While Ealing falls behind its neighbours in spaces for cultural consumption, it outperforms all West London and London averages in spaces for production. For example, Ealing provides:
This presents strong opportunities to build on a unique local offer to improve Ealing as a home for London's creative making and manufacturing and maximise the benefits of culture for Ealing residents.
Ealing’s industrial land contributes to the high provision of space for cultural production. At least 5 per cent of land and 6 per cent of floorspace on Ealing’s industrial land hosts creative jobs, higher than elsewhere in London. This presence can be further strengthened through Ealing’s well-developed strategic relationships with industrial landowners. Ealing has an opportunity through this strength to demonstrate leadership in experimenting with new models for protecting, re-imagining and creating new opportunities for creative activity and cultural sector supply chains on industrial land, including through intensification and co-location. Some areas see a need to support the promotion and protection of existing production facilities and the retention of meanwhile studio spaces. In Park Royal, there is scope to strengthen a local cluster to ensure spaces do not become re-purposed for high economic value activities such as warehousing and data storage.
Analysis of the success of other local authorities in bolstering local cultural production has shown access to equipment to be important to seeding new creative enterprises and building a robust network of cultural production space. One to provide this is through makerspaces, which give open access to tools and equipment for local artists and creative makers to use.
Continue to build a sustainable powerhouse for film in West London with a focus on the retention and the expansion of World Class film facilities, and the associated wider sector supply chain, to support the local economy and deliver good jobs in the borough.
There is the opportunity to attract associated ventures in high value screen activities, including visual effects and XR, with a further opportunity to focus on innovation infrastructure – e.g. for next generation visual effects, immersive storytelling and application of AI to creative content development. Growing skills and career pathways into this sector can further support the industry and local specialisms.
For some creative production sectors, especially film, Ealing has an opportunity to provide ‘site and service’ infrastructure to boost its reputation as friendly to film production. Access to electricity and water in parks and public spaces, fast-track licensing for on-location filming, providing detailed information on available temporary sites – e.g. large warehousing – would open up Ealing as a location for project-based filming.
There is a need to enhance quality of place at key sector clusters, notably Park Royal and the Great West Corridor to the south of the Borough. In these locations, sector stakeholders have identified enhanced legibility, greening, cycle infrastructure, lighting and a more engaging public realm as necessary interventions to maintain these areas as attractive places to work. This would improve active travel connections between clusters and increase attractiveness and safety for employees and employers to work (and live) locally.
There is a need for a varied affordable workspace and studio space offer in the borough. Despite a relatively high provision of artist workspace in comparison to other boroughs, there remains a high demand for space, including several spaces reporting waiting lists, and a lack of affordability for those fit-for-purpose facilities in accessible locations.