New jobs, events & exciting developments: 6 months later for media.cymru

In summer 2021, we were thrilled to share news of the media.cymru consortium securing a share of the £50m Strength in Places fund to develop a world-leading cluster for media innovation in the Cardiff Capital Region.

Now, 6 months down the line, we’re pleased to be back with an update! PDR’s Director of Research, Professor Andrew Walters, shares some of the exciting new developments taking place behind the scenes…

“The project has officially kicked off - and that’s triggered an immediate need to expand our team, so we’re actively recruiting for new roles which is always great!” Andy explains. “There are exciting opportunities to join the team as a Design Researcher and User Centred Designers, and we’ll be looking for these very soon.”

“We’re now in the planning phase, investigating with some of the ‘bigger players’ in the field to find out what this region needs to build upon the existing strengths within the creative sector. After the exploration work we’ll be turning that into challenges for the rest of the industry to respond to, and we’ll then be supporting those companies to respond to those challenges,” Andy continues.

“While the upcoming work will build on all we’ve developed with Clwstwr and the creative industries in South Wales, it’s also an expanded remit; it encapsulates media within the region much more generally, looking at digital infrastructure and bringing new technologies to media companies. Within that though, PDR will still be focused on working with lots of smaller companies to undertake research and development.”

The project was conceived in part to drive economic growth within the Cardiff Caption Region and add an additional £236m in Gross Value Added (GVA) by 2026 through the media sector. Asked about how we’ll work to achieve that, Andy begins: “One of the things we’ll do first is organise knowledge exchange events; structured presentations and interactions between the biggest players and smaller companies to explore how we can develop the right things for media innovation.”

“On top of that, we’ll also be organising a number of innovation talks, designed to draw upon the expertise from within PDR and exploring the results of what happens within the project as it goes along. We’ll be looking at sustainability, equality and diversity, ensuring they’re built into projects properly to yield the economic benefits they can achieve - and that the opportunities to build these elements into projects that aren’t necessarily focused on them is there as well!”

And what about after 2022? Following a year of planning, development, talks, events and recruitment, we’ll move into the more specific, dedicated work with individual companies for 2023. “This is where we’ll go back into those Clwstwr-type activities to look at businesses’ plans and help them to make the most effective use of their new developments”

We’re thrilled to see the project take flight and we’ll be back with an update in the future - watch this space!

Next steps

Read the original story about the £50m Strength in Places funding or read more news.