- Set to build on a run of national events relocating to Manchester, including the BRITs, the MOBOs, and the TV Festival from 2027
- Sector employs more than 100,000 people across screen, music, gaming, advertising and fashion, making it the largest creative hub in Europe outside London
- New hero film premiered at HOME in Manchester
Greater Manchester Freelancer Network also launches to strengthen the voice and influence of freelancers and micro-businesses across the creative industries
Invest Manchester and Marketing Manchester, working alongside Greater Manchester Combined Authority, have launched Home of Everything, a 12-month spotlight on the sector to draw international attention to one of Europe’s fastest-growing creative industry clusters.
More than 100,000 people work in the sector across screen and production, music, gaming, advertising, fashion and creative technology, making it the largest creative cluster in Europe outside London.
Home of Everything makes the case for Greater Manchester across the whole of the creative industries, covering the talent, infrastructure, the businesses already working here and the opportunities that exist across the city region.
Running over the next 12 months, the campaign will combine activity across Greater Manchester with a targeted digital programme and a range of supporting content, which will be showcased across major domestic and international events.
The proposition behind the campaign has been developed with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), aligning with its recent Creative Industries Sector Development Plan.
It coincides with the launch of the Greater Manchester Freelancer Network, a new advisory group giving freelancers and micro-businesses a clear route into Greater Manchester’s creative industries policy and delivery.
Freelancers make up around 30% of the sector’s workforce, and the Network will bring together lived experience and sector knowledge from across all ten boroughs. Working with the GMCA and partners, it will help shape fairer working conditions and embed freelance voices in the delivery of the Creative Industries Sector Development Plan.
The Home of Everything campaign follows a run of creative wins for the city region, raising its creative profile even further, including The BRITs and the MOBOs both being held in Manchester this year and returning in 2027.
As well as The English National Opera establishing its new permanent main base in Greater Manchester by 2029, the country festival C2C set to move to Manchester from Belfast in 2027, and the TV Festival comes to the city region from 2027, the first time it has been staged outside Edinburgh in nearly 50 years.
Marking the start of the campaign is a mockumentary style film of the same name, Home of Everything, which premiered at HOME in Manchester yesterday (8th September).
The film follows four young marketeers at a fictional agency, The Ideas Mill, given the brief of coming up with a concept to promote Greater Manchester to the “world’s creative big guns.”
The film was commissioned from an idea by Manchester-based creative agency Meanwhile, produced by Chief Production and directed by acclaimed comedy filmmaker Chris Cottam, with sub-edits being released throughout the year, covering some of the region’s success stories across film and TV, music, design and advertising, animation, fashion, and gaming.
The sector operates at huge scale across the city region already, with the likes of the BBC alone employing 3,500 staff at MediaCity, where more than 200 production companies also work.
Nearby, WPP runs its flagship UK campus at Enterprise City with 550 staff across eight agencies.
At St John’s, the city centre district built around the former Granada studios, Cloud Imperium Games has its global development operation alongside Aviva Studios, Versa Studios, Soho House and Campfield.
Across the city is the Co-op Live, the UK’s largest indoor arena ranked as Europe’s top venue for ticket sales in its first year. Inside it, adidas and Abbey Road have built a recording studio.
Mayor of Greater Manchester Bev Craig said:
“I want Greater Manchester to be globally renowned for our music, arts and culture. The creativity that has put Greater Manchester on the map comes from every part of our city region. Across our ten boroughs, talented people and businesses are making an important contribution to our economy, our culture and our international reputation.
“This campaign gives us the chance to tell that story to a wider audience. It will help raise the profile of the sector, attract new opportunities and investment, and support our ambition to ensure creative success is something that benefits communities across Greater Manchester.”
Joe Manning, Managing Director of Invest Manchester, said:
“Greater Manchester has the largest concentration of creative businesses anywhere in the UK outside the capital, and the companies already working here know exactly what the city can do.
“It is, however, a different conversation with a studio, a label or a publisher that has never had a reason to look north.
“We have studio space for international productions, a graduate pipeline large enough to staff them and office costs around 18 per cent below London. What we have not had is a way of showing all of it at once, because no single part of the sector explains the whole picture and scale of what is happening across Greater Manchester.
“What started out as making a two-minute film about the creative sector, then turned into nine minutes, which told us a lot about how much we have to offer in Greater Manchester.
“The film is one part of a year of activity, with a different part of the sector in focus each month across events, social media and more.”
Watch the film and find out more at investmanchester.co.uk/everything.
