exists, at best. At worst, it’s been made up because AI had a meltdown and did some hallucinating. Nothing you end up with is truly original. If you’re happy with mediocre, that’s fine. If not, #HireAHuman #HumanMadeContent #HumanWriting #Copywriting ********************************************************************************* I’m a #FreelanceWriter and I really care about the words I use. I read English linguistics and literature at uni and use my English language skills and knowledge to write insightful and informative content to help you connect with readers.

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This morning's reading, as I struggled through a 6am gym session (pull) I didn't want to do, made a great argument: Your AI prompts aren’t the problem; your foundations are. In video production, the strongest AI work isn’t coming from clever text prompts. It’s coming from people who’ve done the hard work first: visual research, reference selection, constraints, taste. The prompt just executes decisions that were already made upstream. That instantly took me back to something I wrote last year about the 80/20 rule with AI. 🏋️ AI can do 80% of the heavy lifting. The last 20% still belongs to humans: judgment, creativity, strategic thinking. What struck me is how cleanly this translates to marketing and operations. If you don’t understand your audience, if you haven’t studied competitors, if you haven’t thought through customer psychology, intent, or context, Then no amount of prompting will save you. AI doesn’t respond to what you want. It responds to what you give it. In filmmaking, that’s visual lineage. In marketing, it’s research, positioning, and clarity. In operations, it’s systems, workflows, and constraints. Prompting isn’t where the work starts. It’s where the work gets revealed. The better the foundations, the quieter the prompt needs to be. That’s true in the editing suite. It’s true in marketing. And it’s why AI will never replace human strategy or judgement, it just exposes whether they were there in the first place... #AI #PromptEngineering

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Over the last few weeks, we've been checking out nurseries for our daughter, and it's been a great reminder that AI isn't going to affect every industry. And that those of us who use AI, work with it, talk and read about it, can get trapped in 'AI bubbles'. Yet the nursery industry exists, contributes to local and global economies, and AI isn't used. Or needed. Or wanted. It's a purely human industry. As we look around, what my Wife and I are basing our decision on is primarily the human element. The interactions with the staff (all have been amazing so far), how they interact with the kids and how our daughter feels while she is there. There is a massive element of trust, and seeing AI in that type of environment would actually be detrimental. I can't think of a single way that any type of AI or automation would be beneficial. Mainly because there has to be a high level of trust to entrust your child with them. AI would damage that trust. Which can be mirrored in business applications. The higher the level of trust required, the more you need a human in the loop. Any other AI-free industries that spring to mind? 

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This is a great read on"Test, Learn, and Grow" "Test & Learn is a way of working in which a mixed discipline team gets up close to a complex problem and works in rapid feedback loops of real world experimentation. It borrows from agile software development and user-centred design, but applies these methods more broadly to all aspects of end-to-end service design and delivery, and policy development, and even to governance and the wider operating environment." For me, Test, Learn & Grow is just good design practice. Design brings the humility to let the user lead and the vision to scale the results. When we integrate design into the heart of government delivery, we're building better systems with those affected by and delivering policies, services or operating environments.

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I'm afraid we're going to need to wait a little bit longer before we can AI our way through an infographic, something I'd love for it to actually be able to do, as it'd save me a lot of time on Photoshop if it could, but it looks like text is STILL an issue to DALL E! I naively thought we were past this, but no, looks like it's still only useful as an abstract concept designer or base template generator for manual editing in Adobe or Canva. Don't even get me started on accurate charts and technical diagrams with AI (you'd think it'd understand visualising data but it really doesn't) 🙄 I'm sure it'll get there in the end, but let the below spelling errors, nonsense placeholder notation, inconsistencies and whatever the hell happened in the bottom right corner serve as a wake up call to how far we've still got to go!

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Last week I talked about those “secret calculator apps” that are actually hidden photo vaults. This week, I want to mention something linked to that: the BBC iPlayer series Wild Cherry. It may look like a standard teen series, but it shows a lot of what young people are dealing with today: 1. Hidden apps and unmonitored spaces 2. Social media pressure and the culture of “performing” online 3. Dangerous trends, challenges and attention-seeking behaviours 4.Teen identity, belonging, emotional regulation and fitting in 5. Parent–child disconnection in a world of constant notifications Even if your school bans phones, these issues may still happen. Most online safety problems start outside school on the bus, in bedrooms, on late-night chats, on apps parents haven’t heard of and schools end up dealing with the impact the next day. And for parents, this is the reality: Our children’s “hang-out space” is no longer in parks or shopping centres. It’s on Snapchat, TikTok, Discord, Roblox, Instagram… and yes, sometimes in hidden vault apps. For schools, teachers and safeguarding leads: 1. Phone bans help remove distractions, but they don’t stop issues that start at home or online late at night. Dont just stop at a ban. 2. Build digital wellbeing into everyday school life, not just assemblies. 3. Have a clear reporting pathway so students feel safe raising concerns. 4. Work with parents so school and home are aligned on boundaries. 5. Remember that online behaviour is often linked to emotional needs belonging, attention, stress, friendship problems. Advice for Parents 1. Build emotional connection offline this is what strengthens trust and helps children open up. 2. Find activities you both enjoy: walks, long drives, cooking, board games, journaling together, or a hobby you can share. 3. Keep phones out of bedrooms at night to reduce late-night stress and group-chat drama. 4. Instead of jumping to bans, focus on having regular, low-pressure conversations about how certain apps or interactions make them feel. 5. Make sure your child knows they can come to you without fear of punishment this alone prevents so many problems from escalating. Share this with another parent or teacher in your network Full series : https://lnkd.in/eq2efKgY

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There’s so much noise around AI at the moment, and a lot of it feels either very technical or not actually that relevant to how small businesses run day to day. So, we’ve introduced something simple. We’re now offering a 1-hour AI Strategy Call (£95 + VAT) with Leena, who’s recently joined us as our AI & Systems Consultant. What I really like about how she works is that she doesn’t jump straight into tools. She starts with how your business actually operates - what feels clunky, what takes too long, what’s being done manually - and then looks at where AI might realistically help. Sometimes it’s small changes. But they’re the changes that actually make a difference. If you’ve been curious about AI but haven’t quite known where to begin, this is a really easy starting point. 🙃

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