Northwest Vision gets £3m and expanded brief - North West Media News

News, opinion and resources for the North West media industry

Northwest Vision gets £3m and expanded brief

| Print |

Email to a friend

Friday, 03 April 2009

Northwest Vision and Media will now be the sole agency for all creative and digital industries in the region.

The expanded role means it will be responsible for TV, film, radio, digital, games, music, publishing and creative services sectors.

The North West Development Agency has approved £3m in additional funding to help it carry out this new remit and to deliver a Digital and Creative Industries cluster development programme until 2012.

NWV&M is aiming to get further funding from the European Regional Development Fund.

"Our creative and digital industries are big success stories for the UK and are growing increasingly crucial to the North West as MediaCityUK becomes a reality," said Andy Burnham MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

"We need to make sure they continue to flourish at regional and national level and the work of an organisation such as NW Vision and Media will be crucial in doing this. I would like to wish NW Vision and Media every success with their important new, wider role."

The agency will provide business support, funding and training to businesses.  

"We are absolutely delighted to become the strategic authority that will lead, support and promote all the creative and digital industries in the Northwest," added Steve Morrison, chair of NW Vision and Media.

NWV&M estimate that the region’s creative and digital industries generate £15.8bn of gross value added, which is 16% of the North West’s output.

Something to add? Then leave a comment below or email us now.

Did you enjoy this article? Please share it!

Sponsored links:

Comments (11)

1 By The Inquisitor, on 03-04-2009 09:29
Unfortunately, NWV&M really doesn't understand the digital piece. They understand film quite well I understand. However, they really need to make some effort to work with digital and represent the superb work that already goes on

Report

2 By Digital person, on 03-04-2009 13:57
Oh god how will they spend it all. As they don't get digital I suspect we'll have some amazing feature films and no understang that digital isn't all about supporting TV and film - its about disruption and replacing it.

Report

3 By Loggedoff, on 03-04-2009 14:45
I wouldn't worry what they do with the cash it will have no effect on the 'ordinary folk' in the real media industry.
You will be able to read how the quango has 'created' jobs etc as they piggy back on real work.
Cut taxes and stop pretending government can solve everything.

Report

4 By Realworld, on 04-04-2009 06:44
Sorry Inquisitor, not just digital, film too - never has. With the exception of the £750k spent on three features as part of the Liverpool '08, (half a million of which was pretty well wasted), they've invariably spent less on producing film than they have on maintaining some individuals' lifestyle...

Where TV is concerned, I don't know what the situation is now, but their first TV 'business advisor', Belinda Peach, had a background in community theatre and knew less about the TV business than the people she was 'advising'. The Regional Attraction Fund, which is happy to shell out dosh in 50k batches to help big London indies establish offices here which they would have done anyway (Channel K as soon as BBC comedy commissioning moved here) or run only until the grant money runs out (Hat Trick), this RAF fund will only offer indiginous companies recoupable loans which have to be paid back eventually. Then they wonder why the take-up is so poor...

One of the results of NWV absorbing Media Training North West is that there is now nowhere in Manchester where anyone can study for a city & guilds in media to learn enough basic skills to become employable. The two places that used to offer these courses (WFA and Hulme Adult Learning Centre) have both had their funding cut - to such an extent that the video department at the latter no longer exists.

Now CIDS, which did do what it said on the tin to a certain extent, has gone and NWVM is taking over regarding ALL the creative industries...?

(Buries face in hands and reaches for the Talisker...)

Report

5 By Loggedoff is right, on 04-04-2009 12:20
Loggedoff has hit the nail square on the head. Ridiculous quangos like the NWDA (shouldn't that be nwda?) are nothing but pointless talking shops. One quango 'agency' has given a grant to another quango 'agency' is the story here. The Tories will abolish the likes of the nwda as soon as they can after they win the next General Election.

Report

6 By Realworld, on 04-04-2009 12:21
To see exactly what I mean, go to the NWVM website and click on the 'Filming in the Northwest' link. This will take you to a series of databases designed to help those planning to shoot and/or carry out post production in the North West.

Now, as any website designer worthy of the title will tell you (and this is supposedly one of the NWVM Chief Exec's areas of expertise), if you don't satisfy customers in three mouse clicks, they go somewhere else. So, what does NWVM do...?

It makes the databases totally inaccessible unless you go through a protracted registration / password exercise beforehand.

How much potential production business is this unbelievably counterproductive system pushing away from the North West every week ?

Sadly, this is absolutely typical of what must be one of the most user-unfriendly organisations I've ever had the misfortune to run across. (But you can bet your life that this won't stop NWVM from using its widening remit as an excuse to give its board members another unseemly hike...)

Report

7 By Amazing, on 04-04-2009 12:22
Does that mean lots of London digital companies will get regional grants to open an office in Salford?

Then after the big back-slapping, all-expenses paid party we'll find out it's staffed by a cleaner and an answering machine.

Surprisingly 6 months later they'll quietly shut it down and walk away (still quids in) because the answering machine didn't pick up enough North West work?

Will NW companies see any of aid? Of course they will, but rather than grants, they'll be offered "help and advice" because that's exactly what an established company needs from them.

Absolutely unbelievable, welcome to our world digital.

Report

8 By Loggedoff, on 06-04-2009 12:06
Steve Morrison says he the leader of our entire industry, yet nobody is prepared to defend this agency - not even Morrison.
Get out of your ivory tower and tell us what you plan to splurge the £3m on. Or is your attention now focused on London?

Report

9 By Jac, on 06-04-2009 18:28
So glad its not just me! The obsession with tv is ridiculous, the bbc will be irrelevent in the next five years. Has nobody told them about convergence???

Report

10 By Logged on, on 07-04-2009 06:57
A point is being missed here. Quangos like this one not a sideshow, they ARE the economy. Get used to it.

Report

11 By Realworld, on 07-04-2009 08:22
In that case, Logged on, it's no wonder that the economy is in such a complete shambles, is it ?

Report