Councillor Jemima Laing (Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Children’s Social Care, Culture and Communications) introduced the item and highlighted:

a)    As a city and a Council, Plymouth had been a constant champion for culture against a backdrop of national cuts and continued to invest in culture, recognising its value and significant contribution to the city, and to society;

b)    The strategic approach had been very successful in securing external partnerships and investment, including Arts Council funding of over £4 million each year in eight cultural organisations, and had allowed the development and growth of culture infrastructure, including projects such as The Box and Market Hall;

c)    There was an identified need and opportunity to apply the methodology or tailored strategic partnerships and investment to creative industries;

d)    The cultural sector and creative industries were connected, but were not the same and required separate strategies;

e)    There were 648 registered companies in the creative industries, employing around 5,000 people and a further 4,000 in the wider economy, accounting for 2.1% of employment in Plymouth and contributed nearly £135 million in GVA (gross value added);

f)     The sectors growth had plateaued and was not growing at the same rates seen in the wider South West or nationally;

g)    Plymouth Culture had been commissioned to create a Creative Industries Plan to define the scale of the opportunity and the interventions needed to achieve growth, aligned to the cities ambition.

Hannah Harris (CEO, Plymouth Culture) added:

h)    Growth in creative industries had been quite stagnant since 2015;

i)     There were a number of creative jobs in non-creative industries, quite unique to Plymouth;

j)     Similar to other places Plymouth had very few anchor organisations, but a plethora of smaller, micro businesses in the sector;

k)    If Plymouth’s creative industries job share were boosted to the national average, the city would gain over 3,000 high-skilled jobs, £165-230 million GVA and 1.9 additional jobs in leisure and retail generated by each creative job;

l)     The greater South West had the joint fastest creative industries jobs growth of any British region between 2019-2022 and Plymouth could be the urban capital for creative industries in Plymouth and Cornwall;

m)  Plymouth had a foundation of anchor institutions, a high proportion of young people aged 18-34, affordable house prices, good digital connectivity and a higher proportion of people in further education to build upon;

n)    The Creative Industries Plan recommended that the Council embed creative industries in all Council policy areas so the plan for its growth could be linked with other priority themes in Plymouth;

o)    It also recommended the designation of culture and creative clusters (CCC’s) and support through policy, space, skills and business support and, community engagement and socially inclusive places;

p)    Four CCC’s had been identified:

                      i.        The Culture Cluster (The Box and universities);

                     ii.        The Performance Cluster (Guildhall, TRP, Millennium, Reel and Athenaeum);

                    iii.        The Createch Cluster – Market Hall;

                    iv.        Plymouth Production Park Cluster (in Cattedown to increase TR2’s production capacity)

q)    There was a need to build a business pipeline to provide support at each stage of business growth;

r)    An action plan with implementation deadlines would be developed;

s)     Importance of developing external collaboration opportunities.

Supported by David Draffan (Service Director for Economic Development) and Victoria Pomery (CEO, The Box), in response to questions, the following was discussed:

t)     It was important to ensure the activity in Plymouth was stimulating economic growth;

u)    Development opportunity at Tavistock Place for a creative space;

v)    Opportunities to link with national partners;

w)   Connecting opportunities through further education, especially the Arts University and retaining graduates;

x)    Ministerial invitations to see activity in the city;

y)    Branding the city well and encouraging people to have their businesses in Plymouth was very important;

z)    TwoFour had been considered in the north of the city for a cluster, but their aim was export, rather than growth within Plymouth;

aa)  It was hoped clusters would help students identify where they could work within the city once they had graduated.

The Panel noted the report.