Strategic leadership in a creative economy

Creative Clusters is an independent policy conference in Glasgow (17-20 November 2008) that will examine the growth of the creative economy.

This seems like a timely event to bring together those working – not just within the creative industries – but also in initiatives to encourage creativity as a driver for businesses.

One such initiative in Birmingham is Creative Republic, who hosted a discussion on how Birmingham’s creative industries can have a role in the Big City Plan.

One of the themes at the Creative Clusters conference is strategic leadership in the creative economy, asking “in a sector built equally upon input from business, culture and technology, who provides policy leadership?”

Local Area Agreements: The next generation

In June 2008, 150 new Local Area Agreements (LAA) were signed off by central government. A Local Area Agreement is a three year agreement, based on local Sustainable Community Strategies, that sets out the priorities for a local area.

The 14 strategic authorities in the West Midlands each have a Local Area Agreement.

Population estimates in the West Midlands

The Office for National Statistics released the 2007 mid year population estimates and 2006 mid year population estimates by ethnic group at Government Office Region level and down to Local Authority District level last week.

Data for the total population is available by five year age bands and broad age group (children, working age, and older people), and can also be split by sex. The ethnicity data can only be split by sex and broad age group.

This data has been incorporated into our 2008 State of the Region demographic dataset (XLS, 2.9MB) and the mid year estimates InstantAtlas maps by region and local authority.

Headline figures for the West Midlands show that in line with national trends the working age population has increased by 3,000, whereas the number of children has decreased by 6,000 since 2006.

Mapping waste in the food industry

New research jointly published by DEFRA and the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), Mapping waste in the food industry, assesses the amount of waste produced in the food industry.

The research, which was carried out by Oakdene Hollins, assessed member sites of the FDF with Shropshire sites producing the greatest quantity of food waste in 2006 (100,780 tonnes), which accounted for over 15% of the UK total.

Shropshire also had the highest volume of waste sent to landfill in the region according to the report at 5,827 tonnes although Scotland and Lincolnshire were considerably larger at over 13,000 tonnes each.

NESTA Regional Innovation Index: call for ideas

The West Midlands Regional Observatory has begun a 3-year programme of research to support the work of the regional Innovation Technology Council.

One of our first contributions is to the call for ideas as part of the new Regional Innovation Index projects. Full details of the NESTA call for ideas are on www.innovationindex.org.uk or download the full paper (PDF, 134KB).

We would like to hear suggestions, will coordinate the responses and submit a synthesis of responses.

If you’d like to respond to all or some of the questions please either post your comments or alternatively email me at brian.macaulay@wmro.org.

The deadline for formal contributions is 5pm, Friday 12th September 2008. We’ll be collating regional responses in the days before, so contributions will need to be submitted to us by the end of Wednesday 10th September 2008.

Sponsorship opportunities at the WMRO Annual Conference 2008: an update

The sponsorship opportunities available at this year’s annual conference are proving to be very popular. Exhibition stands from Geowise, ESRI UK and Renewal Magazine are confirmed with Renewal magazine also sponsoring the sustainable communities workshop and the Applied Research Centre in Sustainable Regeneration at Coventry University inserting flyers into delegate packs. Other companies are set to confirm in the next couple of weeks.

Sponsorship opportunities at the WMRO Annual Conference 2008

Our 2008 Annual Conference will be held on Monday 13th October 2008 in Coventry and gives organisations the opportunity to raise their business profile amongst the key decision makers in the data, intelligence and research community within the West Midlands.

This year, the conference has again attracted several high profile speakers, including Liam Byrne, who will be launching the new State of the Region synthesis report Ian Austin MP, the new Minister for the West Midlands.

Life expectancy in the West Midlands

A recent press release [no longer available online] from trade union GMB highlights the difference in life expectancy at birth across the West Midlands.

Women living in Solihull have the highest life expectancy in the region at 83.3 years with those living in Stoke-on-Trent having the lowest at 79.6.

For men, the difference is greater with those living in South Shropshire expected to live on average to 79.4 years of age, the longest in the West Midlands region. However those living in Sandwell have the lowest life expectancy – a full five years lower.

More economic pain before gain

On the same day that the Bank of England raised the increasing prospect that the UK economy will remain static, with the risk that we may flirt with recession (as defined by economists as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth), the West Midlands’ labour market received further bad news.

The latest data on the numbers claiming Job Seekers Allowance shows that the growth in unemployment looks set to continue.

The figures for July saw the number of claimants grow by 2,400, up from the revised June figure of 2,200. With the latest Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) pointing to further reductions in employment as firms seek to reduce costs in the face of falling demand, expect further bad news in the months to come.

Building a Register of Consultants

We’re developing a new directory for public agencies and the voluntary sector to use when searching for organisations to invite to tender for research projects.

Why are we doing this?

The Register of Consultants aims to solve two issues originally identified by the Economy & Labour Force Group:

1. The same usual suspects are asked to carry out research within the West Midlands region.
2. Public sector agencies and voluntary organisations would like to speak to previous clients who have used a research consultancy to learn if the consultancy is suitable to invite to tender.

Creative industries research from NESTA

Two research reports investigating the UK’s creative industries have recently been published by NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts:

• Hidden Innovation in the Creative Industries
• Beyond the Creative Industries

Hidden Innovation in the Creative Industries, published in July 2008, looks at the level and nature of innovation within the creative industries and identifies areas of ‘hidden innovation’ – areas of innovation that are poorly represented in statistics. For example, the report cites examples of innovation in research and development activity and in organisational forms. The report concludes that creative industries, and the types of innovation they undertake, remain ‘under-represented in statistics and conceptual analyses’.

Creative and media sector skills review

Earlier this year, the Learning & Skills Council undertook a review of skills supply and demand for the creative and media sector in the West Midlands.

Amongst other interesting findings, the review found that employers perceive graduates to lack market-based experience and ‘job readiness’, suggesting that the education sector is struggling to link skills development with economic development to a sufficient degree.

An issue for learners and employers alike also exists due to the ‘oversupply of a myriad of courses’ which results in unclear progression routes for learners and confusion of the ‘value’ of different qualifications for both learners and employers.

The review highlights the opportunities that could potentially be provided to the sector through apprenticeships.

Changes to regional cultural co-ordination

Arts Minister, Margaret Hodge has announced the closure of the Regional Cultural Consortiums by March 2009.

Her intention is that in their place, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s four key agencies in the regions – Arts Council England, Sport England, English Heritage and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council – will have a duty to work together to jointly deliver a core set of shared priorities across the culture and sport agenda.

In terms of regional cultural research, this change in structure may have implications for the future of the West Midlands Cultural Observatory. In the meantime, the Cultural Research Analyst post that supports this initiative is currently funded until March 2009 and there is a strong commitment to joined-up cultural research by regional cultural agencies.

It would be interesting to know your thoughts on this topic. For example, you may have a view on which elements of regional cultural research should, if possible, be retained under the new structure?

Wind resources for the West Midlands

A new study has been published reviewing the economically viable wind resource across the West Midlands region and key wind development constraints based on the current status of wind technology.

The study assists in the initial screening of coarse areas with potential for wind development in the region and consisted of a desktop assessment based on the updated GIS Mapping Tool initially designed for Government Office West Midlands.

As with the heat mapping work referred to in my earlier post, the full report and supporting GIS datasets can be obtained through the Observatory’s research enquiries service.

Heat mapping and decentralised energy report

The recent Energy White Paper asked Regional Development Agencies to identify opportunities as to how they could bring forward decentralised energy projects.

In response to this and on-​going low carbon futures work, Advantage West Midlands commissioned work on heat mapping and decentralised energy and sought early feedback and buy in to the approach from key external stakeholders at a workshop in June 2008.

The West Midlands currently imports around 60% of its heat energy and an even greater percentage of its electricity. Considering the overarching role of Advantage West Midlands as an enabler of sustainable economic development in the region, the agency seeks to reduce the region’s reliance on fossil fuels and improve energy security.