Kirklees has been urged to bang the drum more loudly for the district’s fastest-growing industry sector.
An independent study commissioned by the council has highlighted the positive impact of the creative industries in generating wealth and employment for the district – but said Kirklees had a chance to raise its profile further – partly by pointing to its pedigree in producing major names in the industry.
Iain Bennett, of BOP Consulting, who compiled the Kirklees Creative Economy Impact Study, said the sector lacked the “Christopher Bailey factor” – alluding to the chief executive of leading fashion house Burberry, who studied at Kirklees College, but whose name could be better exploited by the industry locally.
Mr Bennett said: “This is the kind of story that gets people to come to train here and it is a missed opportunity.”
The study said that the creative sector – covering areas such as advertising and marketing, architecture, film and TV, photography, publishing, graphic design, product design and fashion design – was the fastest-growing sector of the Kirklees economy, generating more than £100m annually.
It said that about 5,000 people were employed either in creative businesses or in creative roles in other sectors. The report said the sector supported 860 creative small and medium-sized businesses as well as a “significant” number of micro-businesses.
Mr Bennett said the creative sector in Kirklees had shown real resilience during the recession – losing less than 10% of its workforce initially and now employing 25% more people than it did in 2009.
A breakdown of the figures showed IT and computer software was the biggest employer, accounting for 1,790 of the 5,000 jobs in the creative industries followed by 750 for design. It also highlighted areas such as video game development – employing 300 people – as a burgeoning sub-sector along with specialist publishing and printing.
Adele Poppleton, the council’s head of Active and Creative Communities, said: “Kirklees has a reputation as being a creative place. The Media Centre was one of the first of its kind in the country, but we have been resting on our laurels. Do we still have a thriving creative sector?”
She said the creative sector nationally contributed £76.9bn to the UK economy and grew by 10% in 2013 – three times the growth rate of the rest of the economy. It also accounted for 1.7m jobs – almost 9% of total service sector employment.
“Britain has a global reputation for its creative industries, yet the sector rarely features in government economic policy,” she said. “Is Kirklees making the most of the creative workforce here and are we strong enough to take our place alongside Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool on the M62 ‘cultural’ corridor?”
