YouTube UK boss says Wales has great opportunity to build global audience

Wales’ creative industries drew global attention, after hundreds of delegates travelling from as far as Japan, attended the PLAYBACK festival in Cardiff. YouTube UK & Ireland’s MD Alison Lomax was among the attendess at the event as Media Cymru marked five years of building the country’s creative economy.

Over 500 delegates saw how Media Cymru has built an innovation ecosystem in one of the UK’s fastest-growing creative economies, spanning projects from interactive horror movies to 3D-printed sustainable film props.

Lomax said: “Wales has a thriving ecosystem within the creative industries. Over 80% of UK-created content is watched overseas, so the opportunity to build global audiences is absolutely huge.”

The two-day Cardiff showcase revealed the results of five years of R&D support from Media Cymru — the consortium established in 2022 through UKRI’s Strength in Places Fund to make Wales a global hub for media innovation. Media Cymru has backed 180 R&D projects, engaged more than 1,000 creative innovators, trained over 1,000 industry professionals — 100 of whom have moved into new roles — and helped supported businesses create 300 additional jobs, triple their rate of IP creation, and attract £1.2m in further funding.

Over 60 new products and services have already reached market. For every £1 awarded in grant funding, more than £15 in additional turnover was generated, compared to non-funded companies, and more than £10 in Gross Value Added. Supported businesses have generated over £20m in additional annual export sales. The wider Cardiff Capital Region media sector has grown 84% since 2017 — more than twice the rate of any other UK city — pushing Cardiff into the UK’s top three cities for media production.

Professor Justin Lewis of Media Cymru said: “The evidence points to something structural — funded businesses are building the kind of intellectual property and long-term capability that changes how competitive and innovation-enabled they are.”

Sir Peter Bazalgette, who led the 2017 independent review of the UK’s creative industries that paved the way for regional funding programmes including Media Cymru, said: “It’s been a hugely successful project that has continued to attract new investment from outside of the UK government. That shows there is enormous potential and real opportunity here in Wales.”

Secretary of State for Wales Stephen Kinnock MP also attended, saying: “Media Cymru is transforming the Cardiff Capital Region into a global hub for media innovation. Wales’s creative and media sector is something the world is paying attention to, and the UK Government is focused on helping it develop and grow.”

Among the projects showcased was Wales Interactive’s worldwide call-out for writers, directors and producers to train in interactive movie-making, drawing submissions from Hollywood and beyond. The Penarth-based company — recognised as the world’s second-largest publisher of interactive movie content after Netflix — used its in-house scripting tool WIST to develop branching narratives across genres. Studio Dark Rift Horror developed its proposition into Dead Reset, an interactive horror game that launched at the PC Gaming Show to a global audience of nearly 80 million.

Also featured was Bridgend-based engineering and prototyping company Rusty Design, which tackled waste in TV and film production by developing large-scale 3D-printed props — including a life-sized Formula 1 car replica — using biodegradable materials and methods that reduce material usage by 80% without compromising strength.