Partner Article

North East creative companies invited to Step Forward for investment

Enterprise development company NStar has launched a new phase in its programme to channel investment into the region’s creative businesses. Up to 200 design and creative industry companies will be offered a free benchmarking and diagnostic report to assess demand for investment as part of the new Step Forward scheme.

Mark Fenwick, NStar Design and Creative fund manager, said: “This programme will help every company that applies to move forward towards success. But the programme is just as much about inviting companies that may never have thought about seeking external investment to identify themselves. “There’s a real recognition in the North East’s of the contribution that creative companies can make to delivering jobs and prosperity: the question we’re trying to answer is how many are out there and how we help them to be better?”

Hugh Mason, a founding partner at Pembridge Partners LLP, who are helping to deliver the scehem, said: “As investors, we’ve worked in the North East now since 2003. Look around and the success of companies like Sage shows that there’s world-class entrepreneurship here. All our experience is that this programme will encourage a new generation of creative business people - the dragon’s den generation - to connect with sources of investment and growth and that has to be good for the North East.”

Companies seeking to engage with the Design and Creative Fund can do so online. Every eligible business applying will receive an individual diagnostic and benchmarking report, free of charge, in a process that simply requires them to submit their last two years accounts and go through a 25 minute phone profiling interview, in confidence and at a time that suits them. Full details of the process and an application form are online at the Nstar website.

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