IVE Joins the Northern Powerhouse

We’re hugely excited to announce that IVE has joined the Northern Powerhouse as a partner organisation.

The Northern Powerhouse is one of the delivery mechanisms for the Government’s Industrial strategy, bringing together stakeholders across the region from local government, industry and education together with the aim of finding ways to address key barriers to productivity and promote the North of England and Wales as a fantastic place to live and do business.

We’re particularly excited to come on board as a partner organisation as this gives us a unique opportunity to help shape the future of skills development in the North by being involved in the conversations behind vital strategic planning in this priority area.

For us, one of the key issues facing the North is the creative skills gap. We aim to use this strategic opportunity to advocate for the importance of creativity in education by expressing clearly how it leads to improved economic prosperity. We will also by encouraging and nurturing creative innovation across all industrial sectors and by driving the critical agenda for a healthy skills pipeline for the rapidly expanding creative industries sector,

With these two strategic drivers in mind we also hope  to collaborate with other key partners on initiatives that focus on how to train and up-skill up the existing workforce to help deal with some of the immediate challenges of the future such as; increasing automation, Brexit uncertainty and stagnating productivity.

We’re joining the likes of Barclays, Siemens, Vodafone and other major international businesses in recognising the value of the North as a place to invest in and a driving factor in the UK economy. Building these connections is also a fantastic boost to achieving IVE’s charitable goal of ensuring a more creative future for everyone in the UK.

Northern Powerhouse Minister, Jake Berry MP said:

“As a pioneering Yorkshire-based social enterprise working to teach and nurture creativity across the North, I am delighted to welcome IVE as a Northern Powerhouse Partner. I look forward to seeing what we can achieve together by inspiring and supporting creative personal and professional development for young people and adults – allowing innovation to flourish in the workplace across the Northern Powerhouse.”

IVE’s CEO Rosi Lister added:

“I couldn’t be more delighted to join the Northern Powerhouse as a partner. It is unusual for an organisation like ours to be included but the decision reflects confidence in our unique skill set as experts in nurturing creativity and innovation from classroom to boardroom; from young trainee to senior management..

Our focus on creativity as a big part of the solution to many issues facing the North, provides a valuable voice and perspective within the Northern Powerhouse and should be invaluable in helping achieve their aims.”

This partnership is a natural extension of some of our recent work on convening a group to address some of the issues facing Leeds City Region, which we have written about previously.