Caroline Norbury celebrates a year in business and the small steps being taken towards a big future for British talent
Looking back on Creative England's first 12 months, it's easy to see and celebrate the big things we've achieved: working with 500 companies; investing over £500,000 in new and emerging talent, and securing £5m from the government's Regional Growth Fund to invest in digital and creative businesses. These are all reasons to believe we're heading in the right direction, but however good these facts are, it is just as useful to reflect on the little things – small yet significant.
Just as George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life gets to see a world in which he didn't exist, it's a good exercise for us to see what would have happened (or not happened) if our organisations had never been born. What little, but vital things would not have been put in place?
The roots of Creative England are the regional screen agencies. Small, lean, tightly focused organisations set up in 2001 to initially facilitate the development of filmmaking outside of London, but which over time grew to invest in and support other types of screen businesses: TV, digital media and games.
Those agencies are now consolidated under Creative England with our first ambition to preserve those close contacts with talent and businesses on the ground at a local level. This is a hard task – money is tight and our start-up budget was easily a third of what was there in 2001. However, we've adopted a distributed approach, with teams working throughout the country to achieve it.
The added value of now being one national organisation is that our voice gets heard, and this means that local experience also gets recognised. For example, in our first year we secured £5m to invest in new digital businesses in hard-hit areas of the English regions. As one body we have far more visibility; it's easier to have a direct relationship with the government and be the voice that articulates the needs of our businesses.
And this "voice" is underpinned by practical, on the ground help. In the last few months we've built and launched all-England crew and location databases, to not only support UK television and film production but also attract overseas producers. We've put on crew nights bringing together 1,400 crew members in cities outside London. Increasingly as more and more of us work on a freelance basis the need to meet others, make new contacts for work or just share stories becomes harder. It's a little thing, but just bringing people together is one of the most effective things we can do.
Far too many creative businesses are both under-capitalised and under-skilled. We recognise that talent development and business development have to go hand in hand to create a successful, sustainable enterprise. That's why we offer what we call a 'money plus' service that combines mentoring and business support with access to finance and access to markets. Our view is that in the networked economy every micro-business can think of itself as a global business, wherever it's located, providing it takes the time to build the knowledge and relationships it needs for success.
The foundation of all creative businesses is good ideas, but getting a shot at turning those good ideas into a new format, a new product or a new application is hard. The small investments we've been able to make to fund proof-of-concept proposals and prototypes can really make the difference, turning an idea into a revenue-generating proposition.
In our talent development area too, as well as launching iFeatures2 (our initiative supporting filmmakers to make their first feature film) we've also created new, bespoke approaches such as Elevator. This tailor-made programme aims to help talented filmmakers bridge the significant gap between making short films and features, giving them access to mentors, festivals and opportunities to help them further their career.
We've also recently partnered with the National Film and Television School to offer two bursaries on the Entrepreneurial Producing diploma for producers based in the English regions – an intervention which is small in scope, but potentially very significant in the longer term.
One thing that underpins all these interventions is a belief that, although the creative industries have weathered the recession better than many other sectors, it is unlikely they'll continue to thrive without future support and development. We believe that great ideas don't become great businesses by magic – they need support, they need investment and they need routes to market.
Another thing they need is willing partners. It is not our plan to be a new massive public agency, more one that can build connections and draw in fellow travellers to help us on our journey. We've made a good start in our first year – more than just the first few steps.
Caroline Norbury is chief executive of Creative England – follow both on Twitter @CarolineNorbury and @CreativeEngland
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