29 September 2010

Building a creative economy

The talk at the moment is all about jobs: creating them, sustaining them and they must be good ones.  Not unskilled ones created by multi-nationals that would be whisked off to India given half a chance, not unethical or polluting industries and certainly not public sector ones.

So where will they come from and who will develop them?

The much publicised big society and outsourcing of public services (already done a blog on that) wont be a source, as that is straight displacement or likely reduction. They will have to come from the private sector and probably the "creative" or knowledge based sector in particular.
Businesses that are agile, innovative, where staff have high levels of motivation and productivity (which can be more critical than capital investment in this sector).

So how do you set-up this type of business and what model is appropriate?

From the 160 creative and knowledge based businesses we know about in our directory mostly: design, print and communications, business consultants, architects, IT services. The worker co-operative, and consortia model is good one. (Consortia are made up of, self-employed people and small business who come together for mutual support/shared services)

To help promote our model to the creative sector and potential entrant. Co-operatives UK with help from our members has developed a website and resource to help people create the perfect business for this sector.


To get the message out we are launching this resource around the country and last week I attended the launch event in Manchester, at Openspace a co-working environment which is itself a consortia co-operative of mainly self-employed freelancers and the worker co-operative web designers Ecobee.

Want to know more about Openspace? then have a look at this video.





If you know of people in the creative industries or looking to enter this sector please tell them about our resources and help us promote the co-operative model. www.creatives.uk.coop

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