Creative Scale-Up programme returns to boost Greater Manchester creative businesses

CREATIVE industry businesses in Greater Manchester can receive a timely boost to help their recovery from the impacts of COVID-19 with the return of an innovative programme that will help them to scale-up and grow.

With a vibrant community of more than 8,500 creative businesses, generating £1.4 billion of economic growth annually, Greater Manchester boasts one of the country’s leading creative clusters outside of London.

Some businesses that have already benefited from the programme include Engage Hub, Peoples History Museum, Creative Tourist, Buffalo 7, Prospect Games and Beatstream Media.

However, the COVID-19 lockdown has created many challenges for the local industry, meaning there has never been a better time to receive advice and support from the Creative Scale-Up programme, which was launched in January by the Growth Company and Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and fully funded by DCMS.

The programme will be tackling gaps in investment and growth in the Creative sector, while empowering creative businesses to realise their full growth potential, providing the training and tools necessary to take creative businesses to the next level.

It has been adapted to help businesses tackle the current challenges they are facing due to COVID-19 as well enabling them to position themselves as strongly as possible to move into the recovery phase and bounce back into growth.

One local business to have benefitted from this advice during the pandemic is Mustard Media, Europe’s leading festivals and events accelerator. Rob Masterson, Managing Director, explained: “It’s been fantastic having a senior advisor available to update us individually and help us navigate the coronavirus crisis which has unfortunately had an adverse impact on the live music and festival industry.

“It’s been great having the comprehensive training modules with a range of tools needed to scale up. The breadth of the modules and the fact they’ve been available as webinars has been really helpful to educate the team and has allowed us to be flexible with attending during an uncertain period.

“We’re very much looking forward to applying the sales and marketing and IP knowledge to future innovation projects as we seek to steer the business at this time. We’ve had some very productive discussions with the department for international trade too, helping introduce us to new connections in the US. We hope to build upon these as we seek to expand the business once we get back into growth mode.”

Sam Whitear, Creative Scale-Up Programme Project Manager, said: “The creative industries in Greater Manchester have thrived in recent years, but there is no doubt that COVID-19 has seen a lot of projects come to a halt and left these businesses facing all-new and unexpected challenges.

“We launched Creative Scale-Up in January as a programme to help enable businesses to strengthen and sharpen up their skills, review their strategies and benefit from peer-to-peer learning, and all of these are even more important right now.

“All businesses will be needing to focus on their current challenges, but also planning for the growth they are aiming for when the world of work has returned to normality again.

“Creative Scale-Up adds further scale and depth to the services we are offering for the creative sector, including the relaunched Greater Connected programme, and crucially it supports Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s Build Back Better programme aimed at helping the region come back stronger after COVID-19.”

In line with the Government’s social distancing policies, all modules of the Creative Scale-Up programme will now be delivered virtually.

Businesses in the creative industries in Greater Manchester can still sign up for the few remaining places by 12 June at businessgrowthhub.com/creative-scale-up-programme.

Photo caption: (L-R) Andrew Bennison, Managing Director at Prospect Games Ltd, Helen Fish, Co-founder / CMO at Beatstream Media LTD, Sam Whitear, the Creative Scale-Up Programme Project Manager, and Rob Masterson, Managing Director at Mustard Media, at the launch of the Creative Scale-Up programme.