October’s launch of Media Cymru on the Nationwide Museum in Cardiff was extra thanthe celebration of a novel collaboration designed to speed up progress within the media sector of Southeast Wales.
It unveiled a £50m world-first dedication to supercharging innovation throughout an rising inventive powerhouse – with this Cardiff Capital Area-based sector seen by many as a world-leader-in-waiting, given the ever-growing variety of Oscars, Bafta’s and Emmy’s already sat on the cabinets of the highly-diverse SMEs that collectively make up the third largest media cluster within the UK.
The largest of ambitions for small-medium enterprises
Led by Cardiff College, the groundbreaking Media Cymru strategic funding programme brings collectively 23 media manufacturing, broadcast, know-how, college and native management companions, for the very first time.
And the character of the funding is as extraordinary as Media Cymru itself – with £22m offered by way of the UK Analysis and Innovation (UKRI) Power in Locations Fund, £3m from Cardiff Capital Area and £2m from the Inventive Wales arm of the Welsh Authorities, match-funded by an extra £23m from universities and business companions.
The imaginative and prescient? Within the phrases of Justin Lewis, Director of Media Cymru:
“The programme is right here to make the Cardiff Capital Area a worldwide hub for media innovation, giving SMEs and start-ups the chance to collaborate and innovate, supporting the event of a world-class media sector – right here in Wales – that evokes the world.”
Such measurement, scale – and boldness – of funding displays the spirit and confidence of a Area that has developed one of many strongest media sector progress charges within the UK, attracting 1-in-8 of all new UK jobs in movie and tv since 2006, producing international successes that embody A Discovery of Witches, Physician Who, Dream Horse, His Darkish Supplies, Intercourse Training, Sherlock, and The Battle of the Worlds.
That vibrancy and important mass has created a momentum for Media Cymru to focus funding within the Area’s digital infrastructure, embracing rising applied sciences, growing small companies’ capability to innovate – and constructing the skillsets that underpin any world-class cluster – positioning CCR’s media sector as a testbed for brand spanking new content material, approaches and codecs that remedy challenges and open up alternatives.
A testbed for brand spanking new content material, approaches and codecs – producing inclusive and sustainable financial progress
The Media Cymru programme champions progress that’s inexperienced, honest and aligned to Welsh Authorities’sWellbeing of Future Generations method – with the declared ambition to nurture media improvements that ship a further £236m GVA by 2026, producing the inclusive and sustainable financial growth that’s on the coronary heart of ‘good progress.’
There are three predominant strands of exercise devoted to reaching these objectives, with Media Cymru providing ‘work packages’ centred on offering game-changing analysis, growth and innovation (R,D&I) alternatives for media and wider inventive business companies working within the CCR and past.
To that finish, the programme’s Future Manufacturing & Digital Infrastructure exercise is concentrated on constructing digital infrastructure, creating rising applied sciences and shaping the areas which are so necessary for inventive innovation, whereas the Future Capabilities strand will handle future abilities wants in addition to empowering the analysis and growth to create new merchandise, companies and experiences, prepared for market.
The third strand, Problem-driven Innovation Tasks, is devoted to bringing collectively a large spectrum of companions able to offering options to challenges and alternatives in sustainability, bilingual manufacturing, variety and inclusion, tourism and know-how – reflecting the fervour and urge for food for collaboration that sits on the centre of this pioneering programme.
With funding, coaching and taster alternatives being made accessible from this month (November 2022), we’ll be operating a collection of articles discovering the views and ambitions of the Media Cymru crew – starting with our subsequent function, which explores the ideas and insights of Justin Lewis, Director of Media Cymru …
