Ms Anna-Marie O'Rourke:

I thank the Chairman and members for the opportunity to speak about the harnessing creativity programme. The harnessing creativity programme was devised three years ago by the then Leitrim County Enterprise Board in collaboration with Leitrim County Council, the local enterprise office in County Leitrim, Fermanagh District Council, Irish Central Border Area Network, ICBAN, Ltd. based in Enniskillen, Omagh enterprise company and Tyrone Donegal Partnership. The project has a budget of over €799,000 spread over a three-year time span. The programme is run from the county enterprise office in Carrick-on-Shannon by myself and Ms Orla McGarry, who is present.

The project was an initiative devised by the enterprise office in Leitrim to look at new strategic opportunities for the creative sector in County Leitrim.

The programme is the largest creative enterprise the north west has ever experienced. It explores the culture and creative entrepreneurship as a strategy to find new ways to engage the strengths of the region and the businesses participating, allowing for improved economic activity in the Border region. Leitrim County Enterprise Board had organic connections with Omagh enterprise company and Fermanagh District Council and we had worked together on previous programmes. We have a centre in Carrick-on-Shannon, the Leitrim Design House, which was an opportunity to look at bringing in other areas of the creative sector which were becoming quite vibrant in County Leitrim, such as the IT sector, graphic design, industrial design, interior architecture, and this gives the capacity work with freelancers and sole traders based within the county and the wider region.

At the end of March an international creative economies conference took place in Carrick-on-Shannon at which a host of international speakers from UK and European organisations were present. These were Mr. Alex Milton, director of Irish Design, Dr. Jonathan Sapsed, Brighton Fuse project, Dr. Oonagh Murphy, Queen's University, Mr. Philip McAleese, founder of See.Sense, and Ms Ruth Morrow, director of Tactility Factory at Queen's University. We try to tailor make activities to bring people to the north west or County Leitrim for very specific events.

The harnessing creativity project was launched in Carrick-on-Shannon in March 2013. We were lucky enough to have Mr. Cathal Gaffney, who is accompanying me, to launch the project for us. The target was to bring together 200 creative sector participants and 120 wider sector business participants to participate in the programme over a two-year time span. To date, 1,030 participants have engaged in three strands of delivery, which includes capacity building, a tailored master class programme and a creative lab project that has been rolled out over the two years. More than 180 training days and master classes plus one-to-one mentoring and support for business promotion have taken place in the two years of delivery. Two regional showcase events, one per cycle, with 1,600 people attending took place. During the two-year roll-out 2,300 people attended the events. The exhibition went on tour to the Civic Offices in Dublin, the regional cultural centre in Letterkenny and recently to Catalyst Arts Gallery in Belfast.

Why harness creativity? The creative and cultural industries tend to buck recession according to the United Nations creative economy baseline reports. They increase interest in the possibilities in the culture economy, creative economy, arts in businesses and the creative state. However, there has been a lack of connection between the creative sector as a resource and the wider economy especially in a rural area such as County Leitrim. We are bringing together the business acumen of the local enterprise office, the supports it provides, the arts sector within the county and the Crafts Council of Ireland, which has been involved in previous programmes to ascertain whether we can use this as a tool for supporting small business within the county. I have worked in the craft and design sector.

The vision for the project is to complement knowledge transfer and traditional research and development with creativity transfer to drive a greater level of innovation and unlock new sources of added value, that is, delivering values as well as value, and helping the creative sector become better at business and the business sector to become better at creativity. That may sound basic.

However, in terms of the business development support for the projects we delivered, we brought organisations such as Madano Partnership and the UK Design Council, which are based in London and Belfast, to the north west to deliver a range of training initiatives for both mainstream businesses and those in the creative sector to look at design as a way of thinking forward within their own businesses. It was about bringing the local authorities and the enterprise agencies together to learn how to support and use creativity for regional development, to use its cross-Border capacity and to foster an internationally recognised creative region.

The project has four objectives. Two of them come under the heading of "strengthening creativity". The first is to strengthen the creative, innovative and competitive vitality of creative sector businesses themselves by looking at new thinking, new technologies and new market opportunities. It was in this area, through the master class programme, that we linked up with Visual Artists Ireland and South West College in Omagh. The idea centre there delivered a number of digital fabrication courses over the Easter and summer holidays. We also worked with the Image Centre in Enniskillen, which has a stop-motion studio. A number of participants on the programme were either starting to look at the area of animation or wanted the opportunity to use the equipment that is readily available at South West College in Enniskillen but which would not have been used except by the students. It opened another door to bring local businesses in the region in to use the facilities in both of those colleges. We have also linked up with the CREST centre, the new innovation and sustainable development building at South West College in Enniskillen, and several of the projects we have developed over the past six months are veering towards tourism, building capacity and collaborating together, so there is an opportunity for people to go on and study with the CREST centre.