Localised Blogging
Saturday, October 3rd, 2009NEON had the pleasure of spending Friday evening in the city of Leeds to meet local bloggers. The meeting was held at Azucar, a South American inspired tapas and cantina bar in Brewery Wharf. The bar is partly owned by Howard Marks who lives nearby but evidently does not blog as all we saw of him were publicity shots on the walls.
The meeting was hosted by Havana Cultura – the cultural initiative from Havana Club. We all checked out the impressive website, discussed their Twitter campaign (launches October 19th), the Gilles Peterson/Havana Cultura CD launch (October 26th) and upcoming Havana Club parties planned for Leeds and Manchester.
During the evening NEON met a wonderful group of people, discovered an amazing array of blogs and had a real insight into localised blogging. In the big smoke blogging is prolific; industries are created such as The Underground Restaurant thanks to ease of communication, bloggers are recognised, respected and remunerated such as the Dos Hermanos with their book deal and what started life as the Slutty Fringe music blog has now turned into a go-to culture and lifestyle site. It’s exciting and fast moving and possibilities are endless – we all know the Belle Du Jour story and next in line for blogger exploitation is fashion (just)teen Tavi.
It was obvious from speaking to local bloggers that the unique magic of localised blogging was the desire to nurture community rather than their respective sites. As well as producing excellent blogs with great content there is a overriding communal pride for Leeds and the surrounding area.
NEON hopes that this will not be left behind when these blogs will inevitably be swept up and pushed into the limelight as it is this pride that produces such honest and entertaining reads accessible to all, whether you live in Leeds or not. See our previous post for the hot list.
