Start Yard boss says Birkenhead can rival Shoreditch or the Meatpacking District
Chris Lee, creative director at Start Yard in Birkenhead(Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
Liverpool and the areas around it need to move on from The Beatles’ and celebrate what Liverpool is best at now, a business owner has said.
David Tully, who runs virtual reality company Scene Graph Studios, said more needs to be done to promote technology companies in the region, adding: “Liverpool is a fantastic place in the UK, it’s been said so many times, but I think we need to carry on and celebrate ourselves a bit more.”
The business was one of the first tenants in Start Yard, a collection of different start up businesses based at a former Cammell Laird depot in Birkenhead. While the hub’s early days “were a bit quiet”, Start Yard now has 22 spaces with 19 of them filled. It is bringing people in from Liverpool, and its owner hopes to have eight more units in the next year.
David said: “We did look at the Baltic but for something that we get here, you could probably get a closet for the same price. This place is very good, it’s flexible.
“Birkenhead companies can compete with the big players. You have just got be good at what you do. That gives you hope.”
However he feels Merseyside should do more to shout about the gaming and other tech industries that are based in the region, adding: “Liverpool has been seen as the land of music since the Beatles but it’s not.
“It’s the land of tech but we do not talk about it. The amount of games companies in Liverpool, we do not talk about it. I think everybody has got their head down working so hard you do not have the time to celebrate ourselves.”
Pointing to Birkenhead’s decline in recent decades, he said: “We have got to bring back the tech money and the jobs but no one is going to do it for us.
“We have got to make a change and we have got the infrastructure for it. We have got good companies, good students, and good universities.
Dave Tully at Scenegraph Studios in Start Yard in Birkenhead(Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
“Now we just need to get tech jobs to come in. The amount of brain drain from Liverpool is insane.”
Start Yard is the idea of Chris Lee, who also worked on the regeneration of Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle from its earliest days. Central Birkenhead he feels could follow in its footsteps with Start Yard offering an affordable and easier place to set up a business and create jobs in the area.
Comparing Birkenhead’s potential to Shoreditch in London or the Meatpacking District in New York, Chris said: “It’s no different here. The biggest issue is you can always make it happen fast with a bit of joined up action.”
Four years after it started supported by funding awarded to Wirral Council to regenerate the town, Start Yard is hosting a free start-up event on April 16 aimed at bringing more young people into business.
Chris said: “I know how difficult it is to start a business and I know in the first three to four years, they can fail.
Darren Medley, of MIF Industries, at Start Yard in Birkenhead (Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)
“They could be brilliant ideas but if you do not have luck or determination, it’s difficult to make things happen. It hasn’t been easy for us but we are four years in and the community has flourished.”
Another Start Yard tenant, Darran Medley, who works for fashion networking company MIF Industries, said: “Getting people out of London isn’t easy but you can get a train here in two hours and you can’t do that across London sometimes. This place really does make sense.
“Sometimes people are surprised this is here but then that leads to what else is going on in Birkenhead. There’s lots going on here. Perhaps the reputation isn’t good but the opportunity to change that narrative is there and places like Start Yard do that.”
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