New Brighton Is Already the Cluster Government Is Asking For

When government talks about “hotbeds of creative excellence”, “clusters of cutting-edge creative businesses” and “replicating success through place-based investment”, it is describing New Brighton almost word for word.

The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s recent announcement — celebrating £7 million of Creative Cluster funding and inviting bids for a further £27 million — sets out a clear, repeatable model. Grow creative businesses. Forge partnerships. Build skills. Create jobs. Develop innovative content across film, games, music, fashion and digital culture. Anchor it in place. Let it spill into the local economy.

That model already exists in New Brighton. What’s missing is more formal recognition — and proportionate investment.

A Cluster Without a Logo (Yet)

The official language is precise. Government is looking to “grow clusters of cutting-edge creative businesses”, particularly where there are gaps in existing coverage. It wants partnerships between creative enterprises, universities and civic bodies. It wants innovation, skills, training, job creation and export-ready creative content.

New Brighton has quietly assembled exactly that — without the benefit of a £7 million cheque from government.

Over the last eight years, the town has become a dense, interconnected ecosystem of creative activity. Not a single sector, but a genuinely interdisciplinary mix: internationally recognised street art; immersive and digital practice; photography and visual storytelling; poetry and publishing; craft, illustration and animation; games development; film and screen production; independent studios, collectives and CICs rooted in the town.

This isn’t a scene built on occasional events or visiting talent. It’s embedded. People live here. Work here. Invest here. Mentor here. Take risks here. The spillover effects — footfall, tourism, identity, confidence — are visible on the streets.

In policy terms, this is what a functioning creative cluster looks like before it gets branded as one.

Proven Impact, Underwritten by People

The Combined Authority rightly points to Liverpool City Region’s music sector as evidence of “the transformative impact that government investment can have”. That’s true — and important.

But New Brighton demonstrates the other side of the equation: what happens when creative clusters are driven first by people rather than programmes.

Much of what has happened here has been carried by private investment, volunteer energy, CICs and individual practitioners absorbing risk that would normally sit with public bodies. Studios have been built without subsidy. Cultural assets have been created without capital grants. Networks have formed without official convening power.

The return on that effort is already clear. Cultural value. Social capital. Economic activity. International attention. A reputation that now precedes the town.

From a public-value perspective, this is exactly the kind of place where modest, well-targeted investment produces outsized returns.

The Government’s Words, Applied Locally

The funding now on the table is explicitly about replication.

Ministers are asking regions to identify places where clusters already exist, where innovation is happening, and where support would accelerate rather than artificially create activity. The Creative Clusters programme is designed to address gaps — geographic, sectoral and social — in previous funding rounds.

New Brighton sits squarely in that gap.

It is within the Liverpool City Region, but outside the traditional gravity wells of city-centre investment. It is already active across precisely the sectors named in the Creative Industries Sector Plan: film, TV, video games, immersive media, visual culture, digital production. It already collaborates across disciplines. It already attracts national and international talent. It already converts creativity into place-based economic value.

In short, it already meets the criteria — on the ground, not just on paper.

From Informal Network to Strategic Asset

What formal investment would unlock is scale, resilience and inclusion.

It would allow creative businesses and CICs to move from hand-to-mouth delivery to strategic growth. It would support skills pathways for local people. It would connect practice to research and development. It would create the kind of structured partnerships with universities and institutions that funding frameworks quite rightly demand.

Crucially, it would shift New Brighton from being a success story powered by goodwill into a recognised strategic asset within the City Region’s creative economy.

That isn’t about replacing grassroots energy. It’s about backing it with the ambition now being asked for nationally.

Now Is the Moment

The Combined Authority’s own announcement says this funding is about “forging lasting partnerships”, “driving innovation” and “supercharging the sector” through smart, place-based investment.

New Brighton is not asking to be invented. It is asking to be recognised.

The work is already happening. The ecosystem already functions. The creative capital already exists. What’s required now is alignment — between national ambition, regional strategy and a town that has quietly become one of the most dynamic creative places on the coast.

If the next phase of Creative Clusters funding is about backing what works, filling the gaps and building on proven success, then New Brighton is not a peripheral candidate.

It is a textbook one.

Now is the time for dialogue, collaboration — and for investment to finally catch up with reality.

RW