News – Creative investment for Watershed

Watershed Media Centre has taken a major step towards securing its long-term future following the announcement of a £6.4m investment from the South West of England Regional Development Agency (RDA) to enable the organisation to purchase its building. Watershed, which presents a year-round programme of moving image and digital media activity, is also a hub for creative networking in Bristol, working collaboratively with a creative cluster of arts, media and technology companies in the area. It is located at the E&W Sheds at Bristols harbourside, together with other creative businesses including eMedia business incubation units run by the University of the West of England (UWE), arts career mentoring service Arts Matrix, and education software developers, Futurelab.
By purchasing the Sheds from their current owner, JT Group, Watershed will now be able to shape the medium- to long-term development of its external environment, but will also generate rental revenues from commercial tenants in its buildings, including a number of bars and cafés. The money raised will be ploughed into a permanent endowment available for creative businesses in Bristol to invest in areas such as skills development, networking and innovation, and used to lever further funds to support the creative ecology of the region. A Creative Industries Partnership involving Watershed Arts Trust, the South West RDA, Bristol City Council, UWE, the University of Bristol and others will advise on the distribution of the new fund investment in the wider creative economy.

The move to purchase its building is just one of the strategic steps currently being taken by Watershed to consolidate its cross-sector partnership activity. The organisation has also been working with the Mission Models Money programme (see p7) to create iShed CIC Ltd, a community interest company acting as a cultural broker dealing in research and development in creative technology.