This is a speech I gave in the main auditorium at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the Creative Clusters conference.  This international event focuses on the role and development of the creative industries.  I took part in a session looking at how cultural diversity drives London's creativity.   

Lambeth is one of the most diverse boroughs in London.  It’s home to around 270,000 residents and nearly 10,000 businesses.  We host a number of leading international companies, such as Shell, as well as the cultural industries of the South Bank where we are this morning – Europe’s biggest arts complex. 

But the dynamism and prosperity of this part of the Borough is not replicated across Lambeth.  While there are pockets of great wealth here, we are one of the most deprived local authorities in the country.  One in five adults of working age is unemployed, and one in three children lives in a household on benefits, and nearly a fifth of all residents have no qualifications. 

We are working with our partners, including the private sector, to tackle this scale of worklessness.  With our new economic development strategy, we hope to take advantage of the diversity and dynamism of our population to help boost the creative industries locally.  

Brixton is at the heart of Lambeth and is a major town centre.  It is the heart of the African-Caribbean community, but is also home to many other ethnic populations.  Is has developed a reputation as a diverse cultural and creative centre. 

Brixton’s economy has suffered as a result of a deteriorating physical environment, and from a reputation for high levels of crime.  Brixton has the highest levels of deprivation in Lambeth, and the riots that took place there over 25 years ago still loom large in many outsiders’ perceptions of the area.  But, because of its diversity,  Brixton has an international reputation as a centre for art and culture.  Its character is underpinned by a strong sense of community self-motivation. 

The creative industries in Brixton have been working together more closely over recent years, creating the foundations of a creative hub.  One recent project was the launch of “Made in Brixton” – a forum for the area’s creative industries.  The project launched a directory of over 100 creative-sector firms in and around Brixton town centre.  The aim is to promote the sector locally and nationally and to promote business-to-business networking and supply-chain development. 

Last year, Lambeth Council backed the Lambeth Fashion and Beauty show in Brixton.  This brought together 37 businesses, mostly black-led,  in a fashion and beauty event that attracted over 1100 visitors.  The event promoted networking between businesses in the sector, offered an opportunity to give support and advice to businesses, including new start-ups, and helped developed mini-apprenticeships in the sector.  

Lambeth Council will continue to support the development of ‘Made in Brixton’ and the black creative and cultural industries networks.  We also want to promote the town centre internationally as ‘Creative Brixton’.  That will involve providing new business and incubator space, and making stronger links with the international creative quarters in Lambeth – especially here on the South Bank. 

To help these and similar initiatives, we would like to establish a Creative Brixton Agency with the support of our partners in the London Development Agency, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and the Mayor’s Office.  An agency of this kind can help lever in the resources the sector needs, but it must have the backing of the sector itself to succeed.  As well as supporting existing and new businesses, the Agency would help to champion and represent the sector in Brixton.  It would act as the lead body in bids for development funding.  It would offer sales and marketing support for local businesses, and help develop a wider place branding that would benefit all the cultural sector businesses in and around Brixton.  There is also an opportunity to lead in the development of shared services and facilities, such as managed workspace. 

I’d like to invite the creative sector to bring forward their own proposals for how such an Agency could work for them so that we can work together to establish it and bring in the support the sector needs in Brixton. 

It’s very important for me that the work we do to develop the creative sector in Lambeth helps local people, especially in tackling social exclusion.   There are too many examples where the promotion of the creative sector simply brings in businesses from outside without local people benefiting.  That means it needs to be rooted in what is unique about Lambeth – and that is our cultural diversity.  We have over 150 different languages spoken in our community, we are the heart of the African-Caribbean community as well as the African community in London.  We have a gay quarter around Vauxhall that is developing quickly, and the largest Portuguese population in the UK.  So much diversity in such a small space allows different cultures to rub against each other and feed off each other.  The result of that is often something new and different that helps create the buzz and vibrancy that marks out so much of Lambeth’s grassroots creativity. 

We estimate that 9% of our working population is employed in the creative sector.  There is a strong music and performing arts sector, and a strong computer-games and software sector.  We know this is likely to keep growing because of the high level of interest from our young people.  The link between economic success, innovation, creativity and diversity is becoming clearer.  We need to gain a greater understanding of what support our local creative sector needs to succeed, and what kind of initiatives can help the most. 

We’re ambitious in Lambeth to see rapid social regeneration alongside the physical regeneration that’s already underway.  We know we can use that to tackle the high levels of unemployment and exclusion that our population experiences.  The cultural sector in Lambeth is diverse and dynamic, and I know the sector has a key role to play in regenerating our Borough.