NWDA backs MediaCityUK research facility with £630k

The NWDA's grant will be used to set up a project team to manage FIRM over the next three years.

The team is then expected to draw on a further £2.72m of funding from two UK Research Councils.

Steven Broomhead, chief executive of the NWDA said: “The NWDA is already investing over £30m in the physical development of MediaCityUK. This additional investment in FIRM, based within the NWDA-funded Media Enterprise Centre, has already helped to unlock millions of pounds of national research funding and the project will go on to generate over £20m of private investment in research over the next eight years.

"FIRM will help bring the BBC and other MediaCityUK tenants together with Higher Education and by utilising the recently announced NorthernNet technology we can spread the benefits of MediaCityUK and collaboration across the North. ”

The partners in FIRM are the BBC, the University of Cambridge, Goldsmiths University of London, Lancaster University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Northwest Vision and Media and the University of Salford.

The project will employ 30 researchers and deliver 18 major research collaborations between industry and Higher Education in the creative, ICT and digital sectors.

The University of Salford’s professor Peter Barrett, who is director of FIRM, said: “This welcome support from the NWDA is critical to the work of the FIRM consortium and means we can start work in earnest on our ambitious programme of activities that seeks to contribute strongly to MediaCityUK growing rapidly into a globally significant focus for media and digital developments.”