Why we must be united as well as unique

Welcome to my column, and thanks for starting to read it. It's fantastic to be given this space by the Evening Post and I am going to do my best to hold your interest right to the end and give you something stimulating to think about.

I am a passionate supporter of the creative industries in Nottingham, having spent most of my life as a designer and writer here, and I want to play a part in helping pull together all of the creative people in this city, give us a united voice, enable us to recognise and work with each other and, most importantly, show the wider business community that we should be taken seriously, very seriously!

This column will be supported by a weekly column about Nottingham's creative industries in the Evening Post's daily business pages, plus website coverage and occasional supplements highlighting sections of our activities.

It is a real opportunity for creative businesses to use this section of the Evening Post as a showcase for your work, activities and thoughts, so spread the word and check us out. The more you tell me, the more I can include.

Before looking at how we can build Nottingham's creative sector, it's worth considering what we mean by the term "creative industries''. At first sight we all know what we mean. Those with a positive view would recognise this as including the design agencies, fashion houses, publishers, art galleries, venues, architects and photographers doing quality work in a highly professional manner. Those with a negative view will see the term as a description for all the little one-man bands making T-shirts, knitting scarves, freelancing and struggling to make ends meet as idealistic creative thinkers.

The fact is, it's all of these, and more. It's impossible to create a strict definition of the creative industries, because once you analyse a good definition you realise that almost any business that thinks creatively about its operations is a creative business.

At the core are those who work with creative thinking at the heart of their operations. Some are creating products, some provide creative services to assist other businesses, others are purely artistic and build paying audiences based on their plays, galleries or events.

It seems to me that although the creative industries are seen as niche, the sector is made up of much smaller niches. We're all working in small networks, little pockets of activity, and we're not often aware of the other pockets of activity.

Jewellery designers such as Jessica Elizabeth and craftspeople such as Ingrid Pears are making amazing products and displaying them at the limited studio space they can find. Fashion designer-makers such as Debbie Bryan, Susi Henson, May Cortazzi and Simeon Hartwig are creating amazing fashion brands and creating powerful reputations.

Furniture designers such as Sarah Davenport and Lime Studio are showing Milan that Nottingham can do it just as well. The SHOP collective is creating a buzz over at Canning Circus, Confetti is going from strength to strength, The Elementz recording studio is breaking new ground in the Lace Market and Mark Delamare is making lots of noise promoting our unsigned bands.

The Hockley Hustle is rounding up as many of the most important bits of the creative scene as they can possibly fit in, the city council is running Creative October, which covers Game City, The Nottingham Creative Business Awards, The Roses Design Awards, Mayhem Festival, Kioskiosk and the Antenna digital media centre. Their work is being driven by Becky Smith, with the support of Councillor Graham Chapman, and they are committed to developing Nottingham's creative industries.

At NTU, Jeremy Hague and Ann Priest are doing fantastic work launching Future Factory, which can help SMEs to build businesses with a better focus on sustainability, as well as help run the Nottingham Creative Network, which puts on excellent seminars. Martin Knox's recent lecture was pure inspiration, and Sarah McNicol, from the Hive, has shown all of us how important it is to run properly managed businesses.

The trouble is we're seen as a disparate bunch of small, individualistic businesses that can't be developed as a whole. We are all fiercely independent and have no wish to be clumped together, but we can remain unique at the same time as working together. We need to see where we can help like-minded creative professionals in Nottingham to prosper.

If we can't convince EMDA and other bodies that we're good enough to be invested in, we'll miss opportunities to bring funding into Nottingham that can help us to develop better turnover and profits. It's time to build networks in conjunction with the city council and our universities to build Nottingham up to be the global brand for creativity that we know we are.

Please send your ideas, thoughts, news and information about your creative business to me at mark.shaw@thisisnottingham.co.uk.