Season’s greetings and a massive thank you to all our clients and colleagues for helping The Fifth Sector deliver our widest ever programme of activity in 2024! Projects this year have included:

Sector workforce mapping for Surrey+: in partnership with Surrey Chambers of Commerce and the Surrey Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP).

New research highlights contribution of freelancers and microbusinesses to Kirklees’ £250m+ creative economy

Creative freelancers and microbusinesses operate on a very different business model from most other small businesses. To be successful in a fast-changing and competitive marketplace, they need to combine a focus on their creative specialism with the ability to quickly ‘pivot’ to take advantage of new opportunities and diversify their revenue streams to create sustainable businesses.

Since I announced my intention to publish a book, Creative Alchemy, in the last quarter of 2023, many conversations have started with the same question: ‘when is your book out?’

A Cultural Masterplan and Cultural Compact for Derby City Council last year building upon the legacy of the City of Culture 2025 bid.

In 2019 The Fifth Sector began work in conjunction with and supported Cultural Liverpool, creating a cultural strategy for the city that would span over the next 10 years as of the end of consultation in March 2020.

It was a real pleasure to work on a Cultural Compact for my adopted city. It was a journey that opened my eyes to a place I thought I knew well.

The Fifth Sector is proud to have delivered two projects close to home in the last year; from developing a new cultural consortium model for the Cultural Leaders Group in Manchester to delivering a cultural strategy for the City of Liverpool and a cultural compact for Liverpool City Region.

After the year we have all just faced, the knowledge that digital skills are critical to your staff’s needs in building a resilient organisation is foremost. So how do you go about supporting your team, and understand the digital skills gaps and strengths, to futureproof your organisation?

‘Developing A Cultural Strategy For Liverpool’, is a strategy that sets out the vision for the cultural life of Liverpool up to 2030.

We’ve been taking some time to look back on all the projects that The Fifth Sector has completed or participated in, it is quite awe-inspiring. It takes a milestone such as a 10th anniversary to make you see where we have come from and makes it even more exciting to see where we are going.

That vision, and its optimism, was based on evidence – particularly of the rapid growth of sound recording and music publishing activities over the previous five years.

Iain Bennett, founder of The Fifth Sector, in conversation with ex-BBC producer Andy Taylor about the business and its development over the last decade.

I asked Iain a series of questions about the challenges and successes over the passed years. I also wanted to know how the company was adapting for the future during this uncertain time.

But the Modern Industrial Strategy is a misnomer. It's long on windy optimism - 'cultivating world-leading sectors', 'creating the right institutions to bring together sectors and places.