New festival to support the creative sector

A virtual festival featuring 50 guest speakers has been organised to help the region's creative sector to embrace the opportunities and face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.

The two-day Creative Leaders Festival, which has more than 300 registered attendees already, is being hosted by The Growth Company and will also offer help for the sector to access business support.

It is supported by Creative England, Scale-up Institute, Creative Industries Federation, Boost Business Lancashire, Liverpool Growth Platform and the Intellectual Property Office and will feature over 45 speakers, including Lancashire Business View's own Stephen Bolton, who will feature on an expert panel.

It aims to explore solutions and opportunities that have arisen from the difficult pandemic driven circumstances for the creative sector. The festival’s focus is twofold, on one side it will highlight all the support and development opportunities currently available for creative business and on the other it will explore challenges and help creative industry stakeholders better understand what further support is needed for the North West’s creative sector to recover, flourish and grow once again.

Sarah Novotny, digital, creative and tech sector lead at GC Business Growth Hub, said: "This Festival will emphasise the true collaborative nature of creative businesses in the North West; how versatile the sector is and explore how it can maintain its unique innovative, ground-breaking and globally renown position.

"It will also highlight the importance of creative business support, and how critical local connections and networks are. People like to connect and do business with people they know or can easily meet, which is why GC Business Growth Hub programmes such as the Creative Scale-Up Programme put a lot of emphasis on community building and peer to peer learning."

Click here to see the full schedule and to book your fully funded tickets.