CADIC English Transfer SME Cluster
Focus: Creative Sustainable Development
History: In 2008, Manchester Beacon, initiated a novel interactive process called “Mapping Creativity” involving on-line and offline participation by many creatives in Manchester to find the organisation, which could propose the best project to drive Manchester’s collective creativity, using open source and social technologies to aggregate and maximise Manchester’s resources, The project seeks to catalyse, facilitate and forge links between communities through a series of physical and virtual activities. The winning project established ArcSpace Manchester as a community interest company. ArcSpace is a CADIC Transfer Partner and provides the hub for a SME cluster focusing on “Creative Sustainable Development” You can download here a PowerPoint Arcspace Presentation
The SME Cluster membership is a community of arts based concerns that urgently need to restructure and seek new opportunities and outlets for their work focusing on community development. This need has arisen as a result of the central and local government reforms taking place in the UK. The founder members are all independent self-governing small enterprises , including PennyOn, Firmstart, TogetherWorks and Realtime Media
The overall goal of the cluster is Creative Sustainable Development achievable both by the enterprises in the cluster themselves
-and by their clients
Requirements for support from CADIC
The Arcspace cluster is initially concentrated on finding collaborative advantage between enterprises through developing and mounting a creative event involving face-to face interaction to enable decision-making on sustainability: the Hackademia festival in Manchester. This festival spanned a two week period in September 2011
