The West of England’s creative industry is very broad-based – from TV, film and animation to design, branding and marketing.
Each month Bath Business News’ sister title Creative Business News will focus on a different part of the sector to highlight the latest trends and innovations coming out of the region and champion those who are setting the pace.
To kick off the series, Miranda Prynne looks at how the region’s entrepreneurial spirit, talented workforce and appetite for innovation have combined to trigger a creative boom.
It’s an often-repeated claim that the West of England’s creative sector is flourishing – but it’s backed up by hard stats. The region’s creative industry grew by 32.6% from 2011 to 2014 and has seen the UK’s largest increase in creative sector jobs – from 7.5% in 2013 to 8.3% in 2014.
Bristol and Bath were also together named one of the UK’s leading tech clusters in the most recent Tech Nation report.
While Bristol has also been lauded as the best place in the UK to start a business, according to the Start-up Cities Index, thanks to its skilled labour force, above average business survival rates, good broadband speeds and strong business funding and support networks. 
It is this combination of creativity, tech innovation and entrepreneurialism that seems to be driving the region’s so-called ‘creative boom’.
Many companies at the forefront of this expansion are homegrown businesses that have thrived within the favourable local conditions. A massive 2,795 start-ups were launched in Bristol in 2016.
But they have also been joined by a rush of London-based tech and digital businesses keen to get a slice of the action.
As the largest city in the South West, with a population of nearly half a million, Bristol is now home to more than 17,500 businesses. A third of UK-owned FTSE 100 companies now have a big presence in the area.
Turnover in Bristol and Bath’s tech sector soared by a massive 53% between 2010 and 2014.
It is now worth £8.2bn – behind only London and Reading/Bracknell – and tech workers in the region generate more revenue per head than in any other part of the UK.
Bristol and Bath are home to the UK’s only fast-growing and globally significant tech cluster, according to management consultancy McKinsey & Co. 
The region has been producing specialist microprocessors and silicon chips here for 30 years and have the largest concentration of silicon designers outside of Silicon Valley.
A raft of companies including Oracle, IBM, Sony, Hewlett Packard and JUST EAT have all set up bases in Bristol.
But long before the tech companies began swarming, the region was already famed for its creativity.
Since the BBC set up camp in Bristol 80 years ago, the region has become a centre for TV, film and animation, and the associated support services, with 14 BAFTAs and six Oscars going to companies in the area.
Since 1999 there has been a 106% increase in productivity in the creative and digital industries across Bristol and Bath.
A massive 35% of the world’s natural history programming is created in Bristol, which has also become a global centre for animation, symbolised by the Oscar-winning creators of Wallace & Gromit, Aardman Animations.
IMDb also calls Bristol & Bath home as does the world’s largest YouTube gaming channel, Yogscast. 
Digital content originating from the area reaches more than 500m views each month.
The presence of prestigious universities has also been a driving force for innovation and creativity.
The Bristol Robotics Lab, a collaboration between Bristol University and the University of the West of England’s (UWE), pictured below, fosters world-leading robotics work related to autonomous vehicles, high-speed internet and quantum computing.
Projects like Bristol and Bath by Design bring together academics and professionals from creative and digital industries.
The universities and talent and funding they bring are further supported by a series of industry networks and hubs such as Bristol Media, TechSPARK, Bristol Games Hub and Engine Shed, pictured top.
The Bath and Bristol SETsquared programmes generated more than £48m of investment in 2015, the year Bristol was named the world’s best university incubator by UBI Global.
SETsquared Bristol, set up by the University of Bristol and based at Engine Shed in the heart of the Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone, has supported 184 companies across many different tech sectors including semiconductors, telecoms, automotive, biotech, clean tech and security to name but a few.
This is all just a small slither of the exciting creative work taking place across the West.
Creative Business News will take the time to examine different areas within the creative sector each month.
