Giving the Minister a true insight into the South West's strengths

by Caroline_Norbury on 07-Apr-11 14:58

Tomorrow South West Screen will introduce Ed Vaizey, the Minister for Creative Industries, to a number of the region's creative businesses. 

Chief Executive Caroline Norbury blogs on the importance of giving the Minister a true insight into our creative economy and discussing the challenges that companies face in person...

Ed Vaizey, the Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, is visiting Bristol and Bath to see for himself the vibrant business life, university research centres and cultural institutions that have led to these cities being regarded as hotbeds of innovation and named in the top 10 of significant creative clusters in the country (read the NESTA report here).

As part of his visit, South West Screen and Aardman are hosting a meeting with creative businesses of varying sizes and expertise. Ed will speak face to face to a cross section of the creative sector, including representatives from Future Publishing, Wonky Films, Proctor and Stevenson, Touch Productions, Fluffy Logic, Team Rubber, Sift Media, TLT Solicitors, HP Labs, Walk Tall Media, Icon Films, the BBC and our iFeatures studio. We are keen to make sure that Ed comes away with as full a picture possible of what is happening on the ground here, by updating him on the many issues that have been raised during the roundtables and business surveys we have conducted in past months.  

For example, back in February, we asked creative companies to complete a survey in order to help us feed into the Government’s Growth Review. 75 companies responded, most of which were based in Bath & Bristol. Of these, 65% were cash positive and 62% were profitable.

However, on the business development front, we found that:

• Only 8% had a relationship with someone who could help them scale their business (such as a media company, retailer or technology company)
• Only 4% had spoken to external people about investing in their business
• 50% didn’t produce monthly management accounts
• 60% didn’t have a 12 month forecast in place
• 72% didn’t know what the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) was.

We’re pleased to say that many of the issues we have discussed and raised with officials in the past months found their way into the 2011 Growth Statement and Budget. These included an increase in the R&D tax credit, action on orphan works, simplification of public procurement guidelines to encourage SME engagement, more favourable incentives for EIS and the development of more flexible apprenticeship models to mirror the freelance and SME nature of creative businesses. Importantly the government also announced their high-level commitment to ensure that digital content producers should be able to retain and exploit their IP for the content they produce for public sector bodies.

This is good news, but the fact remains that creative companies still face many structural and economic problems, such as access to capital, access to new markets and finding the right talent. Our survey has shown that as with SMEs in other sectors, creative businesses are unlikely to have non-executive directors on their board, or have access to partners who can help scale their business or use government support services.

South West Screen believes that unlike many other traditional business sectors the creative industries offer significant opportunities for growth and therefore require specific, bespoke support. We welcome the Government’s commitment to the creative industries and in particular the DCMS's support for the establishment of Creative England. This new national body, of which South West Screen will become a founding member, will deliver a coordinated approach to the growth and prosperity of the creative economy, with culture and innovation at its core.

We will run regular business surveys every six months so that we can continue to build a profile of companies based here and help input and shape ideas for intervention. Please take part wherever possible to help us build a truly reflective picture.

In the meantime, have you got a question for Ed Vaizey? Tweet it to us or email info@swscreen.co.uk and we will endeavour to put it to him!

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