Places
Places maps the creative economy of a place. It finds the activity, people and connections that official statistics miss, and shows what is already there before anyone decides what to support.
Clients
Places is built for funders, councils and partnerships. It supports investment cases, cluster bids, strategies and evaluations. Each client receives: a dataset of the place's creative companies and workforce, with every estimate labelled; a map of its creative economy; and an evidence pack for investment cases, bids and strategies.
Five steps
- Recognisethe activity
- Seethe people
- Understandthe place
- Connectthe capabilities
- Choosewhat to support
Recognise the activity: find creative companies wherever they are registered, including under other industry codes, to build a verified list of a place's creative businesses.
See the people: estimate the whole creative workforce, including freelancers and sole traders missing from official datasets, with every modelled figure labelled as an estimate.
Understand the place: map where creative activity sits and use that to estimate its GVA and wider economic impact.
Connect the capabilities: trace the links between companies, freelancers, venues and institutions to show where skills, space and demand overlap, and where capacity goes unused.
Choose what to support: test each option against one shared picture of the place, then decide what to support and where.
North East Scotland
Aberdeen City Council commissioned The Fifth Sector to map the creative economy of North East Scotland. Our report (PDF) identified a workforce of over 10,000 creative workers, more than double that shown in national statistics. Almost half of those (49%) work independently; more than 2,000 appear in no official dataset. The Regional Economic Partnership for North East Scotland has adopted our findings and recommendations in North East Culture Connects (PDF), the region's framework for growing the creative economy.
To find what is hidden in your place, talk to us.