The Death - and Life? - of Wired Sussex

As many did, I read the message about the closure of Wired Sussex with much sadness. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since and have realised I don’t just feel sad, and sorry for those who I know will have worked incredibly hard to avoid this ending. So this post is an effort to encapsulate what it is that I think we’re really losing.

I’m probably more invested than most. Back in 2013 I worked for one of the 10 local companies that were the founding members of Wired Sussex and had formed the first board of directors. When Will McInnes moved to New York I was recruited to take over his role as a non-exec director, a role I played until 2022 when I left to chair Lighthouse.?

Over that time I saw the massive, regenerative impact Wired Sussex had on Brighton, on New England House and on thousands of creative technologists like me and the people I worked with.?

Many people’s interactions might just have been with the Wired Sussex jobs board, or their legendary parties ( Andy Keetch dressed as a giant elf springs to mind). But I always considered the organisation to have two operating modes - farming, and hunting. As farmers they nurtured the membership, offering useful services, connections and opportunities to socialise and/or collaborate with likeminded people. The hunting mode was less obvious, but possibly much more strategically important and impactful for the city as a whole.?

As CEO, Phil Jones excelled at scouting out new opportunities and then winning the funding to deliver them. The Brighton Fuse research was foundational, providing evidence that companies which ‘fused’ creative skills from the arts and humanities with technology expertise had a competitive edge. It helped to define the nature of Brighton’s creative cluster and show the value of a place where people from creative, arts, culture and tech backgrounds come together in new ways to drive innovation and economic growth.

From this concept came the Fusebox, a collaboration space and programme of activities designed to accelerate the opportunities for creative/tech fusion. It provided a home for new technologies that member companies could access, including the 5G testbed funded by the Digital Catapult and the LEP. This led to exciting partnerships with Brighton Dome to enable artists, musicians and venues to produce new immersive performance formats.

These activities have had an influence way beyond Brighton - they inspired other cities such as Bristol to do similar research, attracted the British Council to understand how creative spaces enable local economies, and influenced the work of the Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre’s work on creative clusters.?

That the Fusebox was housed at New England House is also important. NEH is a building that many people hate due to its perceived ugliness. But focusing on the tired outside misses the vibrancy of what happens on the inside. NEH is a council-owned, eight-storey factory that provides affordable workspace to an amazing community of makers which until last week included the entrepreneurs and innovators who are the residents of the Fusebox. It is organic, collaborative, multi-disciplinary - the essence of fusion. And it’s publicly-owned - no council could build anything like it today.?

Being so visible and well connected nationally, having a clear narrative around creativity and innovation, and an authoritative evidence base have helped Wired Sussex play a part in positioning Brighton & Hove as a good place for large scale inward investment.

In 2014 Wired Sussex was part of a consortium that developed the proposals for the successful Greater Brighton City Deal, designed to help the area fulfil its economic potential, in particular by building on the success of Brighton’s creative digital sector, and helping smaller companies scale. Under the terms of the Deal, it was agreed to renovate and expand New England House, to create the conditions for creative digital businesses to grow more rapidly, and to put the cluster on the map. This involved a ￡24.53m total investment in New England House, with the private sector contributing ￡9.8m, Brighton and Hove City Council contributing ￡9.8m, and Government investing ￡4.9m. As far as I know, this investment has yet to be made.

Another feature of the Deal was the creation of the Brighton Digital Exchange (BDX) a cooperatively-owned and run data centre sited in New England House, which provides super fast connectivity to businesses at lower cost.?

I’ve written more than I intended, and not mentioned other key contributions Wired Sussex made - like their investment in The Skiff, Brighton's oldest dedicated co-working space, and supporting Brighton Digital Festival. But the point of this wasn’t to list all the great things Wired Sussex did. All things have a lifespan, and although it did lots of amazing stuff, maybe Wired Sussex had just run its course.

This leaves a massive hole but also energy, networks, spaces - all legacies that can and should be built on or re-used.?

At the moment the Fusebox still exists as a space, (albeit one without the funds to pay the landlord), there are still active and energetic innovators wanting to use the Fusebox, there are still networks, tools, equipment, relationships. To let them go without consideration seems a terrible waste of the investments made so far and the hope, the opportunities for the future.

As a city, we need to recognise the power of collaborating across sectors, and create new ways for “all boats to rise with the tide”. This means investing time and effort in building connections, in supporting new ideas and generously sharing the resources that enable new people, networks and organisations to emerge.

For our new council administration it means recognising the importance of infrastructure organisations that enable individual companies to come together as a sector, driving the economic benefits that all the research evidences - and proactively supporting them. It also means looking at those organisations that do receive public investment and questioning how well they distribute it to support new, emerging ideas and seldom heard voices. It means rebuilding the engine for inward investment into the creative digital sector to ensure it does fulfil the potential the City Deal identified to provide employment and generate innovative products and services.

The council also needs to revisit New England House. It is not just a generic office space with a value per square foot. It is a community of creators, of value generators, housed in a flexible, affordable space, positioned in a prime location. Owned by the council it can’t be considered as just another commercial asset - it is a public good. Now is the time to develop an ambitious, alternative future for the building, from the inside out. To find a model that can help the city finally fulfil the ambitions set out in the City Deal - and more.

What do you think? Please share, comments welcome!