What makes the West Midlands great for Creative and Digital Technology?
The bold creativity inherent to the West Midlands can be seen in the successes of artistic companies that have located here. With expertise in software and a strong creative flair among our students and existing talent pool, the West Midlands is one of the best places to locate a company operating in the Creative and Digital Technologies sector.
We spoke to the heads of those companies and found out how locating in the heart of the UK has helped them succeed. Watch the video below, or scroll down to read the transcript.
STEAMHouse
As Sonia Reynolds of Zephlinear mentions, STEAMHouse gives entrepreneurs and new businesses support to start up and grow. It is a dynamic incubator working as part of Birmingham City University, able to equip its members with the space, tools, skills, knowledge, guidance, and networks needed to launch or grow a business.
1 Mill Street
1 Mill Street has offered a co-working space to many companies, becoming known as a haven for up-and-coming game developers. It is located in Leamington Spa, the West Midlands’ game development hotspot. As well as having its own bar, 1 Mill Street offers desk space, networking, creative Incubator support from the University of Warwick, and exclusive affiliate offers from local business partners. It even has its own studio.
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Video transcript
00:08 – Sally Scott – Advanced
Birmingham is a fantastic place to be for technology businesses.
00:13 – Taran Singh – Taran 3D
When you’re a new business being around other creative businesses is really important.
00:18 – Sally Scott
Outside of London, it has the highest number of tech businesses and tech startups.
00:26 – Yejide Adeoye – YA Creates
There’re a lot of creative minds, a lot of business-minded people as well.
00:30 – Taran Singh
It gives you a chance to collaborate with other businesses when you’re in close proximity to each other. There’s a great cross-pollination of ideas.
00:39 – Sally Scott
So that entrepreneurial spirit, that vibrancy, the ecosystem that exists around it is second to none.
00:46 – Sonia Reynolds – Zephlinear
When you’re inventing something totally new, you can be very isolated. So being at STEAMHouse has just been brilliant because they give you the opportunity to access technicians to access joiners.
00:59 – Kini Nagaraja – Microland
When you want to set up your headquarters in a country you want to set it up quickly and focus quickly on your business because that’s what you need to do at the end of the day. And that way, West Midlands Growth Company enabled us to do it quickly.
01:11 – Sally Scott
The West Midlands Growth Company have been a huge support to us. They’ve introduced us and facilitated introductions into the very vibrant ecosystem of businesses that exist in the West Midlands.
01:26 – Cat Callicott – 1 Mill Street
Leamington Spa is actually nicknamed Silicon Spa. That’s because we have so many games companies and people in the creative digital world here.
01:35 – Andrew Jeffries – Repixel8
The video game industry is actually going massive at the moment because you’ve got mobile phone games, console games and PC games that have just taken off in a big way.
01: 47 – Phil Bale – Ubisoft
This is a vital area for the UK games sector in that because of the high density of studios here, the number of people working here, the skills that they have, and the experience that they’ve had over decades of developing games. We wanted to tap into that and use some of that and build a team here to grow and support our games.
02:07 – Michael Moriarty – Esports Wolves
The West Midlands is a really good place for esports because we’ve got close links to gaming sectors in areas like Leamington Spa. We’ve got fantastic Expo halls in Birmingham, Coventry, as well as also here in Wolverhampton with a stadium and access to facilities like the university as well.
02:23 – Nick Harewood – Kainos
We’ve built really good relationships with the universities here, which are world-class. We’ve recruited 100 graduates over the last three years and that’s just the start in terms of our ambition here. We’re a global company, we have offices in Belfast, Gdansk, Toronto, and London. Partly the cost-effectiveness of workspace in Birmingham, but also its connectivity that makes it an ideal location for a hub.
02:47 – Michael Moriarty
Access to infrastructure is fantastic here as well. There’s fast internet, 5G mobile networks as well.
02:51 – Taran Singh
We’ve got a lot of development happening in film and gaming and virtual production. It’s bringing skills, it’s bringing demand for business as well. So, it’s a great place to be at the moment.
03:03 – Sally Scott
I think Birmingham and the West Midlands have an extremely bright future. The legacy coming from the Commonwealth Games will certainly attract much more investment and enable it to do not just more of the same but really step up a gear in attracting new businesses, new ventures to come to the area.