The joint venture from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) will see the creation of eight creative industry “clusters” that will gather together prominent UK creative businesses.
With big names such as Aardman animation studio, Burberry fashion label and Sony, the £80m project, led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is designed to create jobs and drive the creation of new businesses and products to be marketed around the world.
Culture secretary Jeremy Wright said: “Britain’s creative industries are an economic and cultural powerhouse and the creative clusters will ensure they continue to thrive in different regions across the country.
“These partnerships between business, academia and industry will encourage the use of future technology to develop new products and experiences, and boost employment opportunities across the breadth of the UK.”
In boosting the creative industries – worth circa £92bn to the UK economy and exporting an estimated £46bn annually – it is hoped by the print sector that the bounty will be shared.
For Robert McClements, president of the BPIF’s Creative Digital Industries (CDi) special interest group, it is key that print companies engage directly with the businesses within these clusters in order to promote print’s value to the creative process.
“Print plays a vital role in the creative sector – it complements creativity in a busy and competitive range of multi-channel communications,” he said. “Print is both a physical expression of creativity and a means of communicating messages about the other forms in the sector ranging from beautiful photographic books and film posters to engaging marketing collateral.
“Economic benefits of supported clusters is well-proven. Business thrives around a nucleus of common interest resulting in shared expertise, concentration of skills and critical mass to attract more companies to locate and for potential customers to expect to find the services they need.
“Wherever economic success is established there will be opportunities for print companies to provide services.”
Each of the clusters – based in Bristol, Leeds, London, York, Cardiff, Belfast, Dundee and Edinburgh – will be led by a university in the local area and focus on a different aspect of the creative process. With print often a vital link in the chain for creative agencies, printers have welcomed the plan as a potential to boost their own standing with its client base.
For London-based operation Boss Print, around “95%” of its clients are design agencies based within creative sectors, according to managing director Fenton Smith, and the team gets “heavily involved” in the process of fulfilling their clients’ needs.
“I think it is the case that with all the different multimedia and all the different options out there these days, every creative and designer has so much they need to understand,” said Smith. “Client knowledge in print has tailed off and that is where we come in.
“There is more reliance from clients on our knowledge these days. They often come in with a visual for us and ask for our advice and guidance on how to realise it in print. This can be good, but it is also difficult because the client sees it as your fault if the work goes wrong.
“I welcome an initiative like this if it inspires something in the creative industry, and one thing our industry needs to do is get out there and explain the power of print to them.”
Colchester letterpress outfit Typoretum is often directly involved in the creative process of its clients, especially as its more antiquated processes slip further out of common knowledge. However, co-founder Cecilia Knopp is anxious to see whether the clusters will deliver on their promise.
“With our clients, we are able to inform on and develop their ideas by showing them our analogue process,” she said. “Some of the best branding work we have done comes from agency clients coming into the studio and playing around with our type.
“I think we are living in a digital world, but it is soothing to see a piece of print. It engages all of your senses – for us, that includes smell – and gives you the time to really digest it.
“Regarding these clusters, shop talk is fine, but I want to know how that will disseminate, progress and bring in income. Education for the next generation is vital and we need to get into schools, colleges and universities. We have made use of internships through the Erasmus scheme for years but that will disappear after Brexit, so maybe these clusters will allow us to continue to offer training.”
