Thriving Baltic Creative Community Poised To Grow Into New Digital House
With Baltic Creative CIC’s Digital House at 61–65 Norfolk Street nearing completion, many of the first studios have been taken by existing Baltic Creative tenants who are at full capacity in their current studios. While leases are now being offered to the wider digital and creative sector, the brand new studios at Digital House have until now been prioritised for current tenants. And for many of them, this expansion can’t come soon enough.
Taking over the top floor studio will be app and software developers Citrus Suite. Moving into the new Digital House will allow them to restart their previously successful scheme of offering placements to aspiring developers, a strategy that had to be put on hold for 12 months as the team outgrew their Jamaica Street studio. Although they were amongst the first top sign up to the new development, Citrus Suite do admit that they will miss the highly visibility of their previous workspace, with much of their business, sometimes £100,000 plus jobs, coming from people walking in from the street. However there is no doubt that the movement to the Digital House will ultimately allow the company to prosper further as they are backed by the high quality resources that their business demands.
Another company benefitting from the new build is Simul. CEO Roderick Kennedy uses his background in plasma physics alongside his three person team to create high quality sky renders for the games industry. Roderick believes the dynamic environment provided by the Digital House will be 'very positive for recruitment’ as it is a perfect manifestation of the buzz of the Baltic Triangle. This will subsequently encourage people to seek out employment in the area.
For Michelle Dow and All About STEM, the Digital House will become the epicentre for the promotion of STEM careers throughout the North West, providing an area where their Maghull employees and Baltic based workers can come together to ‘take things to the next level.’ Dow believes that the ‘sense of community’ afforded by the Digital House is what makes All About STEM and other companies in the Baltic Triangle successful. ‘It’s that nod to the person in the next shed. It feels like family. People pass leads on without realising that they are passing leads on. It is really hard to quantify that and put a price on it.’
Overall the £2.6m Digital House is the Baltic Creative’s next step towards providing high quality affordable space for digital companies in the Baltic Triangle. With the potential to accommodate 20 digital/tech businesses, the scheme will provide a boost to the Baltic Triangle’s rapidly growing reputation as one of the UK’s most dynamic creative clusters.
