
FSB Creative Roundtable, Cardiff Meeting
It was a pleasure to be invited to join the Cardiff section of the Federation of Small Business’s (FSB) roundtable event to discuss the challenges and the positives within the creative industry in Wales.
The FSB exist to support smaller businesses in all fields. Part of their remit is to lobby for better outcomes from government and grant bodies. It’s about trying to allow smaller businesses to be heard. And that’s what happened at this event (the FSB Creative Roundtable Cardiff), which took place at Tramshed Tech in Cardiff.
The Discussion
A huge element that came out of the discussion was the difficulty of attracting funding in all forms. The reason were many and varied, particularly affecting the film production firms. But of course also affects some of our clients, even if we don’t need to attract funding ourselves.
We also brought up how university students are often not fully prepared for the careers they enter (something I have seen multiple times and found deeply frustrating). While not all places of learning suffer from this, it was a repeating issue across many creative industries.
In ours, it is a lack at times of commercial knowledge (an understanding of what both third sector and corporate organisations need from a design team) and full grasp of the tools of the trade. I’ve often found new graduates missing key skills that should be part of the curriculum. Unfortunately it seems they are not, and there seems to be reluctance for change given the feedback I heard. Maybe this is something we need to talk about more as an industry.
Outcomes
Hopefully, the information learned through events such as these can start to shift the thinking for some sectors. We’ll see… but we applaud the FSB wholeheartedly for engaging with us in this way.
And finally, it was great to meet some old faces and new ones too, and see the potential that exists in South Wales for a really powerful, competent, passionate, and successful creative industry. Long may that be the case.
Jeff
Caffeine Creative are based on the outskirts of Cardiff and can help with graphic design, web development, company values, branding and more.