Before I answer these questions, let's back track a bit as the local context is important. Barnsley is a medium sized city - at least by UK standards in the north of England. Historically it was a mining community so with the closure of mines in the 1970s and 19430s, it suffered massive industrial decline coupled with high Levels of unemployment and deprivation.
So, the city has had to completely re-imagine its future and think creatively about its assets so as to grow new jobs. I think this scenario will resonate with people from other medium sized cities. One initiative, which has been particularly successful, is the 'Enterprising Barnsley' business support programme (part funded through ERDF) which has helped local companies to create over 1400 jobs since 2010. Let's not forget that this is in a period when the rest of the UK economy was at best stagnant. Barnsley grew the biggest number of jobs in the whole country - 9.4% growth - we're pretty proud of that.
Why did your city decide to set up an URBACT Action Planning Network?
We've done a lot of work to develop and cluster the creative and digital economy but it's an organic, living thing and there's always more to do. We want to ensure our biggest physical asset - the Digital Media Centre - can fulfil our ambitions to be a thriving hub of creative and digital activity - a place where people and businesses and skills collide and collaborate. For this to happen we need to ensure we are planning for the future. We got involved in a previous URBACT network Creative Clusters a few years back and on the back of that also participated in a couple of URBACT events. I could see how the URBACT model would enable us to do more integrated work on the digital economy - one of our prime targets for growth and very much an enabling sector for other industries - and how, with this being such a rapidly changing sector, it could be useful to work with other cities on the opportunities and challenges. I started to talk to a few people about this idea - including Alison our Lead Expert and from those conversations TechTown was born.
Who was behind the initiative?
Well that would be me initially as Sector Specialist for the Digital and Creative Sector locally and as manager of the Digital and Media Centre. We are benefitting from some great regional-level support for the digital economy in the UK but medium cities have to find ways to collaborate and compete with powerful places closer to home - in our case Sheffield and Leeds. I discussed the original idea with various people - most importantly in this context local geeks - after all they are the people who have to drive this.. We want the project to be 'of the digital .economy not just 'for' the digital economy. So we are all busy 'geek-seeking' as these are the people that will make jobs in this sector and hopefully then go on to employ others. We really want to help the stars in our digital economy to scale, and for the city to be a viable option for new businesses too.
What is the main policy challenge or problem you would like to address in the network?
Digital and Technology economies offer massive opportunities. In Barnsley we thought we were doing OK - at least compared to TechCity in London - and then the Government initiated TechNorth, through which they are investing sizeable resources to grow the 'Northern Powerhouse'. We quickly realised that we would have our work cut out to ensure that Barnsley didn't lose out to our large neighbouring cities and particularly Sheffield and Leeds. As part of this reflection we realised that other medium sized cities were probably asking themselves similar questions: How do we compete with larger city centres and their accompanying lifestyle offer, higher salaries, connectivity to higher education and larger knowledge based communities? What can we do locally to attract national and regional incentives and programmes for growth and inward investment which so often focus on larger cities?
Ultimately it's about growing our local digital economy and clearly people and skills feature in this landscape. We need to find the talent to fill highly skilled roles in the digital and technology economy as well as attracting and retaining talent to start new businesses in this sector. We also need to think about filling digital and technology roles in the wider economy where there is also increased demand. So, it's not just about digital companies but also about digital jobs in other sectors. We've made some inroads in this area but demand is only going to increase.
Why did you choose to address this problem or work on this policy issue in the framework of an URBACT network?
I guess our main motivation for working within an URBACT network is a sense of shared urgency in a rapidly changing landscape. Everything is happening really quickly. There is so much potential and yet so many scary challenges. Having tasted what URBACT has to offer through Creative Clusters we were keen to apply the methodology - and the opportunity for transnational learning - to our local digital context. We think it will really help us to explore further the role and viability of digital and technology clusters and look at how medium sized cities can benefit from major city initiatives to grow Jobs.
What concrete results do you expect to achieve through this URBACT network? At local level, as a local authority? At network level?
That's a good question. You sound like my boss!! I am (quite rightly) under constant pressure locally to quantify the results. The trouble is this is about hearts and minds. It's not that easy to predict and measure what success looks like. Ultimately Its about bringing stakeholders together to co create a plan which will go on to grow digital jobs and businesses and ensure our whole economy is successful and competitive and relevant. If my job was redundant, maybe that would be a good measure of success.
How did you set up your initial partnership? Why did you choose these partners? Did you approach them or did they approach you?
We were keen to have medium sized cities which had at least started their digital economy journey and were therefore conscious of some of the challenges and opportunities. Through existing networks we had some ideas of where these cities were and approached them direct. We also used the URBACT partner search database and had lots of conversations at the CityFest in Riga. We were actually slightly overwhelmed by the interest in the project Idea and developed some criteria to help us select the cities which were the best fit for TechTown for Phase 1.
One of your tasks will be to complete the partnership from your current number of partners to up to 12 partners, how are you going to proceed? Have you received many "declarations of interest"? From which part of Europe? Are you still looking for potential partners? If so, what kind? What are the selection criteria?
As I said before, we've been inundated with interest. I think we're nearly there. We have accepted 2 new partners in Croatia and France and are in advanced conversations with 3 others in Denmark. Ireland and the UK. In an Ideal world we would find 1 more medium sized city from a less developed region but it needs to be the right city - one that has started their digital economy journey and preferably from a Central and Eastern European Country.
The network has just been approved for a 6 month development phase. What will be the next steps for you as lead partner city? What will be the challenges? How do you foresee working with the partner cities?
We had our first partnership meeting in the middle of October which went well I think - it was really interactive with lots of opportunities for partners to get stuck in. We even did a Halloween team building challenge one evening - that was a laugh - and a great way to build trust and confidence across the team ..... and we are a team! It was great to meet the partners face to face, have an opportunity to start talking about our shared interests and begin to pinpoint our common ones.
We are now starting our partner visits. I plan to accompany Alison on all of these as I think this investment now from me will reap rewards both locally and transnationally moving forward. Alison hopes to have the baseline drafted by the end of January and in February well regroup in San Sebastian and have an opportunity to discuss it and to further refine our plans for the action planning phase.
We are also sneaking some real digital working in there with a hack day in Barnsley in January and a follow up to this in San Sebastian hopefully. I think it's going to be an exhausting but stimulating few months - trains, planes and automobiles and lots of coffee and chocolate! Bring it on :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z08KIJG1rXs&feature=youtu.be