Shape the Future: 2030 and Beyond
9 May 2023
Create Central, the industry-led body made up of some of the region’s most successful TV, film, games, and wider creative content business leaders, has announced the launch of five missions to help shape the future of the industry in the region.
Ed Shedd, Create Central Chair, said “Create Central's Shape the Future: 2030 and Beyond is firmly focussed on developing the West Midlands' unique blend of skills and capabilities. Whether that be championing an IP Content Fund for the region to kick start creative ideas, clearly signposting the routes to market our creatives can take to get those ideas commissioned and developed, or our increased focus on the games and virtual world sectors alongside TV, film, and publishing, our aim is clear: By 2030 we want the West Midlands to have a creative ecosystem that makes us internationally renowned as THE place to create for any storyteller.”
Through extensive conversations with industry stakeholders and individuals, Create Central has identified five priority areas that would benefit from action and provide the most effective interventions to enable the region to reach its vision for the West Midlands creative content sector of 2030.
Skills, equity, diversity, and inclusion are all cross-cutting themes through all our missions, and we have been selected as one of the BFI's skills clusters to support this activity.
At the core of all our Shape the Future initiatives are our VALUES, which guide us in our mission. We wholeheartedly prioritise equity, diversity, and inclusion and are dedicated to incorporating these principles into every aspect of our work.
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Big creative hits don't just emerge from nowhere. They need to be nurtured and supported, especially in their early-stage development. We want to champion the region to set up a high-risk, high-reward investment fund designed specifically for the West Midlands' creative community. The idea is a Fund that would distribute small investments and grants enabling the most creative individuals, teams, and companies to develop IP in the region, allowing them to grow to become the next big global content or CreaTech innovation.
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Content creators face challenges in finding effective routes to market, such as partnerships with broadcasters or streamers, international co-productions, or advertiser-funded content. Global content production spend is expected to be the lowest in ten years. Third-party funding for original content will become increasingly important. Streaming services dominate but face competition, while mergers have changed the funding landscape, with Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Comcast as the top three funders of original content. To provide opportunities for storytellers, clear and accessible support for identifying routes to market is essential.
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Virtual production, motion capture, real-time development, greenscreen, VFX, VR, AR, creation with games engines like UNREAL, AI creative tools - what do they mean for the future of media and storytelling? How can they best be deployed to drive innovation and creativity? We want to put the West Midlands at the heart of these debates as the world wrestles with what the future might look like, placing centre stage the need for the creative vision to lead the application of the technology and for the technology to serve the future needs of storytellers. We want to democratise these opportunities so that the young, diverse, and talented people of our region can access the technology, products, and skills to provide them with careers in as yet unknown roles.
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Silicon Spa is a fantastic West Midlands success story and home to some of the world’s leading games companies, such as Sega, Sumo, Codemasters and Ubisoft. We want to secure this success for the future and grow the West Midlands' games cluster.
As with every other industry, current success does not mean there are no future challenges, and we want to work with the local games sector to ensure the region is doing everything possible to neutralise threats and maximise opportunities for local investors.
Whether that is providing more significant support for the future skills needs of the sector, helping to diversify its talent pipeline, or investing in the creation of local games IP, we want to build links inside and outside the region’s games sector and take it to the next level.
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The West Midlands has an opportunity to lead the way in sustainability. We aim to make the West Midlands the UK's first sustainable production ecosystem, where creators and suppliers can deliver original content sustainably. This is both a challenge and an opportunity for growth. Let's use sustainability as a content source and showcase how we can address the climate crisis creatively. This will raise the profile of the sector and educate people about sustainability.
Find out more about our missions to turbo-charge the West Midlands creative content sector in Shape the Future: 2030 and Beyond.