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£1m Creative investment fund launched

Creative England has launched a new £1 million business investment fund to support creative and digital businesses across England.

Registrations for the fund open today, and SMEs looking to develop software applications and content for a number of sectors are being encouraged to apply.

These sectors include cross platform TV development, healthcare, government services, games and interactive entertainment, business-to-business, e-learning and mobile applications.

The fund hopes to support companies developing cross platform applications or content related to applications in the above markets.

Funding will be available via interest free loans of between £50,000 and £100,000 will be matched 50/50 with the company sharing development costs.

Jim Farmery, Creative England’s Director of Business Development, said: “By launching this programme I hope we can stimulate the development of some really interesting content and applications and support projects that otherwise would have struggled to get off the ground”.

The Business Development Fund is designed to support companies who have innovative new ideas for content development backed with commercial exploitation opportunities.

It will be open to SMEs outside London, with priority given to companies based in the North, West Midlands and South West, which relates to the Regional Growth Fund objective to prioritise support for areas that have been overly dependent on public sector employment.

Enterprise Minister Mark Prisk said: “Small businesses are the lifeblood of the economy, and we want to encourage more people to discover their entrepreneurial spirit and exploit new opportunities.

“This scheme, which has benefitted from the Regional Growth Fund is the right kind of support to help creative and digital businesses get off the ground and develop new and exciting content.”

This is the first element of the £5m award from the Government’s Regional Growth Fund to Creative England in April 2012. This private sector-led scheme aims to provide development funding and market expertise to small creative and digital businesses working in cross-platform content and services.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .