Deadline: 7-Jul-22
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) is inviting local area partnerships in England (except London) to submit expressions of interest (EOIs) to participate in the Create Growth Programme (CGP) over three financial years, from FY22/23 to FY24/25.
The CGP is an expansion of the Creative Scale Up pilot (2019-2021), which provided the Greater Manchester, West Midlands and West of England Combined Authorities with a package of business and investor support to support creative businesses to scale and access finance outside London. The CGP will build on the success of the pilot to provide six regions in England outside London with a bespoke package to support high-growth potential creative businesses and build investor networks. The support package will comprise three complementary strands: business support targeted at the creative industries; finance; and investor capacity building activities.
Local area partnerships will be directly responsible for delivering targeted business support to high-growth potential creative businesses. It is expected that participation in the CGP will help to build local knowledge, capacity and infrastructure to support creative businesses beyond the programme.
EOI applicants will be shortlisted by a panel appointed by DCMS. Shortlisted applicants will be invited to submit full applications to bid to participate in the programme.
Objectives
The objectives of the Create Growth Programme are to:
- Support high-growth potential creative businesses to become investment ready outside of London, by developing businesses’ knowledge, skills and access to finance.
- Increase the number of investors willing to invest in creative businesses outside of London, by educating and developing investor networks.
Funding Information
- Each successful local area partnership will be awarded approximately £1.275 million in grant funding to deliver the business support package across three financial years.
- In addition to this, businesses across participating local area partnerships will have the opportunity to benefit from up to a £7 million fund for finance support.
- Local area partnerships will also benefit from the investor capacity building activities developed through the programme.
Eligibility Criteria
- The programme is open to EOIs from local area partnerships in England and outside of London only. London boroughs and the Greater London Authority are excluded from applying to the programme either as a stand alone application or as part of a consortium bid. The CGP is focused on supporting creative businesses and unlocking economic growth in other parts of the country.
- Applicants must be either a Combined Authority, Local Authority or Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP). In the case of a consortium application, the lead organisation must be either a Combined Authority, Local Authority or LEP.
- There is no predetermined minimum or maximum size of geographical area(s) that can apply. However, local area partnerships will be assessed on their capacity to deliver on the stated objectives of the CGP and will be required to demonstrate there are enough businesses in the area that can benefit from the programme and sufficient local infrastructure to support businesses beyond the programme.
- It is therefore suggested that local area partnerships should, where existing, be a Mayoral Combined Authority or a consortium of upper tier and unitary authorities elsewhere.
For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/guidance/applying-to-the-create-growth-programme