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The Brixton Pound is a local currency. It’s money that sticks to Brixton. Brixton Pound’s creators hope that it will encourage use of local businesses and produce as well as ensuring money that is spend in Brixton, stays in Brixton.

The challenges Brixton Pound faces are 1) Get more businesses to take B£ 2) Get consumers to “ask for their change in Brixton pounds”.

Before the brainstorm descended into a very interesting debate on economics, these are the ideas we had

1. B£ Bling jewelry design competition. (Think big blingy rings and pendants with the B£ sign, instead of a dollar sign)

2. A poster campaign with the line “A Brixton Pound is worth more than a pound” and this month’s offers – lots of the businesses who accept B£ have money off deals if you use the local currency. These posters would work best in on community noticeboards and the like.

3. Get community leaders involved – ask local vicars and religious leaders to ask for next week’s collection in Brixton Pounds, then distribute leaflets as people are leaving the service.

4. Get children involved in a “Ask for your pocket money in B£” campaign.

5. Make more of the brilliant B£ logo by improving the “B£ accepted here” window sticker – something round (pound shaped) with the dots and grooves of a pound around the outside would be more instantly recognisable and would stand out from other window stickers.

6. Make “I asked for my change in B£” stickers available at the cash register – if people can see that others have supported Brixton Pounds, they are more likely to do so as well.

7. Capitalise on the existing community support for B£ by creating t-shirts for people to wear – this allows you to use your supporters to spread the word. The B£ imagery and logo are really appealing and would create very desirable clothing.

8. Look at ideas for stalls you could set up at community events so you can have a presence there; the Windrush Square opening party later in Feb; Lambeth Country Show and Streatham Festival. This would be a great place to start the B£ Bling competition. Or to give away “Ask for your pocket money in B£” money boxes.

9. B£’s first birthday is coming up – there should be a party to celebrate. We discussed a few money related themes for this. Brixton Pound Bankers Ball, The B£ Stock Exchange and so on.

10. There’s an existing leaflet aimed at businesses and consumers. We recommended having one leaflet for businesses and one for consumers because they both need different information and will respond better to different kinds of communication. The exisiting leaflet lists all the places that except B£ by area. We suggested creating genre specific flyers – B£ Dinning, B£ Pubs, B£ Style and so on. These flyers can be leaf in restaurants, pub, fashion store etc, respectively.

11. Change dishes, bills, till stickers and menus are an ideal place to remind people to ask for their change in B£. We suggested creating materials for these points, including round pound shaped “Ask for your pocket money in B£” stickers to go in the bottom of change dishes in pubs, bars and restaurants.

Find out more about the Brixton Pound and where to get/spend yours here http://brixtonpound.org

Spike Spondike is a livewire American creative full of ideas but a bit unsure of how to go about getting a job in the creative industry in London.

She came to Idea Shop with a lot of ideas and even more charisma and asked us to go through her CV and portfolio to give her the best possible chance of getting a job.

We were really impressed with the actual work but gave her a few pointers on her CV to make it more applicable to the British market as well as giving her a few contacts and recruitment companies who may be able to point her in the right direction.

Her CV and portfolio were presented in a rather kooky, creative way. We advised Spike to save the quirkiness for elsewhere and let the work speak for itself. She had a portfolio of two halves, half amazing conceptual creative work, half other stuff. After chatting to her for a while it became clear that the conceptual work was what excited her – happily that was also where she really shone. (She really is very talented). We suggested focusing her efforts on that work, rather than selling herself short on something she didn’t really want to do.

We also suggested she use a site like www.carbonmade.com for her online portfolio. This would allow her to focus on the work and not worry about doing, (or being judged on), web design/development.

And then for the quirkiness. We felt that in additional to a more traditional CV and portfolio, she could use her considerable creative talents to create a buzz around her work.  We talked about various ideas for a blog to celebrate her love of creative generalism and design diversity. We talked about the lovely lovely example of Make Something Cool Everyday by Brook Davies

http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Make-Something-Cool-Every-Day-2009/171640

We looked into ideas for a sticker campaign leading people to Spike’s blog or portfolio. We also discussed various guerilla stunts. But I can’t share any of these with you because it would ruin the surprise.

We wish this unique creative talent all the best in her search for work. Check out her blog here http://www.spikethedesigner.blogspot.com/

Posted by Jason Scott