By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter
More than £500,000 will be spent on providing tailored support to around 60 creative and digital businesses across Nottingham.
Nottingham City Council says the city has a “large and growing” number of businesses in the creative and digital sector, with the exact number thought to be more than 6,000.
However, it says one of the most significant barriers to their growth has been successfully seeking out and attracting external investment.
The Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) has now granted the council £520,000 to employ an economic development project manager and fund tailored support programmes for businesses.
“The Create Growth Programme (CGP) is a programme funded by the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) to support the creative and digital sector grow outside of London and the South East,” delegated decision documents say.
“It will address one of the identified barriers to growth in that the sector does not seek out or attract external investment.
“The programme aims to change this by investing in local and regional partnerships to run programmes targeting companies with high growth potential to achieve that potential, through external investment.
“This funding round was launched in Summer 2023, and a local consortium led by Nottingham City Council, covering Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, bid and was successful.
“The programme runs to March 2025 and will engage with over 250 potential and actual high growth businesses, with a view to 62 businesses participating in the programme.”
The support programmes for each business will run for two to three months.
They will include small workshops and mentoring activities to help provide skills for companies.
Pathways for growth in immersive technology, led by the University of Nottingham, will be provided alongside small grants to help businesses buy consultancy support to make any required changes to their organisations.
Partners receiving funding to help provide support include Invest in Nottingham (£2,000), NBV Enterprise Solutions (£113,000), the council (£123,180), Nottinghamshire County Council (£49,700), Nottingham Trent University (£168,853) and the University of Nottingham (£72,424).
It comes after the council launched its Economic Plan to help boost Nottingham’s local economy over the next ten years.
The ambitions of the plan, which residents had their chance to have a say on earlier this year, include the creation of 20,000 new jobs, £4bn in regeneration investment, generating £1bn of additional Gross Value Added (GVA) and developing better infrastructure and services.
This plan identifies support for the creative sector as a key priority in developing the local economy, with the funding going some way to meeting this ambition.
