MyWorld has had an incredible impact so far, with 399 jobs created, £39m of additional investment leveraged, and 411 businesses supported. Originally, this was a five-year programme, but due to a delay in opening The Sheds, we have extended into our sixth year.
This has presented an exciting opportunity for us to build on much of the work already done across the consortium and continue to drive innovation in creative technology outside of MyWorld. As the programme enters its sixth year, we’ll be increasing our focus on some key, high-impact areas, whilst other areas of the programme are reaching their planned conclusion. 

We’re also looking to the legacy of MyWorld and have two projects underway to help deliver on this. One is ensuring that the four facilities from UWE Bristol, Bath Spa University, University of Bath and  University of Bristol continue to develop and cement their interconnected approach – presenting a globally unique offering to those looking to conduct R&D – be they from within the creative industries or beyond.

Our work has enabled us to present this region’s strengths to a national and international audience – to define what our specialisms are, and to demonstrate our boundary-pushing research, technology and production. Developing and presenting these strengths is the focus of our second legacy project – and that is around Live Performance. We have a clear regional strength around live performance, and MyWorld has developed the industry capability to bring live performance to more audiences, including those previously excluded, in more immersive and engaging ways.

These two legacy projects will form a key part of our activity in this sixth year and will require and enable even more collaboration from across the consortium and region. And this wonderfully highlights one of the other, lasting impacts of the programme. It has brought together an incredible range of people and organisations from across the region to collaborate, innovate and embed real change. As some of their work here comes to and end at the close of our fifth year on March 31st we know that above the metrics which demonstrate our impact, that the relationships built and strengthened through this programme will carry on and the collisions of people and ideas will continue to make this region more innovative, more inclusive, more prosperous and to captivate audiences around the world in new and brilliant ways.

And the best thing is, we are far from done yet, MyWorld continues to drive impact and has created the best practice and relationships to continue to do so.