Spotlight shines on Liverpool City Region Digital & Creative sector

Posted 13th February 2017
 
 
6 minutes read
 
Icon indicating article type.

Three of the City Region’s top creative and digital talent has joined the Liverpool City Region Digital & Creative Board.

Chelsea Slater from Liverpool Girl Geeks, Amanda Follit from Amaze and Ian Finch from Mando are the three newest members who will help shape the sector and build upon its strengths as a major UK Digital & Creative hotbed.

The Digital and Creative sector is of critical importance for the Liverpool City Region and forms one of the key growth sectors as identified in the City Region’s Growth Strategy as central to driving sustained growth of the economy over the coming decades.

The Board has been established by the Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership, on behalf of the City Region and brings a variety of experiences across the digital, cultural, commercial and academic sectors to drive, promote and accelerate the City Region’s global position in the digital and cultural industries.

This will be based on the City Region’s distinctive assets, including: STFC Hartree Centre at SciTech Daresbury, which houses the most powerful supercomputer in the UK dedicated to industrial R&D; Baltic Creative, home to more than 450 firms including working in the digital and creative sector; FACT, one of the UK’s leading media arts centres; the AIMES N3 data storage facility at Wavertree Technology Campus; Sensor City, one of the first sensor technology incubators in the world; plus the Materials Innovation Factory – the intended global leader in computer-aided materials science & discovery – both opening this year.

Kate Willard, Chair of the Digital and Creative Board said: “Liverpool City Region is a thriving, creative digital hotbed working with global clients on a ground-breaking portfolio of work. This City Region has the second fastest growing technology start-up cluster in the country with around 3,500 businesses making an annual GVA contribution of almost £900m – we want to grow this

“The breadth of what we do here in the City Region is truly awe-inspiring – from Big Data Analytics and High-Performance Computing and Internet of Things (IoT) through to digital marketing, film, TV and e-health – all making an important contribution to the economy. It’s no wonder that the City Region is seen as a beacon of excellence in the digital and creative industries. That is why having a Digital & Creative Board is so important – it means we can work together on an ambitious portfolio of activity to accelerate the development and competitiveness of this sector”; explained Kate.

Kate added: “We are not a Board that will be making decisions behind closed doors – we want to get out there and work closely with businesses to help make the Digital & Creative sector even bigger and better than it already is. In fact, only the other week, we held our first event to discuss the skills and business support needed to enable businesses in the sector to grow and thrive. The event was an amazing success due to our fabulous speakers, facilitators Liverpool Girl Geeks, and of course the incredible audience who were really engaged with what we are trying to do.”

The first of ‘Our Digital Futures’ workshops was held at City of Liverpool College focused on two of the Digital and Creative Board’s priorities – Skills and Business support. Presentations were given by Dan Rubel, Group Strategy & Communications Director at Shop Direct, Lou Cordwell, Founder & CEO at Magnetic North and Lee Frater, ‎Head of Strategic Influencer Partnerships, North, SMS&P at Microsoft.

Feedback from the session will be discussed at the next Digital and Creative Board meeting and Our Digital Future – Episode 2 will take place in 19th October at Shop Direct. Further information on the event can be found here.