How Can Leeds as a Creative City Region Prepare Business Leaders for the Challenges Ahead?

IVE recently convened our first Dinner Digestif evening, bringing together thought leaders from across the worlds of business, education & politics to discuss the topic: “How Can Leeds as a Creative City Region Prepare Business Leaders for the Challenges Ahead?”

The evening began with a speech and provocation by Ian Livingstone, CBE. Ian is one of the founding fathers of the UK games industry, co-founding both Games Workshop and Fighting Fantasy as well as being chief executive of Eidos from 1995 to 2002, overseeing the launch of titles such as Tomb Raider.

Ian discussed his own career, starting with the founding of Games Workshop in the late 70’s where the huge order of £60 worth of Dungeons and Dragons materials secured them the exclusive distribution rights in Europe for the next 3 years! He then moved onto his later career shepherding the rise of the UK video games industry from a niche hobby to contributing more than £4 billion to the UK economy.

Key points from Ian’s talk included:

• The misconceptions of the gaming industry amongst the wider business community and how this generates financial problems. Ian related the difficulty in explaining what Dungeons & Dragons was to bank managers and being flatly turned down for investment funding by bankers who greeted the product with suspicion and confusion. This issue persists despite the huge success of video games in particular and the majority of start-up gaming companies cannot attract investment funding from established institutions.
• The importance of IP for creatives. Ian points to the creation of Lara Croft by Eidos. Although a successful video games franchise, Lara as an IP featured in advertising for the likes of Seat, Lucozade and even Visa, was spun off into comics, toys and merchandise and eventually became 3 Hollywood films. Many creatives lose control of their IP to fund their start up but Ian stressed the value of holding it.
• The value of gaming as a way to learn transferrable skills. Gaming, both video games and board games, has been proven to improve problem solving abilities and meta cognition, raise literacy levels and encourage creative thinking. What’s more, gamifying education encourages participation in school across all cohorts.

• The creative industry as a whole is worth more than £84 billion to the UK economy and is growing at twice the rate of the wider economy. It needs a major influx of talent to fuel growth, particularly in programming skills, but also in the sense of a wider set of creative skills.

The evening then transitioned into the discussion portion with those assembled in the room asked;

Increasing automation, Brexit and other factors are going to produce challenging economic times for the Leeds City Region. As a creative centre, creative industries such as film, music and gaming represent a major area of growth but are facing a skills shortage. More broadly, all industries would benefit from more creative employees with skills in problem solving, innovation and analysis. So, how do we ensure that Leeds is creating the workforce with the necessary creative skills and that the creative industries are supported to grow?

The Dinner Digestif included a mix of IVE staff and trustees, Leeds city councillors, education policy makers, members of the Chamber of Commerce, business owners representing both multinational corporations and SMEs, artists and University lecturers. Much of the strength of the evening came from that diverse mix of viewpoints and experiences with attendees remarking that it was refreshing to get to talk with people outside of their industry. It made them aware of problems they didn’t realise were factors but also allowed them to address their concerns to people with the ability to act on it. As one attendee remarked:

“Creating a platform to have this discussion with people you might not normally have this discussion with has sparked good thinking.”

Guests spoke for around 2 hours on the topic with plenty of passionate voices heard. Towards the end the key points that emerged were:

• There is a shared anxiety about the direction of travel in the national curriculum. In particular the dearth of creative opportunities post KS2. We need to find a way of challenging the Governments eradication of (transferable) creative subjects in schools. Discussion was made around creating a group that could speak with one voice across sectors about the value of creative subjects. Discussion also looked at what school leaders are already empowered to do within existing frameworks but are nervous to do because of a fear that it isn’t what OFSTED is looking for. As one attendee commented; “School leaders have the power to ensure that creative subjects are part of their offering, what can we say to them so that they realise that?” We’ve actually begun to address this issue already at IVE by producing a White Paper entitled: “Why do good and outstanding OFSTED schools demonstrate a creative mind set and an understanding of the importance of creativity?”
• Short term thinking (including the constant meddling of Governments) is one of our greatest challenges and that we have to begin a conversation that goes beyond politics and looks long into the future and plan accordingly. The fact that the future is very uncertain brings a further fundamental challenge that means we need to learn to plan in a different way, a way that plans for constant adaptation. This again is something we’ve previously discussed when looking at the 3 biggest challenges facing UK businesses in 2018.

• In terms of practical actions, it was pointed out repeatedly that businesses are required to pay into a training levy and not enough of them make use of this to train staff that can address this creative skills shortage. A programme like Creative Leadership for Business would enable businesses to invest in staff that are adaptable and capable of problem solving and dealing with the uncertainty we’re likely to experience in the next few years.
• A consensus was generated about the power of industry leaders and their potential influence on Government policy change. The West & North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce seemed open to a further conversation about how an all sector approach might take this agenda forward.

The evening ended with attendees being asked to summarise the key issues of the debate and try and produce a conclusion. Some of our favourites included:

“This is important, to everyone”

“A strategy is needed”

“We can do it and we should do it”

“We need to speak with one voice”

And a final note.

“In terms of uncertainty we must have courage”

If you are interested in taking part in future Dinner Digestif events then please email rosi@weareive.org

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