MediaCity: Designing tomorrow’s creative and healthy communities

Key players representing MediaCity’s community joined together to share their insights into how our leading creative cluster integrates culture and innovation as well as health and wellbeing into its environment. Nigel Moore – Fuzzy Duck, Kate Hadfield – Carbon Creative, Sam Ingleson – The University of Salford, Jonathan Harley dock10 and Stephen Young – Salford City Council.

Kate who runs ethic driven design agency – Carbon Creative and is a great advocate of MediaCity said: “We wanted to join a community to actively engage on site and bring our values which is exactly what we’ve been able to do here. It’s not just about creativity and innovation for the good of the economic driver – it’s about reaching out and making social inclusion high on the agenda.”  As an example, she shared the success of MediaCity’s sustainability and social value network – of which she was a founding member, “we have to work as a collective and be open to sharing resources, skills and knowledge for the better good.”

The special network MediaCity organically brings was recognised as an important point of difference. Sam talked about its value and how staff and students alike benefit  – with students getting the opportunity to work on live briefs building up invaluable ‘real work’ experience.

For Nigel, the value of the network brings the opportunity to collaborate, find solutions to challenges as well as access schools and colleges where the raw talent lies and complements the higher education pool on site.

Jonathan talked about the importance of diversifying dock10’s offer to remain competitive in a challenging market – growing its virtual studios capability and working with content creators and in esports, “ensuring we can offer employment opportunities for the future. It’s about re-training crews from traditional ways of working as well as fresh trainees in virtual production.”

Jonathan sees real opportunity in the merging of ‘on location’ and virtual set production to create an ever more realistic and cost effective raft of new shows from sitcoms to drama. This new world content and way of working will unlock more opportunity in the industry and pave the way for a fresh wave of writers, creatives and technologists.

Stephen reinforced the important role youth zones play in helping youngsters see what opportunities are open to them – particularly from deprived and challenging areas. “If you can’t see it, you don’t know its there.”

Nigel recognises that the education system  currently doesn’t give young people the freedom to explore; “how do we help schools to encourage them to write crazy stories? As a sector we need to do more to engage with their capabilities – out of the formal education process.”

He also talked about the huge pool of untapped talent within the deaf/ partially sighted/ blind and neurodivergent groups. “If we want content that truly reflects all – the creators have to be from these groups.”

Future proofing opportunity, skills and talent is key to the long-term success of MediaCity in perpetuity.