Nicholas Craig column

Jun 20 2003 By Nicholas Craig, The Journal

Newcastle's student graduate shows fizz with originality, skill and ideas. This year I presented the Watson Burton award for Best Animation to a brilliant film by Henry White, newly graduated from Northumbria University.

I'm even more delighted to learn that a company he has helped to set up, Lungfish Studio, will be operating from this area.

We live in a genuinely creative region.

To keep that innovative streak alive we need to keep the best graduates in our region.

We also need to engage the next generation in the excitement of learning skills old and new.

Newcastle is one of the world's top 10 creative cities - the only British city to make the list - according to Professor Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class.

He argues that the most important ingredients in economic development are the ideas and creativity of talented individuals.

Professor Florida shows that there is a clear connection between the ability of a city to attract talented workers and its rate of growth of high technology employment. The cities, regions and nations that will thrive in the 21st Century, he says, are those that are able to attract and retain creative talent.

Economic development will need to change from being a company-driven procedure, focusing on inward investment and the creation of new businesses, to a people-driven process.

When choosing a place to live, talented people are concerned not just with employment opportunities but with a `people climate' - an environment that offers a choice of lifestyle options.

They rate highly a welcoming, open culture that helps them pursue the kind of life that they desire.

The best news of the week for North-East industry is that work is due to start in September on the International and Creative Business Centre in Gateshead. The £3.7m venture aims to attract 120 creative, IT, media and design companies. It complements the adjacent Knowledge Campus, where the first buildings will open in 2005 to house creative, design and product development.