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This is the Custard Factory which is in the Digbeth area and together with the East Side
of Birmingham it’s hosting a lot of small digital media companies and it just feels
like a new Birmingham. In my view, regeneration economics should really be a project about
understanding the factors that will drive economic growth in Birmingham, in the West
Midlands and then the UK more widely. We’re coming out from hopefully a long period of
recession and it’s very important that policy addresses the issues ‘where will growth
come from?’ because places like Digbeth, like the Custard Factory, they mirror the
development of these new industries which are the future for Birmingham.
From my perspective, I think regeneration economies need to address the skills issues
that exist within local areas. The regeneration economy’s agenda also needs to look at transitions
between school into further education, into university and into the workplace. One of
the big dominant issues at the moment is a lack of engineering graduates. Kind of current
projections suggest that by 2020, so only 7 years away now, that we need to more than
double the number of engineering graduates that we produce. So for me I want regeneration
economies to really try and unpick the way we deliver STEM programmes and study within
higher education and to look at new ways of recruiting the graduates that we know that
we need within the UK because of this projected shortfall.
The Arts and Heritage sector makes an enormous contribution to the economy. Oxford econometrics
concluded a couple of years ago it’s £12.4 billion a year. I actually think that’s
an underestimate. It doesn’t take account of the value in attracting overseas students
to the UK, for example. One of the things that Arts and Heritage brings to the table
in terms of regenerating economies is embracing new technology to make these massive data
sets of collections accessible to really, really diverse audiences. If we do that in
partnership with SMEs, which we do a lot of the time, the solutions that we find are actually
transferrable to all the other areas of the economy. For example, it's not just that we’re
revolutionising collections and how we deliver content, it’s that we could be revolutionising
the classroom and the meeting room of the future.
Our research looks at the impact of weather and climate on the built environment and built
into that is looking at how we can improve the resilience of these critical infrastructure
networks, so extreme events like flooding and heat waves. If you think about our local
businesses, they will provide a product. Now they could supply that product if it’s a
tangible product via the road network, or it could be an information service in which
case they’re using the ICT network as a means to deliver their product. So the critical
infrastructure network underlying your local businesses is crucial to their success. I
hope regeneration economies takes a holistic view towards how we can develop the local
economy to make sure all the underlying foundations are in place, whatever that discipline is,
to make sure all the boxes are ticked and everything is going to be resilient for the
future.
Right, this is Acme Whistles, the largest and oldest manufacturer of whistles on the
planet. We’re here because the history and the success of regional economies is made
up of thousands of small companies like this and this company is integrated into the regional
economy and into the international economy. To understand the West Midlands you have to
start with companies like this. So what we’re trying to do is look at the Midwest of the
United States and compare that to the West Midlands and the reason we’re doing that
is they are two very different economies, they have some degrees of similarities within
them given the importance of heavy automotive industries within both places and also given
the fact that Birmingham is twinned with Chicago, so there’s a political affiliation. When
we brought 20 academics together to discuss this, what we did at the end of the day is
ask them the question about where we should go, what we should take forward in terms of
academic debate and everybody said, all twenty said that we are unhappy with the existing
approaches and that’s the first time I’ve been in a room where twenty academics have
been saying that everything they’ve been doing over the last twenty five, thirty years,
is actually incorrect and we need to start again. So it’s a very exciting, challenging
project. We’re going to upset many people because the papers we publish are going to
be saying look, we didn’t understand it or haven’t understood it as well as we should
do. People are going to be unhappy, they’re going to be very critical of our new approach
but by doing that we’re going to advance the debate and advance understanding.
I think it’s amazing that the Institute of Advanced Studies has procured this project
and timing could not be better. What we do we really need to do to face up to the challenges
that we have not only as a region in this country but as a country? I think the spotlight’s
on us. The world is looking at us and this is a great opportunity for this region to
profile a new way.