The West of England Create Growth Programme, which provides support and investment to local creative industries, will be expanded with more than £1 million of new funding, Metro Mayor Dan Norris announced on Wednesday, 25th January.

West of England games developers, those working in film and TV, the arts and more, are set to benefit from the new scheme.

The investment will support innovative creative local businesses through a six-month programme with grants, mentoring, workshops and expert one-to-one support.

Speaking at the launch taking place at Bristol’s Emmy Award-winning and BAFTA-nominated visual effects studio, Moonraker Ltd, Metro Mayor Dan Norris said: “Moonraker shows this programme works. They benefited from the original scheme. They’ve created visual effects and CGI content for the BBC, Sky and Netflix. They’re a success story. With this additional investment I hope we are writing the next chapter of many more local success stories for the future too. This £1.2 million programme of support - fully funded by my West of England mayoral region - will support the many, many brilliant creative companies we have in the West face the future with growing confidence. Our region has always been a region of innovation and imagination. Only recently, Disney+ have checked in to the new state-of-the-art and West of England Authority-funded Bottle Yard Studios - that’s a massive vote of confidence in our world-leading creative industries, and our region. I’m truly proud to back our fantastic creative talent here in the West of England”.

Moonraker’s Head of Production, Alex Briggs, added: “The Creative Growth Programme was transformative for us. The funding enabled us to put a mentor in place that in turn helped us to branch out into new technologies and to create original content for the Fulldome marketplace, just launching our first original film, Moonbase: The Next Step. Alongside our ongoing visual effects work on projects for Netflix, Disney+ and the BBC we are developing additional original content and plan to launch our second Fulldome film later this year”.

In addition to the launch of their first film, the studio have just been announced as one of the 2023 Broadcast Best Places to Work in Television, a coveted accolade highlighting that Moonraker is at the top of the list for production workers to work and get on.