EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Creative Town Initiative

Creative Town Initiative - Huddersfield, United Kingdom

Introduction

The Creative Town Initiative examines how people can think, plan and act creatively in the city. It explores how cities can be made more liveable and vital by harnessing people's imagination and talent. It seeks to open out an ideas bank of possibilities from which innovations will emerge.

Problem

How can a city release its creative assets and realise its full potential?

Description

There are particular reasons for thinking about creativity in cities today. Cities that once based their wealth on trade, manufacturing or even basic service provision must innovate to survive. The productive base is both physically moving to lower cost centres and its technological core is transforming with greater rapidity. This has dramatic implications economically and socially.

Approach

In 1995 Huddersfield first came to understand the logic of its development in terms of the idea of Urban Creativity, through development of The Creative Town Initiative (CTI). In 1995 phase 1 of the Kirklees Media Centre started. Essentially a managed workspace, it quickly filled with young companies operating in the area of new media, on-line and off-line art, design, consultancy and sales.

The hypothesis being proposed by CTI is that from a core in around the milieu of this media quarter, the creativity of the town can grow indefinitely, replenished by the constant release of untapped human capital. The strategy is to build a system - The Cycle of Urban Creativity - which will drive the sustainable growth of innovation-inspired prosperity long after the EC funding has been exhausted. The planning and implementation of The Creative City idea involves the following stages:

Operational management for the CTI has been delegated by Kirklees Metropolitan Council to Huddersfield Pride: an independent regeneration company.
A small programme management secretariat is responsible for strategic direction, monitoring and evaluation.
In the metropolitan district of Kirklees, the town of Huddersfield as a whole has embraced the concept of the CTI project.
An overall five step strategic planning process: planning, establishing indicators, execution, assessment and reporting back.
Within each phase are key analytical tools including preparation and planning, assessing potential, devising indicators, execution, communicating and disseminating.
The application of a set of analytical tools, the most important of which is 'The cycle of urban creativity' concept.
A series of indicators to measure how relatively creative a city or project is.
A range of techniques that help creative thinking and planning.
The CTI has developed a substantial website with descriptions of each project.
The project is based upon a robust, compelling and readily transferable model.
Co-funding has been received from a wide range of sources including over 20% from the private sector investors.
Each project is subject to rigorous appraisal at the onset to test value for money, sustainability and complementarity within the overall programme.
The project has been accompanied by a longitudinal survey of its impact on the local creative economy.

Results

Huddersfield was chosen as one of the winners of a competition held by the European Commission, to find Europe's most innovative towns and cities.
CTI created 168 new jobs as well as safeguarding 179 jobs which already existed in the fledgling creative economy of the town.
In addition to the EC financial contribution of 3 million Euro, the project raised a further 7 million Euro from a range of private and public sector sources.
For many years Huddersfield has been a place where new forms of governance and growth coalition have been tried and tested. Over the last three years the town has been an innovation torchbearer for the European Union as one of its 26 Urban Pilot Projects.

Contact info

Huddersfield Pride Ltd
Rosemarie Lees (Programme Co-ordinator), tel. +44 1484226585

Project start date

01/06/1997

Links

Huddersfield Pride

Document type

case

Themes

Urban Policy > Economy knowledge & employment > Urban economy

Keywords

Specific sectors