Nottingham & Nottinghamshire
The Nottingham region is being led by Nottingham City Council and encompasses Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.
Lead Organisation
Nottingham City Council
URL
Location
Nottingham & Nottinghamshire
About the region
Research by Nottingham Trent University revealed that Nottingham is fast becoming a hub for Creative and Digital Industries (CDI) and employment in the sector has grown faster than most major cities including London since 2015. This comes in spite of the fact that the take up of equity and finance for business in the region has historically been low.
Branded Create Growth N2 (CGN2), the team are focussing on the creative and digital sector across the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire area, particularly CreaTech, a significant sector in the region. They’re also looking to boost already thriving sectors such as digital marketing, app development and immersive experiences that support sectors from gaming and eSports, to architecture, culture and health.
One objective is to facilitate access to alternative finance. The East Midlands is bottom of the league when it comes to the take up of equity, and that’s something that we’d like to see improved through the Create Growth N2 Programme.
Alison Clark, East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA)’s Director of Culture, Visitor and Sport said:
With two universities, a thriving cultural scene and world-famous heritage, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire has untold potential that the team are hoping to unlock. By facilitating a portfolio of skills development, commercial and leadership capability and growth finance opportunities for creative businesses, the team are committed to developing the region’s appetite for innovation and investment – getting creatives engaged in the city and the wider economy.
Innovations in the Creative and Digital sector often set standards adopted across other industries. Games technologies like digital twins and immersive experiences frequently lead to high-value, high productivity applications in other fields, boosting our regional competitiveness. Expanding this sector will help other industries adopt new technologies. Skills developed in this sector are transferable to other high impact creative and technical activities.
Objectives and delivery
CGN2 set out to facilitate access to growth and innovation finance opportunities for creative businesses in the region. The team have a strategic focus on peer networking and learning opportunities with the aim of getting companies investment-ready, with proven market potential.
The team are delivering two main types of support across the region: one-to-one and group sessions, focused around learning to use and apply Augmented and Virtual Reality technologies, as well as business and leadership skills. The former includes exploration days to help founders discover new opportunities, followed by group activities covering particular themes and topics. Support for business skills has been based in cohorts focused around experience and stage of development.
By taking this dual approach, SME leaders have been able to learn skills and capabilities to enhance or develop new products or services. The support with strategy, value proposition pitching, business modelling, market research and marketing has provided the tools to help them to commercialise these and gain market traction. Support with leadership, financial management, and finance has helped to provide the skills and confidence to pitch to potential customers or investors.
Alison said:
Supporting Academic-Business Partnerships is one of EMCCA’s key objectives for this priority sector. This project links SMEs with Nottingham Business School, at Nottingham Trent University, and the University of Nottingham’s Virtual and Immersive Production Studio – a unique partnership. There is a clear correlation between universities providing high-quality support for the sector and the concentration of related businesses.
Impact and response
There’s been a great deal of interest from creative and digital businesses looking to get involved with the programme and the support is proving useful to bolster the many positive things already happening in the region.
Bringing creatives and business leaders together and creating an arena for people to relay their successes, concerns or challenges has had an immediate tangible impact on the region. We’ve experienced a vibrancy, both from early-stage founders and more established SME leaders, all testing their ideas and innovations in a supportive environment, before taking them out to market.
The team are making sure they’re giving a real leg up to those companies that are established and growing or that could be future success stories with a bit of help and intervention. There has been a great deal of peer learning and networking thanks to the group workshops, through cohorts such as our dynamic Futureproofed cohort supporting established digital and marketing agencies, or the Virtual and Immersive Production Programme, supporting AR/VR experimentation.
Alison said:
Working with successful programmes and iterating the support to our priority sectors is essential to ensure we continue to develop trust and build market awareness around how Business support can accelerate business growth.