22/10/2012 - England-wide agency has invested more than £2 million in creative talent and businesses

Creative England is completing its first year of operation. The agency has dealt with over 500 companies, invested £531,000 in new and emerging talent, endowed £1.5 million in film culture initiatives and secured £5 million from the Government’s Regional Growth Fund (RGF) to support digital and creative businesses since opening in October 2011.

From the RGF money, it has already made £2 million available in the form of interest-free loans, including assigning £1 million to develop new fiction formats for the BBC and Channel 4. The agency has also secured third party investment of £1.3 million for their iFeatures2 low budget development and production programme.

The agency is also rolling out a series of accelerator programmes for start-up media companies with a number of different partners across the country, starting with the Dotforge Accelerator with Sheffield Local Enterprise Partnership.

Creative England Chief Executive Caroline Norbury said, “We’ve had a strong first year, laying down some good foundations for the future. These statistics are welcome as they show that we’ve been delivering on our founding principles to support and develop creative talent and businesses.”

Creative England was set up to foster success and ambition within the creative industries, and, in particular, to address the issues of access to finance, skills development, and connectivity; issues which are most often reported as hampering the growth of small and medium sized enterprises in the sector.