Creative Industries
Creative Industries are key to making Salford beautiful, vibrant and prosperous through both the attraction of new businesses to mediacity:uk and support for existing businesses based in Salford.
In order to address the challenge of attracting new investment into the city while retaining the creative industries that make it vibrant, a strategy is in development to maximise the potential of the creative industries sector in Central Salford. This will seek to build upon existing activity.
Initially, this strategy will focus on the existing historic and cultural fabric of the Chapel Street area and its potential for development as a cultural quarter.
The Chapel Street area has a wide range of creative businesses from architects and graphic designers, to media companies and visual artists. Chapel Street is also home to a number of key ingredients to fostering creativity including:
- The presence of Salford University as a regionally significant hub of art, design, music and media education, research and enterprise development.
- Chapel Street’s status as the historic core of Salford retaining civic cultural facilities including Salford Museum and Art Gallery and the Local History Library.
- The fact that portions of the district form a constituent part of the metropolitan core of Greater Manchester with the potential to benefit from and share in its vibrant creative life.
- The provision of creative industries workspace at Islington Mill
- Increasing numbers of visual artists have been attracted to the district in the form of artists’ studio associations providing workspace. These include Cow Lane Studios, Hot Bed Press, Suite Studios, Manchester Artists’ Studio Association and Studio Salford. The area is now the base for upwards of 60 visual artists.
The first phase of support for creative industries includes work on a development plan for Islington Mill, research into pathways into the creative industries for local people and support for the development of an Arts Club that can underpin creative networks and activity in the area.
The strategy for creative industries development is also embedded in MediaCityUK's public sector support programme.