Shaun Woodward MP is a leading figure in Gordon Brown's cabinet. The secretary for Northern Ireland, and former Culture Minister, visited Team UD on September 3rd and gave an exclusive interview to TheUpDown. Check out the Q&A for an insight into his own humble roots, his passion for creativity and why he believes that education is the key to success.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Shaun: I had no idea starting out in life what I was going to do. I came from a pretty ordinary family. Everyone left school at 15 in my family - nobody had been to college, nobody went to university, nobody had any ambition to stay on at school. My dad was wondering why I didn’t go and get a 'proper job'. I regard what you are doing here as getting a 'proper job' – my dad wouldn’t have recognised that.

Most of us think about a journey as a beginning, middle and an end. What I found in life was that I didn’t even know where the beginning was, let alone the middle… and I had absolutely no idea where the end was.

“We didn’t have a book in the house, we didn’t have any music in the house, growing up. It was the family in the street who lived opposite that gave me the ambition and told me that I didn’t have to accept my lot in life.”

I had a number of different careers. I had ten years in the television industry and then I got into this really bizarre game called politics. By the way, a top tip in politics is to decide which party you want to be in, because I made a mistake of choosing the wrong party to start with and I had to correct it.

I say that to you because it is important that you never give up. If you really want to do something – never, ever give up. The great thing about this place, and what this particular government believes in, is that it creates opportunities for people. And this place seems to me absolutely about creating opportunity. I spent a year being in charge of the creative industries in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and I worked very closely with Fergal Sharkey (pictured below). Five-years ago we were very much into the idea of creating more musical spaces for people. A lot of my best friends are in the music industry. A lot of them have done well and some of them have struggled.

Fergal used to sing in a band called The Undertones. He gave up 20 years ago, but what he said was that he gave up when he was doing a concert in Rio and there were 800,000 people in the audience. He thought that he would quit while he was ahead. He never sung a concert since. But since then he’s put a huge amount of effort into creating spaces for young people particularly to really get into the business. And he used to bang on my door and bang onto me all the time about the importance of spaces like this to start the many, many journeys that don’t have to just begin at 16, 17, 18 or any particular age; places that help you develop yourself and the community can be part of it.

THE ECONOMICS OF CREATIVITY

What I heard this morning was a fantastic group of different people and talents. One of the things about our country is that we have this amazing creative talent. Now why does creative talent matter here? Well, I’ll tell you why it matters. Everyone bangs on about the banking industry and the finance industry, but if you take all the creative industries – music, video games, televisions, film software production - if you take them all together, they are now producing more money for this country than the financial services industry

Everybody wants an iPod and an iPod is made in China, but where does the content come from that most people want on their iPod? And what is the language in which it is spoken? So we are sitting on an absolute gold mine in this country, because you actually work in the language that everybody wants - whether its China, India or America. Everybody wants this creative output, much of which comes from this country… much of which is probably sitting in this room - it always amazes me that we in this country have never really quite got our heads around that fact. We’ve always tended to see the arts as something that entertains us on the outside. We don’t see it as something that is at the heart of our future as a country – not just as a community, but as a whole country.

You are financially, intellectually and entertainment wise far more important than banking and financial services. The future for us is the content we create. We’ll never be able to make the cheapest iPod, the cheapest car, the cheapest whatever. We might design it, but at the end of the day, the content for it - whether it be in music, film, television or the games industry - is here and it’s in this room; it’s in the many places like this up and down the country. I passionately believe in the importance of encouraging the putting of money into developing the talent that sits in this room and elsewhere.

THE OLYMPIC SPIRIT

The great thing about the Olympics is that it is a great opportunity to re-energise some of this. The Olympics is going to bring the world’s media for a period of 4 - 5 months before the Olympic starts and for the Olympic period itself. There are going to be tens of thousands of them here. People are going to come with an interest in the area.

Let’s be frank, you have something that my constituency, which is up in Liverpool, hasn’t got. You guys are where it is at. So there is going to be an extraordinary level of interest in the run up. You’re going to see endless magazine pieces, newspaper features and television programmes - not just about the Olympics, but where the Olympics is happening.

"We’ll never be able to make the cheapest iPod, the cheapest car, the cheapest whatever. We might design it. But at the end of the day, the content for it, whether it be in music, film or television, or the games industry is here and it’s in this room."

You are going to find people really up for coming here and seeing this talent. This morning I’ve seen some fantastic talent and it’s been a real privilege for me. You’re amazing and I feel that somewhere like this is a great place to start your many, many journeys.

The one thing I’d like to leave you with is, don’t ever give up. Don’t ever let anyone say you’re not good enough. If you want to succeed you will. The people who organise and run this place really get the point of it. My job is to create opportunity and to create funding for you to do this. You can never have enough money, but I think things are changing. It is getting better. Whether it is the Lottery or schemes coming out of the Olympics, there is an ambition here to make places like this really work. Good luck with everything you do. Thank you very much for giving up your time to show me something. When I go off to see my cabinet colleagues and the Prime Minster afterwards, I promise I will be talking about his place.

Q&A SESSION: FROM BELFAST TO BOW

How did you find making the transition from culture to Secretary for Northern Ireland?

Shaun: Everything you do in life is useful. Although they are seemingly quite different, learning to bring people together and being ambitious for the things that people want to achieve, learning to use your talent to help people achieve, in that sense they are very similar. If you are working in the creative industries, you are learning to work as a team.

One of you talked about working on the business side. We need people working on the business side. We really need people to develop the skills, whether it’s marketing, promotions, rights and copyright protection - all of that is important. Many of these skills become generic. In the end, what they have in common – from my position – is that they are about people and loving working with people. Getting a real kick seeing people do things that they might not have been able to do for themselves, and using the tools that you have got to help people find a voice; whether it's finding a voice in a documentary about someone who may have had a still born baby or about race riots or whatever else it might be. That’s about giving them a voice and creating a TV programme or movie to help them say that thing.

Getting into politics is about helping people in a constituency like mine, which is one of the poorest in the country, in St Helens just outside Liverpool. It’s about helping them get a voice, helping them get an opportunity because they all lost their jobs when Mrs Thatcher closed the pits and a number of factories.

Being in Northern Island is about helping people who never got an opportunity because for 40 years two different communities were too busy knocking the hell out of one another leading to nearly 4000 people losing their lives. We are trying to bring people together to get a sense of where we might go with this.

It’s really interesting that in Belfast today we have an incredibly thriving creative industry, because as you probably know, very often, where things have been difficult, where things have been gritty and things have been on the edge, it stops you being soft and mushy. It’s that drive that makes you want to go out and do something. That’s the link between Belfast and here.

Do you have any words of advice?

Shaun: Former president of America, Ronald Regan (1980-1988) used to have a paperweight on his desk, which somebody was kind enough to give to me. It says on it ‘You can achieve anything in life, if you let other people take the credit’. I think that’s quite a good thing to remember.

If you want to get on, let Simon Cowell take the credit. I wouldn’t sign his contract, but I’d let him take the credit. If he feels he’s created talent then let him. The point is, you will be that talent and other people will see it.

UD Creative: There seems to be so few opportunities out there for young people who have graduated from university and are looking to break into the creative industries. As a person coming from a working class background, how do I get the help I need?

Shaun: You already have something that allows you to even ask the question. My older brothers, who left school at 15, never even knew the questions. I am passionate about going to university. We have a target of 50% going to university. I think it should be 80%. People say we need plumbers and electricians… my view about that is simple – what’s wrong with an educated plumber?

“When I go off to see my cabinet colleagues and the Prime Minster afterwards, I promise I will be talking about this place.”

What going to college and university does, more than anything, is open your mind so that you start to ask the right questions. Bernard Shaw once spoke about ‘Not accepting the world as it is, but as it might be’.

For all the problems you have, you begin to question the world with a view not to end up a cynical person. You’re ambitious. In that ambition you have a desire to get on. The great thing about that desire to get on is that you will take people with you. If one of you succeeds in the music industry, you will take a bunch of people with you. You described yourself as working class. There will be kids in your street who will hold you up as a place they want go to and it will open up for them a sense that the world doesn’t have to be as it. It can be better. I can do better. My family can do better. We can all do better.

College, university and learning is great. Of course some people have it in them anyway. Some people have it, whether they’re working class or not. Some parents are just brilliant at giving their children that confidence. But in my family we didn’t have a book in the house, we didn’t have any music in the house growing up.

It was the family in the street who lived opposite that gave me the ambition and told me that I didn’t have to accept my lot in life, that it could be different, and that's what I think you’ve been given by university. There are problems, and you have articulated them very well, but it has given you something. It has given you access to something out there that’s given you a real break.

There would be nothing wrong with it if you just use it for yourself, because you are entitled to that. But you can also use it to inspire other people. You can use it to inspire family members and friends. How many people in your family have been to university looking back over the last 15-20 years?

UD Creative: Just one.

Shaun: How many people can we include in your extended family? Aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews…

UD Creative: Around 50 to 100 people.

Shaun: That is my point. You are the torch carrier for your family. Your life has so many opportunities. You can genuinely say, “What am I going to do?"

It will still be tough, of course it will. The point is that there are so many things you can do. The other 49 never got that chance. Why? Because nobody gave them the key. You took the key and you went through the door. You had to do the work to get through the door. But the point is you chose to go through it. On the other side it’s a new world. And that new world is exciting and it’s got opportunities. There are no guarantees. The opportunities, I dare say, that are open to you, compared to the other 49, are so different.

PARTING WORDS

Shaun: The piece of advice I give you for a happy life is get on with it for the next 10 years. But in 10 years time just have a health check on this and make sure you haven’t left them all behind. Make sure you’re still connected to them. Go find those younger ones and get them on the ladder. They may need some help. They may need to be told why it’s worth getting on that ladder, but I’m absolutely sure that the ladder you put yourself on, and are climbing, is going to make your life really fulfilled. And if you want to give something back, just make sure you encourage a few more of them to get on that ladder as well.

Big thank you to Natalie, Becca, Eunice, DJ Wonder and the whole team for helping to organise the presentation.

PICS: YINKA | WORDS: FUSION

LINKS:

• Find out more about Shaun Woodward's visit to Urban Development right here