The Sheffield City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) has today announced the establishment of a Creative and Digital Industries (CDI) sector group. The purpose of the group will be to consult and advise on the strategy for economic regeneration in the City Region through digital technologies and their role at the heart of all the LEP's initiatives. The CDI group, which will be chaired by Mike Holcombe - Professor of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield, will include members selected via an application process over the coming weeks. For more information about applying, visit www.collabojam.net/CDIsectorgroup/.  The group will work in tandem with a private sector operational team which includes Marco Potesta - formerly of Plusnet and Insight; Jag Goraya of the GIST Foundation; and Emma Cheshire - formerly of Screen Yorkshire; with support from officers drawn from Sheffield City Region local authorities and the two Sheffield Universities. Building on the City Region's growing status as a digital hub and the benefits that the Digital Region project is set to provide, the team have been tasked with delivering three major projects:

• A Collaboration Centre Network which aims to drive value in the CDI sector through open innovation. The network will provide a platform for collaborating, sharing and innovating, which brings together problems with problem-solvers across the private, public and third sectors.
• Establishing a next generation wholesale data centre infrastructure which will capitalise on the growing importance of Software as a Service (SaaS) and will serve the UK and beyond. It has the creation of jobs and the incubation of new businesses at the heart of its strategy and crucially will accommodate innovation space in order to support the development of, and collaboration between, our key industry sectors based on the use and development of technology.
• Working in tandem with local authorities and their delivery partners to explore the automation and transformation of public services and business processes - securing significant cost savings which can be reinvested.

Lee Strafford, of the LEP board who will oversee this activity, said: "The CDI sector is a huge force in the UK economy and is an area in which the Sheffield City Region excels. The opportunity is to ensure that both the City Region and the UK continue to innovate in order to remain globally competitive. Therefore, I am pleased that open collaboration between the CDI Sector Group and the CDI delivery team will play an important role in ensuring that the sector continues to thrive for the benefit of the City Region economy and I look forward to seeing these exciting projects come to fruition."

The first step of the Collaboration Centre Network strand 13 July 2025 with ‘Collabojam' at the Workstation in Sheffield. Emma Cheshire explains: "CollaboJam is a call for aspiring and seasoned collaborators to come together and share expertise, successes and future opportunities to evolve a wide-reaching, deeply connected and sustainable network that can realise lasting value across different sectors and markets. The event was aimed at people interested in using collaboration models and techniques to solve real world commercial and service delivery issues." Attendees learned how leading businesses and organisations have collaborated to create opportunities and new products; got hands-on experience of practical techniques for successful collaboration and innovation; helped define how the Sheffield City Region partners, universities and businesses can work together to create opportunity; and met and discovered potential collaborators who could help address product and service challenges.