What We Do

The Creative Industries Development Service (CIDS) works to help new and established creative businesses in Greater Manchester, whilst also taking a strategic overview of the sector – developing projects in response to industry needs.

We offer a free Information Service for creative business to help them find out what support is available to them, which can be accessed either through this website, factsheets, phone, or by email.

We also offer a range of communications for creative businesses - we publish CREATIVE Times - the UK's first trade journal for the creative industries and an accompanying monthly email update, CIDS News  – which are available to anybody that submits a full company profile on this site. We also have an RSS service - which allows you to get all the latest updates from this site, as soon as we publish the information! In addition, we publish the Manchester Creative Annual in association with Adline, which is designed to showcase the Creative Industries to businesses across the wider economy.

CIDS also run events designed to help creative businesses, including Creative Focus, The Loop, and The Loop Plus.

Our strategic work has involved establishing and supporting networks covering everything from computer games developers to fashion designers. In 2005 we worked with our partners across these creative networks to produce the Creative Industries Action Plan for Manchester Enterprises - a blueprint defining how business support in the sector should be delivered.

CIDS is a non-profit making limited company funded by the European Regional Development Fund, the Northwest Development Agency, Manchester City Council and other regional partners.