Derby and Derbyshire Creative Industries Strategy

This commission comes at a time when Derbyshire’s creative economy has been identified as the fastest growing in the East Midlands in terms of both jobs and businesses.

The strategy has, therefore, a significant platform of success to build on. These include the achievements of the partners involved in delivering elements of an ambitious programme of work outlined in 'Making Connections', an earlier report on the creative industries such as the establishment of the Creative Industries Network (CIN), delivery of specialist targeted support through the Focussing Creativity programme and the creation of dedicated workspace for the sector in Banks Mill and Friar Gate amongst others.

The process of developing the strategy has been informed by a far reaching desk review and extensive consultation with creative businesses and stakeholders. The key findings of these are available in separate summary documents.

The vision for the strategy is that "Derby and Derbyshire will be the place of choice for creative people to live, work, set up their businesses and develop the creative economy in ways which bring further economic and cultural benefits to the area."

It sets out how this will be achieved by:

• presenting Derby and Derbyshire as a high quality environment for creative businesses and people
• growing the local creative economy by attracting more talented people to live, work and run their businesses in the area
• investing in a high quality infrastructure in terms of workspace, business support and skills development
• enabling those with talent to reinvest it through their contribution to the local culture and economy.

It identifies steps that need to be taken to achieve this:

• marketing the creativity of the area through Marketing Derby, Destination Management Partnership and Derbyshire Arts Partnership in order to raise the profile of the area and attract people to live in or visit the area
• providing a series of hubs offering workspace, access to information, networking and intensive one to one business support to help new businesses to establish and existing businesses to grow
• developing access to market opportunities, both local consumer markets and gateways to markets outside the area
• developing a high level strategic approach to supporting growth in the computer games cluster
• integrating cultural and economic objectives in order to capture the 'spillover' effects of the sector and contribute to the physical and social regeneration of rural and urban communities
• investing in the generation of new talent through creative education and support pathways to employment such as apprenticeships

You can download the full report.

last updated: 13-11-2008 10:59

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