Boston Creative Hub

South and East Lincolnshire Councils Partnership commissioned Chimera, through the Local Government Association’s Economic Growth Advisor programme, to research into the potential appetite for and demand/scope for a new Creative hub facility in Boston, serving the needs of the South and East Lincolnshire communities.

The concept included the provision of vocational educational programmes, business space and flexible co-working space, performance facilities and a café.

Key drivers for the study were:

• To help the diversification of the Boston (and wider South and East Lincolnshire) local economy and encourage the creation of more, higher skilled / higher paid career opportunities 

• To provide new opportunities, particularly for young people, to help retain and attract talent and develop a skills and talent pipeline for the future

• To nurture creative talent and stimulate new businesses and entrepreneurialism that will also help existing key sectors (such as agriculture) grow by enabling them to successfully adopt new technologies, to help them innovate and by linking them with creative and technical skills sets

• To help raise ambitions for the town and local area, and with a Boston town centre location favoured, to help stimulate more activity, footfall and be a feature of wider town centre revitalisation plans.

Our work entailed a review of the state of the creative sector locally and its potential for growth; an extensive programme of consultations with 48 relevant stakeholders in business, public and community sectors and key personnel across local and sub-regional educational institutions.

Our report has provided SELCP with a number of clear recommendations to consider and to take forward as next steps, likely to be the development of an outline business case.