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Business News
South East Create Growth Programme Award
The Create Growth Programme is a first of its kind opportunity targeted at creative businesses with the potential to grow.
The award acknowledges the highly entrepreneurial pool of high-growth potential creative businesses in the South East not yet at the scaling stage, who can benefit from intensive, targeted, expert support to help them secure the investment they need to grow their business.
This free programme will provide the South East’s creative businesses with the support, the networks and the investment they need – transforming their innovative creative ideas into the leading businesses of the future. Following a competitive process, a consortium of partners led by Kent County Council working on behalf of the South East creative, cultural and digital sector has secured one of only six awards of £1.275m to regional partnerships across the UK to deliver the Create Growth Programme. The Create Growth Programme is a Department for Digital Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) initiative to support high-growth potential creative businesses outside of London to become investment ready. It will also increase the number of investors willing to invest in creative businesses, by educating and developing investor networks. Eligible businesses will be able to access an intensive business support programme designed to improve the leadership capacity of pre-scale-up creative businesses, so that they are better placed to access finance, particularly investor finance. They will also have access to national and regional angel investor networks that are interested in creative industry investment opportunities. The programme supports the significant growth of the creative industries across Kent with more than10,600 people now employed in the creative industries across the County and 1500 creative companies relocating here in the last five years. Digital start-ups, film & TV studios, artistic producers, games manufacturers, and entertainment companies have created an ecosystem of expertise and growth from household names to SMEs. Investment in the Thames Estuary, connecting the County to London as a global leader, and strategic locations that are primed for creative and digital businesses to expand, include the Folkestone Creative Quarter, Maidstone TV Studios, and Margate Creative Land Trust. On top of these creative hotspots, towns such as Tunbridge Wells, Gravesham, Margate, Folkestone and Ashford have also been taking full advantage of the county’s booming creative sector, building creative communities.
Eligible businesses will be between the seed and scaling stages and will fall into one of the following sub-sectors: • Film, TV, Video, Radio & Photography • Design & Designer Fashion • Music, Performing & Visual Arts • CreaTech, Augmented Reality (AR)
Aritificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Extended Reality (XR) and Gaming They will: • Be Intellectual Property-rich micro and
Small to Medium Sized Enterprises • Have turnover growth of 10% year-on-year over approximately 3 years (including either prior to or during the pandemic) • Employ a minimum of 2 people over the last two years (full-time, part-time or freelance) • Have created a revenue generating product, launched a new platform or service or reached a market of scale • Have generated a sales revenue in the last 2 years • Be located within the administrative boundaries of Greater Essex, Kent,
Medway, East Sussex, West Sussex or Brighton and Hove.
Businesses within the Consortium’s local authority areas who meet the eligibility criteria will also be able to access a share of £7million finance. Companies applying for finance will need to demonstrate their potential to scale rapidly and become sustainable through private investment. The investment fund and investor building activities will be delivered by the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK.
These interventions will support the development of new business models, creating investable propositions that bring these creative sub sector closer to the investor markets. Simultaneously, investor markets will be coached by Innovate UK on the benefits of creative sector investment
The programme is being set up now and will launch in January 2023. The funding must be spent by March 2025. Access to the programme is likely to close in October 2024 when the final cohort of businesses will be recruited (to be confirmed).
We are busy setting up this programme, if you are interested and think your business might be eligible, please register your interest by emailing: info@createsoutheast.org.uk
Trailblazing Kent skills partnership ready to deliver on ambitious
skills accelerator programme with new courses and learning centres launching in 2023
Further education providers across Kent will come together early next year for the launch of four exciting and innovative business focused learning centres to support the region’s transition to Net Zero.
Buildings that will be home to students studying for new courses focused on ‘decarbonisation’ will launch in January 2023, the latest part of a government backed Skills Accelerator project launched in October 2021 by EKC Group, MidKent College and North Kent College, in partnership with the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce.
New ‘decarbonisation’ learning zones will ensure businesses and their future employees can call upon the skills and best practice needed to support the transition to Net Zero and make a significant contribution to the UK’s reputation as a global hub for the green economy. Opening in January 2023, these important new centres will help to power the growth of sustainable skills and employment opportunities in Kent and Medway with a focus on three sectors key to the economy of this part of the South East of England: Construction, ManufacturingEngineering and Horticulture.
They will include the following: • A Green Engineering and Design centre at
EKC Group’s Ashford College, and a Green
Engineering and Mechatronic lab with
Electric and Assisted vehicle centres based at EKC Group’s Canterbury College. • A Green Construction and Design Centre based at MidKent College’s Maidstone campus, providing young people and adults with the skills and training they will need to thrive in the modern workplace. • A Green Horticulture Centre at Hadlow
College, part of North Kent College and
Kent’s only rural, land-based college.
Business incubator spaces for start-up SMEs specialising in products or services related to decarbonisation are also being set up alongside each of the three learning zones.
Graham Razey, OBE, Chief Executive Officer
of EKC Group, said: “The COP27 Climate Summit highlighted the urgency with which the impact of Climate Change on the planet needs to be addressed. The importance of equipping adults and young people across Kent and Medway with the skills that employers will be looking for in the transition to Net Zero has never been more important. “We are very excited to be launching our Green Construction and Design Centre in Ashford College, and our Green Engineering and Mechatronic lab at Canterbury College early next year to help businesses flourish and unlock these valuable new skills in the years ahead.”
Simon Cook, Principal and Chief Executive, MidKent College and Chair of Kent Further Education
(KFE), which champions the FE sector across Kent and Medway, said: “These new learning centres are a key component of our joint response as a FE sector to the transformation in skills demand that Kent is facing, and that our partnership is determined to tackle head on. “In launching our new Green Construction and Design Centre we have considered key localised evidence of demand from the Local Skills Improvement Plan evidence base, including the roles and expertise employers will need in navigating the transition to a low carbon economy.”
David Gleed, Chief Executive and Executive Principal, North Kent
College, said: “The £5.6 million secured from the Government’s Skills Accelerator programme is not just about securing skills and training opportunities for adults and young people. “As this project progresses, we will be looking to engage with as many businesses as we can and invite them to join us and our FE sector partners in devising new skills solutions that will support career opportunities now and in the future. The opening of our new Green Agriculture Centre at Hadlow College is just the start.” The innovative Kent-wide skills partnership launched in October 2021 is aimed at developing a world leading curriculum focused on creating jobs, opportunities, and a more sustainable future.
EKC Group, MidKent College and North Kent College, in partnership with the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce, secured £5.6m in funding from the Government’s Skills Accelerator Programme to help support the region’s transition to Net Zero.
The focus on decarbonisation will ensure the colleges drive efforts to equip the workforce with the knowledge, skills and technological innovation to reduce the environmental impact of industry and play a key role in the area’s economic development.
Blue Strawberry
creates global interest
Kent-based Canterbury Ai is making in-roads at Discovery Park in Sandwich with its social media marketing software called Blue Strawberry, which uses artificial intelligence to help users post and schedule Social Media.
The software is not only uniquely named after one of Kent's favourite fruits, albeit in a different colour, but it is helping thousands of users globally to save time and money.
However, this is not where the story ends; the company is seeing interest from some of the world's largest technology companies that are looking to help stimulate business growth and a closer partnership with this Kent-based business. It is also being seen as a potential unicorn business, with the potential to be valued in the billions. It has successfully completed multiple investment rounds as it edges towards series A investment in 2023.
Wesley Baker, the company CEO, said, "we have seen tremendous interest in what we are creating with Blue Strawberry, which is exciting", and this interest includes the likes of Google, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft. He went on to say, "the support we have received at Discovery Park has allowed us to grow the business quickly and effectively in a truly innovative environment, which is a credit to the area to have this facility on the doorsteps for companies like ours".
The company initially had not planned for this product but pivoted towards it once it became apparent that they had something unique and world-first. Dr Bing Tian, the company's Chief Business Officer, was eager to point out that this entire focus on Blue Strawberry did not really occur until September 2021 when the company crystalised the vision of what the company had actually developed.
