Action Groups - Business, Marketing & IT

The Business, Marketing and IT Group recognises the mutual reliance of small, creative businesses in the Valley, their importance to the marketing of the Valley as a whole and the need to more effectively network their businesses and their marketing efforts through a solid and progressive communications structure.

Strategy
The Group deliberately, and rightly, views 'creative' as being more than simply the commonly identified creative industries (although the Upper Calder Valley has abundant talent in these areas). It takes the concept forward into creative ways of doing and evolving business and of managing the relationship between live/work goals and outcomes. The exploration of progressive and radical business models, lifestyle mixes and their relation to tangible, intangible and community benefits is a strong feature of valley life.

The Group recognises that whilst the Upper Calder Valley currently has limited large scale business, and that there is little scope for the development of major single employer businesses, it has a wealth of individuals and small teams, often homeworking or tucked away in nonmainstream premises, many of whom are able to command international recognition in their chosen fields.

The Group therefore seeks to provide opportunities for these elements to come together, both physically and virtually, in a way that will allow partnerships and alliances to form, grow and benefit from each other’s strengths. It seeks to find ways of bringing together individual power sources, already shining brightly in their own specialist fields and allowing them to connect together to light up whole areas of activity and development, creating a 'Flying Shuttle of Enterprise' that constantly traverses the Valley from side to side, binding the warp and weft together.

Actions

1. Network Hubs
Create a networking infrastructure for the Valley which is both physical and virtual, through creating a series of multi-purpose, multimedia centres along the length of the Valley, the first four located in the main market towns: Todmorden, Hebden Bridge, Sowerby Bridge and Mytholmroyd. These centres will provide flexible space for workshop, small office and virtual office use, together with exhibition, performance and digital mini-theatre capability.

These hubs will support existing and emerging businesses offering a showcase, a focal point for networking and business advice and support services. They will be connected by high bandwidth communications, allowing multi-site events to take place. The hubs to be established within the sequence of 21st Century Marketplaces that will be created along the Valley.

2. Business 'Federation' Launch Event
This event to be held early in 2004 allowing business people to travel freely up and down the Valley on shuttle buses to meet their peers at a number of social locations, to be linked by webcam to allow inter-site interaction.

3. Virtual Networking
To be carried out through the creation of common communications infrastructures and information systems. A high penetration local 'geographical' intranet should be established to provide a basis for future local autonomy in managing low cost data and other telecommunications.

4. Database Creation and Consolidation
A creative industries database, nearing release from Leeds University, should be integrated with skills and business databases planned by, or expected to emerge, and then widely distributed.

5. Calder Connect Co-operative (3-C)
3-C has already launched as the community owned, not-for-profit, broadband supplier for the Upper Calder Valley, with the future potential to supply a wide range of data and telecommunications services.

6. Expansion of a Green Real Estate Environment
The expansion of a green real estate environment for business and the creation of an international 'Distributed' Centre for Creative Working and Living are two longer term projects prioritised by the Group.

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