Great Yorkshire Show
The Great Yorkshire Show is the North's leading agricultural event and took place from Tuesday 14 to Thursday 16 July on the 250-acre Great Yorkshire Showground on the edge of the spa town of Harrogate.
2009 was the 151st Great Yorkshire Show celebrating agriculture and country life. Yorkshire Forward were once again sponsors of the event that attracts thousand of people from across the region and the UK.
Support for Your Business
We want to retain, grow and attract the businesses that sustain rural communities. We know agriculture and forestry are essential sectors and we want to help them boost their efficiency and competitiveness. Our aim is to ensure rural areas remain vibrant and diverse and improve the quality of life and environment. A dynamic rural economy is as essential to the region as it is to the social fabric of our rural communities. The Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) runs from 2007-2013 and means we are able to invest £63 million in our region over six years.
Our stand at the Great Yorkshire Show this year provided advice and information on the support available for rural businesses. If you missed us this year you can still find out about RDPE and how it could benefit your business. Read our case study below to find out how we've helped Dependable Productions.
Dependable Productions
A specialist TV and digital media production company in rural North Yorkshire has transformed its production facility into a high specification studio that could be mistaken for a studio in Soho, London.
Dependable Productions in Borrowby near Thirsk has benefited from over £30,000 of financial support from Yorkshire Forward through the Rural Enterprise Investment Programme (REIP) which has turned co-founders Lucy and Richard Critchlow’s dream of developing a Yorkshire based, cutting edge digital media production service into a reality.
Both Lucy and Richard have TV production backgrounds having worked at the BBC on projects such as Concorde’s last flight, and the New Years Eve firework display on the London Eye.
Dependable Productions provides TV and digital media to the corporate, public and broadcast sectors. The grant was used to renovate a disused barn into a state of the art digital media production studio incorporating office space, a high definition edit suite, a small green screen studio facility and also to purchase DVD duplicating equipment.
“Our new production facility has increased our ability to provide a high quality service to clients both within the region and the UK. The quality of our new facility in North Yorkshire now matches the quality of the product we offer. We can now invite clients to participate in the post production process which we couldn’t really do when we were based at home. Our new commercial DVD duplicator allows us complete control of both the cost and quality of the entire process where previously duplication had been out-sourced. Bringing this process in-house has also increased our profitability,” explained Richard.
Business has increased since receiving the grant having produced a promotional DVD for Musical Associates; a project for Leeds based Arla Foods; Absolute Radio’s Christmas Zoo sessions featuring Paul Weller and Travis.
“Thanks to Yorkshire Forward’s assistance and support we are now in a position to attract new clients and we are intent on proving that Yorkshire companies don’t need to go to London to get a high quality product. We have taken on a freelance producer to help with our current workload and once turnover increases further we will be able to employ additional staff,” continued Richard.
REIP, which is part of the Rural Development Programme for England, aims to grow the region’s rural businesses and is jointly funded by Defra and the European Union and is managed by Yorkshire Forward in Yorkshire and Humber region.
Tom Riordan, Chief Executive at Yorkshire Forward commented; “I am delighted Dependable Productions is doing so well as a direct result of Yorkshire Forward’s support and also organisations are choosing a Yorkshire company for their digital and media production needs. I would urge other rural businesses to take advantage of the Rural Enterprise Investment Programme. More than 80% of our region is rural, so it is vital that we support the growth of businesses in our rural communities if we are to grow the region’s economy as a whole.”
