South By South West is a music Festival which takes place in Austin every year and draws bands and music industry from all over the world. Whilst covering the 'alternative counter-festival' for the Face we made a film with Mexican young people from the city. We were fascinated by the number of people in Austin who managed to earn their living in the creative industry. Some said this was because it was an old hippy draw but there was more to it than met the eye.

A key highlight was our trip to a bridge just outside the city centre. 1.5 million bats- ALL FEMALE!!- gather there every year and at about 6.45pm as they file away to feed, they turn the sky black. The bats are vegetarian and somehow, even though there are so many of them (this is the biggest bat colony in the world) they manage not to hit eachother in the air.

We saw some really good bands: Dead Meadow, Earth, The Oxes, 90 Day men but spent most of our time filming young people and talking to them about life in Texas. We befriended a local Botanist, Kelly, who took us to the hot springs and over the road from our hotel was the Helen Keller school for the deaf, while just down the street was a school for the blind.

Most of the young people we met had some pretty unusual places that they had converted to hang-outs. 'Terrible 1( T1)' the skate ramp and then a BMX park that looked like camel humps. Nina visited Round Rock and saw at first hand how religious many of the young people were. We shot about 18 hours of film and took some 200 photos. One morning we even awoke at our hotel to find Walmart filming an advert with a crew of 75 people and the 'ideal family' whom had been flown in from Kentucky to sit on the porch and 'look local'.

It's worth checking out Richard Florida, the economist's writing on why Austin is so prosperous in the creative industries. It is one of the fastest growing economies in the USA. Nina and I had one of the most inspiring trips of our life whilst shooting our film.