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iNet Workshop - what happened on the night.

This workshop was designed to introduce the iNet to the businesses of Bath and to start exploring ideas for they might take advantage of this £3.2m pot of ERDF funding which is to run for the next three years, managed and distributed through the Creative Industries iNet via South West Screen. Knowledge of the iNets, how they work and which projects qualify is still pretty slight, so we wanted to give people the chance to meet the iNets team in person (Nico MacDonald, Matt Desmier and Verity Alexander from South West Screen, and Korash Sanjideh who is the iNet advisor for Business Link), find out more and put their questions to them.

For anyone completely in the dark, the iNet is there to provide business support for South West based businesses who have an idea around the key areas of innovation, knowledge sharing and export.

In simple terms, iNet support is for the kind of tertiary activities businesses don't normally get around to doing as they are too busy focusing on their primary activity: making money. R&D, marketing and PR support, for example, are the kinds of areas where iNet support can help, as long as the proposed idea focuses on one of those three core themes: innovation, knowledge transfer and export.

Monday’s event brought together members of B&NES Council, the iNet team, Bath Spa University and some of Bath’s most proactive creative businesses. The evening focused on two key areas for Bath businesses: the lack of flexible, creative workspace and the need for creative and technology experts to communicate better and more.

Following a presentation from the Nico, the interim Director of the Creative Industries iNet on the kinds of projects the programme is seeking to support (for examples of current and past projects, please go to the iNet microsite: http://creativeindustriesi.net), Bathcamp’s Mike Ellis and Storm’s Dave Kelly talked through the genesis of Bath Digital, a new forum linking ‘geeks’ with ‘creatives’ and with business.

This was followed by Steve Brewer and Dominique Brown from Burtt-Jones and Brewer giving us their thoughts on what the perfect creative workspace would look like.

Both are hot topics, which according to Matt Desmier and Korash Sanjideh, are also occupying the minds of creative clusters in Bournemouth and Plymouth. Is one solution to provide a service linking all three hubs – a South West-wide initiative?

Certainly, the ensuing discussion prevented us from moving on to cover other areas. Conversation flowed, introductions were made and business cards swapped. It is too early to tell if either project will be eligible for iNet support, but at the very least, the workshop showed the iNet team the level of demand for both ideas and hopefully introduced them to some Bath businesses who may themselves go on to propose ideas.

If you have an idea to help support businesses in the South West region and if it is innovative, encourages knowledge transfer or export, then you might be eligible for iNet support.

If you are based in the B&NES region, please contact us here at Creative Bath (emma@creativebath.org) to help you submit your idea. However, if you wish to discuss the iNet in more detail, or wish to arrange a one-to-one with the iNet business broker, please contact the iNet team on creative.industries@inets-sw.co.uk
 

Posted by:

Emma Chappel

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Other

Tags:

Creative_Bath, iNet, workshop