Bristol Media wins SWRDA skills brief
Creative industry network Bristol Media has been appointed by the South West Regional Development Agency in a £1.7m investment to ensure skills and talent are retained in the area.
Bristol Media was appointed after Mike Bennett, the group’s chief executive and joint managing director of digital group E3 Media, brought together 25 managing directors of creative groups to address their concerns.
According to Bennett, ‘We discussed what we could do to lobby the public sector over skills talent and retention, so I pitched to the RDA’.
The scheme, Talent Attraction Retention and Development in the South West, will launch in August. Known as Tardis, the scheme will run two databases for consultancies and freelancers that will facilitate the redeployment of people at risk of redundancy in the creative, aerospace and engineering industries.
‘Consultancies might find they have eight creatives, but two won’t have enough work for the next few months. If they don’t want to lose them they can log onto the database and see if someone else can employ them over that time,’ Bennett says.
The scheme will also identify job and education opportunities, and provide a ‘rapid match’ between organisations experiencing talent shortages and surpluses.
In addition, workshops and one-to-one meetings between Bristol Media and creative groups will aim to facilitate the skill-sharing programme and address other employment concerns.
According to the South West RDA, £76m is lost by the South West economy because of vacancies that can’t be filled, and 62 000 people are employed in the creative, cultural and digital sectors across the region.
Great news.
Well done to all involved in Bristol.
As a an ex-London headhunter for the design business in London now, re-located to the South West, I am delighted with the support of SWRDA. We have so much talent here which needs to be recognised and jobs protected during these difficult times. The design business has much to contribute to the growth of business and should not be regarded as an embellishment or an unnecessary overhead.