Creative Industries
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport
defines the creative industries as:
'Those industries that have their origin in individual creativity,
skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job
creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual
property.'
They comprise the following sub-sectors:
Advertising; Architecture; Art and antiques market; Crafts; Design;
Designer Fashion; Film and video; Interactive leisure software;
Music; Performing arts; Publishing; Software and computer services;
Television and Radio.
The creative sector in the region has grown
almost exponentially in the last decade and originating from
Bristol, the South West now encompasses a rich eco-system of
creative talent including design, music, animation, film,
television, art, mobile content and illustration and has a spread
of regional centres of creativity in Bournemouth, Cornwall,
Plymouth as well as Bristol.
Business
The Creative Industries sector is broad – some 89,000 people
work directly in this sector with a further 55,000 working in
creative occupations outside the ‘pure’ sector in the region.
Nationally the whole sector contributed 8% of the UK’s GVA and is
growing faster than the rest of the economy.
The region has achieved international
recognition as the UK’s most prominent media centre outside London
(including two South West based companies in the Top 100
Interactive Agencies in the UK – Sift and E3). In Broadcast
Magazine’s Nations and Regions survey, eleven of the top 50
regional independent production companies are based in the South
West. Big hits produced in the region include Deal or no Deal
(Endemol), Planet Earth (BBC NHU), Skins (Company Pictures), and
Wallace and Gromit (Aardman).
Bristol is home to Europe’s leading Animation
business (Aardman) and 25% of the world’s natural history output
comes from businesses based in the city. The BBC has recently
recognised Bristol as its national centre for factual programming.
In addition to programming and entertainment, there is strong work
on advertising.
Regional Expertise
The Creative Industries in the South West are acknowledged
nationally as a regional strength, and more than a quarter of
researchers in the South West are in the Arts and Humanities.
There are over 7,700 creative students at 13 colleges and
universities, as well as several thousand students whose work
covers technical areas of digital media - many of which are leaders
in their respective fields and all of whom have developed strong
and synergistic links with business.
The National Centre for Computer Animation
(NCCA) at Bournemouth University is the UK’s leading animation
research group (RAE 5 and nominated UK’s top university for courses
in animation by 3D World Magazine two years running). The NCCA sits
within the BU Media School, the UK’s only Centre for Excellence in
Media Practice (as designated by HEFCE) and is also only one of two
accredited skillset screen and media academies in the UK.
The UK’s first Media centre, the
Watershed, opened here 25 years
ago and the city now hosts the newly opened Pervasive Media Studio, the first
of its kind in the UK. The Pervasive Media Studio will develop new
forms of media that are sensitive to where you are and what you are
doing, meeting the demands of technologies that are rapidly
changing the way we access information and entertainment.