cultural industries, cultural clusters and the city: the example of natural history film-making in...

Cultural industries, cultural clusters and the city:the example of natural history film-making in Bristol

Keith Bassett a,*, Ron Griffiths b, Ian Smith b

a School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1SS, UKb University of the West of England, Faculty of the Built Environment, UK

Received 12 March 2001; in revised form 30 July 2001

Abstract

This paper explores the structure of the natural history film-making cluster in Bristol in the light of wider theories concerning the

nature and importance of clusters in urban growth. After reviewing relevant literature concerning clustering in the cultural in-

dustries, and an overview of the cultural industries sector in Bristol, the paper proceeds to analyse this particular cluster in more

detail. The analysis proceeds by examining in turn the origins and stages of cluster gowth, different aspects of cluster depth, linkages

between the local cluster and the global economy, institutional thickness and cluster support, and the current dynamics of change.

The final section relates the findings back to questions of cluster definition and local policy initiatives. � 2002 Published by Elsevier

Science Ltd.

Keywords: Spatial clusters; Cultural industries; Media industries; Broadcasting; Natural history film-making; Urban cultural policies

1. Introduction

Over the past decade there has been a resurgence ofinterest in the spatial clustering of different kinds ofeconomic activity (Gordon and McCann, 2000), and thenurturing of such clusters has become an importantcomponent of public policy both at the regional andlocal scale. The recent DTI report on business clusters inthe UK defines clusters as ‘‘geographic concentrationsof interconnected companies, specialised suppliers, ser-vice providers, firms in related industries, and associatedinstitutions (for example, universities, standards agen-cies, and trade associations) in particular fields thatcompete but also co-operate’’ (DTI, 2001, p. 14). Suchclusters are regarded as important because they lead tohigher growth through raising productivity, increasingfirms’ capacities for innovation by diffusing technologi-cal knowledge and innovation more rapidly, and stim-ulating higher rates of new business formation throughspin-off ventures.

Empirical analyses have identified various types ofclusters. For example, Markusen (1996) inductively

derived four spatial types; the ‘‘Marshallian IndustrialDistrict’’, the ‘‘Hub-and-spoke Industrial District’’, the‘‘Satellite Platform’’, and the ‘‘State-anchored Dis-trict’’, though she argued that in practice most clusterswere likely to be a mix of all four models. The DTIreport, on the other hand, which identified 154 UKclusters in all, classified them according to their ‘‘stageof development’’ (embryonic, established, mature);‘‘depth’’ (the number of industrial and other linkages);‘‘employment dynamic’’ (employment growing, de-clining or stable); and their ‘‘significance’’ (whetherinternational, national or regional). As a final ex-ample, Capello (1999) has suggested a series of dis-tinctions between ‘‘geographical concentrations’’,‘‘specialised areas’’, ‘‘industrial districts’’, ‘‘milieux’’,and ‘‘innovative milieux’’, according to the levels oflinkages, interactions, and collective learning withinthe cluster.

In this paper we are specifically concerned with ev-idence for clustering in the cultural industries.Thecultural (or creative) products industries have attractedincreasing attention from researchers and policy mak-ers in recent years, not least because of their evidentimportance to employment and economic growth. Al-though precise definitions vary, a broad definitionwould include sectors such as film and video produc-

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Geoforum 33 (2002) 165–177

*Corresponding author.

E-mail address: [email protected] (K. Bassett).

0016-7185/02/$ - see front matter � 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

PII: S0016-7185 (01 )00032-X

tion, music production, printing and publishing, mul-timedia, the performing arts, fashion and industrialdesign (e.g. Creative Industries Task Force, 1998).Such industries are characterised by their output ofcommercialised products with a high aesthetic andsymbolic content, reflecting ‘‘the tendency in moderncapitalism for cultural production to be increasinglycommodified, while commodities themselves becomeincreasingly invested with symbolic value’’ (Scott, 2000,p. 3).

The cultural industries are also characterised by adistinctive set of production and distribution relations.As regards production, Scott (1996, 1997, 2000) arguesthat such industries are marked by five main techno-logical–organisational elements. First, their technologiesand labour processes often require a large amount ofskilled labour supported to an increasing degree by ad-vanced, flexible computer technologies. Second, pro-duction is almost always organised in dense networks ofsmall and medium sized firms which are strongly inter-dependent. Third, these dense networks form ‘‘multi-facetted industrial complexes’’ that exert high levels ofdemand on local labour markets and require a widevariety of labour skills. Fourth, such industrial com-plexes are replete with a wide variety of external econ-omies. Fifth, such complexes also rely for theirsuccessful functioning on a range of institutional infra-structures that provide overheads, support flows of in-formation, and promote trust and co-operation betweenproducers. As a result of these strong interconnectionsand powerful external economies, agglomerative ten-dencies are strong, and cultural products industries arethus often found in localised, spatial clusters in favouredurban centres.

As regards distribution, however, Scott argues thatlocal networks of small producers are likely to beembedded in global distribution networks which tendto be dominated by a handful of large cultural andmedia conglomerates. As a result, cultural industriesare ‘‘stretched across a force-field of global and localrelationships’’ (Scott, 2000, p. 4), with productionmore and more localised in privileged clusters andoutputs distributed across wider and wider networksof consumption. The sites of these clusters are typi-cally world cities or nationally dominant culturalnodes such as Paris and Los Angeles, where thedistinctive characteristics of place are symbioticallyentwined with the images of locally produced, cul-tural products (Molotch, 1996). However, Scott sug-gests that certain favoured cities further down theurban hierarchy may be able to sustain smaller,though perhaps more dependent, clusters of activity.This is indeed the case in Bristol, identified in theDTI report as a centre for a small but internationallysignificant TV and digital media cluster in the SouthWest.

2. The local context: cultural industries in Bristol

Bristol is the largest city in the South West regionwith a population approaching 500,000. It is an attrac-tive and affluent city with an important aerospace in-dustry, but its recent prosperity is more related to theconsiderable growth in employment in a wide range ofservice industries, particularly financial and businessservices. Although Bristol primarily markets itself as asite for high technology and advanced services, localpolicies have focussed increasing attention on thegrowth of the city’s cultural industries, even claimingthat Bristol is now Britain’s ‘‘second media city’’ (BCC,2000; Griffiths et al., 1999).

Defining and measuring the city’s cultural sector isparticularly difficult given the inadequacies of existingdata sources. Different researchers have, for example,used different combinations of sectors from the Censusof Employment to estimate overall employment levels.A fairly standard definition, used by O’Brien and Feist(1996), includes the production of records and tapes,printing and publishing, film and television productionand distribution, artistic production, and employment inlibraries, museums and art galleries. By this definitionthe total employment in the Bristol TTWA was just over3000 in 1998, or less than 1% of total employment. Arecent survey of the Bristol media sector (Hayman,2000), using a slightly different range of categories, ar-rived at a figure of around 4000. However, if we use themuch broader definition of the ‘‘cultural industriesproduction system’’ suggested by Pratt (1997), whichcombines employment in production activities, infra-structure provision, distribution, and consumption, wearrive at the figures shown in Table 1. Bristol’s total risesto 10,500, though the extent of London’s domination inthe cultural industries is also clear from the totals andthe location quotients.

The figures in Table 1 also indicate that if Bristol doeshave a distinctive strength it is in cultural productionactivities, and employment in this category increased36% between 1991 and 1997. Within this productiontotal the largest single sub-component is for radio andtelevision production, where employment is dominatedby two big employers, Public Broadcasting Services(BBC) Bristol and HTV-West. BBC Bristol is one of theBBCs main regional production centers, and employsaround 800 employees in three main units; one coveringproduction in natural history, animation and docu-mentary features; another covering regional broadcast-ing; and a third providing a range of productionfacilities. HTV-West (now owned by Granada) is thecommercial channel, but it makes many fewer pro-grammes for local and national networking than theBBC.

In terms of distinctive production genres, the Bristolarea has a specialist strength in two areas, natural his-

166 K. Bassett et al. / Geoforum 33 (2002) 165–177

tory film-making and 3D animation. In 3D animation,Aardman Animations now has an international repu-tation and is prospering on the back of movie deals withDreamWorks in the USA. Other animation companieshave started up or been drawn to Bristol by Aardman’sreputation and successes, and a small, but significantproduction cluster has begun to emerge in the centralarea of the city which may become of great importancein the future. However, the most distinctive cluster ofcurrent activities relates to natural history film-making.Bristol claims to be, and indeed is, a world centre for themaking of wildlife and natural history films and hascultivated its image as ‘‘the green Hollywood’’, ‘‘thehome to more wildlife TV specialists than any other cityon Earth’’ (publicity material for 2000 ‘‘Wildscreen’’film festival in Bristol). Current policies are aimed atsustaining and expanding this cluster, but the success ofsuch policies is very much dependent on understandingthe nature and dynamics of the cluster and its relation towider global forces. These are issues taken up in the thesections that follow.

3. The natural history film-making cluster in Bristol

The theoretical and empirical work that has beencarried out on clusters suggests a series of questions toguide more detailed investigations. First, how did thecluster originate and what stages of development has itevolved through over time? Second, how deep is thecluster and what is the nature of its internal relation-ships? Third, how do global and local processes intersectin the dynamics of the cluster? Fourth, what institu-tional structures support the cluster? Fifth, what are thecurrent dynamics of the cluster and what do these sug-gest about its sustainability and future trajectories?Sixth, how does the cluster fit into broader typologies ofcluster forms? Seventh, what are the implications of allthis for local public strategies?

To try and answer these questions we obtained back-ground information from a variety of sources, such assurveys of the media sector carried out for the City

Council (BCC, 2000), company websites, and the tradepress. However, the core of our analysis is based on aseries of 15 interviews with key individuals and compa-nies, carried out in the period from late 1999 to early 2001.These interviews (which covered aspects of firms’ origins,growth, outputs, and local and global interconnnections)lasted up to an hour and a half, and some companies wereinterviewed on two occasions a year apart. We supple-mented this material with further information from avariety of local informants with knowledge of the Bristolmedia scene. Pulling all this information together pro-vides us with the following overview.

Natural history film-making in Bristol centres on theBBC, home to the Natural History Unit (NHU) for thelast 40 years. It is safe to say that if the NHU had notbeen established in the city in 1957, and survived andprospered since then, most of the other film-makingactivities would not exist. As part of BBC Bristol, theNHU is housed in a jumble of old and new buildingsbehind an imposing neo-Georgian frontage in the Clif-ton area of the city, not far from Bristol University (seeFig. 1). When we carried out our first survey in late1999/early 2000 the NHU was employing just under 300people on production and administration, but with 75%or more considered by its executive head as ‘‘creativeworkers’’.

The next largest production unit was Partridge Films,part of HTV, located in the HTV complex on the southside of the city centre, and employing around 45 people.Alongside these units were a cluster of smaller, mostlyindependent film production companies which specia-lised in natural history and science, including Zebra,Tigress, Icon, Green Umbrella, Scorer Associates, JohnDowner, and Beeley Productions.

Supporting these production units was a wider net-work of small firms and freelance individuals providingspecialist support services. There were five main facilitieshouses, three graphics companies, several firms of soundand technical specialists, and a shifting population ofcameramen and other freelancers.

All told, there were around 20 companies whichformed part of the natural history cluster, with different

Table 1

Levels of full time equivalent (fte) employment in Bristol and Southern England, 1996/97

Cultural industries

production system

Bristol TTWA London TTWA Western London crescenta

Fte jobs Location

quotient

Fte jobs Location

quotient

Fte jobs Location

quotient

Production 3400 1.25 81,400 3.21 19,100 1.88

Infrastructure 2500 0.69 18,000 0.54 11,500 0.85

Distribution 3600 0.83 82,900 2.06 19,900 1.23

Consumption 950 0.54 19,800 1.21 5600 0.86

Total 10,500 0.84 122,100 1.75 56,100 1.21

Note: Figures from 1996 and 1997 Annual Employment Survey.aWestern London crescent is made up of Heathrow, Slough, Reading, Aylesbury and Wycombe.

K. Bassett et al. / Geoforum 33 (2002) 165–177 167

specialisms and outputs. As Fig. 1 shows, most of thesefirms were also part of a spatial cluster within walkingdistance of the BBC in Clifton.

Although this is a distinctive cluster of activities ofinternational importance in its specialist area, it proba-bly directly employs only around 1000–1200 people,although it also generates considerable income for thelocal area, is of great symbolic importance to Bristol,and serves to make the area attractive to other mediacompanies.

To understand this cluster further we first need tounderstand how it originated and how it has grown.Given its central importance at the core of the cluster,we need to focus attention first on the Natural HistoryUnit, whose own history must in turn be set within thewider context of changes within the BBC and the evo-lution of natural history film-making in the UK (for aparallel account of natural history film-making in theUSA see Mitman, 1999).

4. Origins and stages of cluster growth

4.1. The core of the cluster: the BBC NHU

The origins of the NHU can be traced back to earlypost-war radio programs, such as ‘‘The Naturalist’’

(1946), produced by Desmond Hawkins, who becameone of the founding fathers of the NHU (Parsons, 1982).The first ventures into wildlife television used some ofthe films that Peter Scott had made to raise money forthe Slimbridge bird sanctuary on the Severn Estuary,near Bristol, and the first wildlife TV series, ‘‘Look’’,presented by Peter Scott, was launched in 1955.

As output expanded, Hawkins proposed that a sep-arate unit should be set up within the BBC, located inBristol where there was already a core of wildlife spe-cialists. When the unit started in 1957, its underlyingphilosophy was spelled out by Hawkins in a memo tothe BBC board of management. ‘‘The spirit of scientificinquiry must have pride of place’’, he wrote, and it wasimportant that films should ‘‘stand up to the criticalscrutiny of scientists’’ (quoted in Clarke, 1998). Thisattitude has sustained a particular genre of natural his-tory films based on scientific rigour and close observa-tion in the field. Although this has been the dominantgenre of film-production within the NHU, the mid-1950s already saw the emergence of other genres such aspresenter-led, ‘‘hunting-with-camera’’ series (e.g.‘‘OnSafari’’ with Armand and Michaela Dennis) and thefilming of animals in zoos or studios (see Davies, 2000a).

By the 1960s wildlife films were well established in TVprogramming schedules and the unit was employingaround 20 people. The introduction of colour television

Fig. 1. Natural history film-making in Bristol.


in 1967 was quickly followed by the first wildlife series incolour, ‘‘The World About Us’’, which ran for almost 20years. Yet the NHU was still at this time under theshadow of the BBCs main documentary making centrein London, and ‘‘the budgets were small and the tech-nology was pretty rough’’ (Mick Rhodes, then head ofthe NHU, quoted in Clarke, 1998). The BBC was alsofacing increased competition from Anglia Television’s‘‘Survival’’ series. Whilst the BBC still relied to a greatextent on amateur, though gifted, film makers who werenaturalists first, Anglia employed a small team of pro-fessional cameramen and produced outputs that theNHU thought ‘‘decidedly jazzy’’ and did not want toemulate at that time (Parsons, 1982, p. 263).

By the early 1970s the NHU had established sufficientexperience and prestige within the BBC to support aproposal for a major, natural history series. Originallysketched by Chris Parsons, the series was finally ap-proved in 1975/76 and emerged as the 13 part series‘‘Life on Earth’’, narrated by David Attenborough.When the series began on television in 1979 it proved agreat success, and was followed by two sequels, ‘‘TheLiving Planet’’ (1984) and ‘‘The Trials of Life’’ (1990).In 1979 the NHUs importance was recognised by itsdesignation as a separate Department within the BBC,and Parsons became its first head. At this time the Unitwas producing around 200 programs annually and had astaff of 70 (Parsons, 1982).

In the 1990s the NHU was affected by broadcastingderegulation and the introduction of new managerialregimes in the BBC. As a result of the 1990s Broad-casting Act, the BBC and the Independent Televisioncompanies were required to ensure that at least 25% oftheir total programme output was contracted to inde-pendent producers. This resulted in a substantial re-duction in BBC staff, with many of those maderedundant setting up independent companies or be-coming freelancers. A new managerial regime involving‘‘producer’s choice’’ also introduced elements of an in-ternal market. Nevertheless the NHU continued to growas the market for wildlife films expanded in parallel withthe proliferation of new channel outlets and growingoverseas demand. Although the NHU faced increasingcompetition from other wildlife film makers such asUnited Wildlife (the outcome of a merger betweenPartridge Films and Survival), more investment and anew commercial awareness enabled the Unit to maintainits dominant position, particularly in the field of so-called ‘‘blue chip’’ series with a long shelf life that couldbe shown repeatedly, transcended language and culturalbarriers, and could thus be sold worldwide.

By 2000 the NHU could claim to be the largestwildlife film production unit in the world. As befits itsworldwide status it operated as a specialist departmentwith much more autonomy from London than otherunits within the BBC. This partly reflected its success in

its own field and the specialist nature of the skills in-volved in natural history film-making. Employment hadrisen to around 300 in 2000, including administrativestaff. The core of the production staff were the 30 or soproducers (mostly on permanent contracts), Assistantproducers (about two thirds permanent), and research-ers (all on fixed term contracts). The longer runningseries also had Series Producers who were responsiblefor the series a a whole and made some of the programsthemselves (for more details on internal structure andethos see Davies, 2000b).

In 2000 the Unit’s strengths still lay very much withthe ‘‘blue chip’’ or ‘‘landmark’’ series of wildlife films,based on extensive research, with high production valuesand a long shelf-life, typically fronted by the highly re-spected figure of David Attenborough. However, therange of output had widened over the previous decadeand included more presenter or personality-led pro-grams, a genre that had increased greatly in popularityand an area where the BBC faced greater competitionfrom the independants. The Unit also included the‘‘Wildvision’’ section, started in 1991, which exploitedthe huge film archive that had accumulated over theyears, including large quantities of unused footage, or‘‘outs’’, which could be edited or ‘‘re-versioned’’ tomake new programs relatively cheaply with new com-mentaries and presenters.

4.1.1. The film production chain: from concept to distri-bution

Wildlife program making within the NHU can bebroken down into stages, from origination and com-missioning, through production, to post-production anddistribution. Each stage involves different combinationsof specialist skills.

The process typically started with NHU producerscoming up with ideas and projects that appealed to themand which they thought would attract funding from thechannel controllers. The ideas were then presented inoutline form to the controllers of BBC1 and BBC2 andthose that passed this hurdle were then worked up inmore detail for final approval.

Funding usually came from three sources. Part camefrom the budgets of the BBC controllers (mainly licencefee money); part came from BBC Worldwide (thecommercial arm of the BBC); and part came from USpartners. The BBCs main partner in the US was theDiscovery channel which had prior rights to anythingthe Unit made to be broadcast in the US. This source offunding did have some influence on editorial decisions.For example, films of wildlife in Britain may have beenpopular with British audiences, but they did not sell sowell abroad.Production itself often involved filming in many dif-

ferent countries, requiring a great deal of co-ordinationsince a site might have to be visited many times over in


the course of a season and material might be shot forseveral different programs in a series. Once filming wascompleted much of the post-production editing andtracklaying was carried out in Bristol using the extensiverange of in-house facilities, though specialist indepen-dent firms might also be sub-contracted to carry outsome work. Distribution involved broadcasting on BBCor overseas channels and the marketing of associatedproducts by the commercial arm of the BBC.

In-house facilities were provided by BBC Resourceswhich had to tender for the work of the other units onsite, but which also did contract work for outside firms.At the time of our survey BBC Resources Bristol wasadvertising its post-production facilities on the Net,listing the availability of two digital dubbing theatres,three on-line edit suites, two track laying rooms, twotelecine suites, Video Noise reduction facilities, 14 off-line cutting rooms, and on-site graphics facilities, andwhat was described as the largest and most diverse,natural history sound library in the world for addingatmospheric noises to soundtracks.

To illustrate the production train, we can take theexample of the highly successful series, ‘‘The Life ofBirds’’, which comprised 10, 50-min programs. Theconcept for the series seems to have originated with thethen head of the NHU, Alistair Fothergill, ‘‘a mad keenornithologist’’. He suggested the idea to David Atten-borough, who had just finished ‘‘The Private Life ofPlants’’ and was looking for his next big project, andAttenborough produced a rough outline of the series onpaper. This was then worked up into a more detailedproposal which, not surprisingly given Attenborough’sreputation, passed through the various commissioningstages.

Finance was split roughly three ways. One third camefrom the controller of BBC1. Another third came fromBBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, whoproduced the accompanying book, videos and CDs. Thefinal third came from PBS based in Washington, anumbrella organisation that fed programming to all thePBS channels in the US. The overall budget was £7:25m, or around £752; 000 per episode, spent over a threeyear period. Most of this money was spent in-house, andmost of this (around two thirds) was spent in the Bristolarea.

A lot of preparatory research was carried out by twoBristol based researchers who talked to scientists andprepared material for Attenborough to weave into astory. For production there were five producers, all butone of them BBC staff, and shooting was carried out in48 different countries.

Post-production involved the transfer of the negativeto video, off-line and on-line editing, recording musicand narration, and final tracklaying. BBC Resources didmost of the post-production in-house (for between £2and £2:5 m), but some editing and graphics work was

carried out by specialist Bristol post-production firms.The extensive outs went into the NHU library archive tobe reused by Wildvision.

4.1.2. The NHU and the cityThe NHU seemed firmly embedded in the city, for a

number of reasons. First, because once people hadmoved to the Unit they did not tend to move on veryquickly. In the words of one producer, these were people‘‘with specialist skills who do not easily transfer to otherproduction departments’’. A second reason given wasthe atmosphere and freedom which the Unit offered.Although there were evident dissatisfactions with theincreasing levels of bureaucracy and financial controls,one producer described the atmosphere as ‘‘brilliant’’,and another who had had numerous offers to workelsewhere for more money commented:

‘‘But I’ve always had terrific freedom here to makefilms that I’ve been happy to do. The Unit is full of likeminded people, with a good base of knowledge andgood company. So I’ve stuck around because I like theway it works here. And I’m a strong believer in publicservice broadcasting’’.

The third reason for the embedding was the avail-ability of specialist services both within the BBC and inthe wider media network. Finally, those within theNHU also felt they were part of a wider film-makingcommunity with whom they could interact in an atmo-sphere that was ‘‘partly collaborative, partly competi-tive’’. In the words of one producer:

We feel it is important to us to demonstrate to thecentral BBC executives that our strength lies withour links with independent producers and facilitieshouses in Bristol.

4.2. Independent television: Partridge and HTV

On the other side of the city center to the BBC are thestudios of HTV, the commercial channel for the region.In 2000 these studios were also the location for PartridgeFilms, then the next largest film production company inBristol. The company was founded by Michael Rosen-berg in 1974 in London, Rosenberg having developed anearly fascination with wildlife on his parents’ farm inSouth Africa (Cowern, 2000). Partridge quickly estab-lished itself at the quality end of the wildlife film market,and went on to win a series of international prizes for itsoutput, but the firm ran into increasing financial diffi-culties. It was saved in 1992 by new management and thetaking of a majority stake by the commercial televisioncompany HTV. It was helped again in 1997 when HTVwas taken over by United News and Media. UNM al-ready owned other regional television channels, which


included the wildlife film unit Survival, based in Nor-wich. Survival and Partridge were then merged as Uni-ted Wildlife, but the two units retained their own headsand production units.

In the 1990s Partridge expanded from traditional bluechip film-making into new genres, and annual outputrose from around 8 h in the early 1990s to around 30 hof more varied output in the late 1990s. Alongside bluechip programs it also produced ‘‘library shows’’ from itsextensive archive of film footage, presenter-led seriessuch as ‘‘The Ten Deadliest Snakes’’ with Steve Irwin,and educational films (‘‘Animal Alphabet’’) for pre-school children. Partridge had also been involved withco-productions with the BBC and US distributors. Atthe time they were interviewed about 75% of their saleswere overseas exports, and about 90% of this outputwent to the USA, ‘‘because they have a lot of channels,they love wildlife, and they pay well’’. Europe was asignificant, but much smaller market.

4.3. The independent production companies

Although relatively free standing, the NHU andPartridge were part of a larger cluster of firms involvedin production which were for were for the most partlocated very close to the BBC in Clifton. Their genesisand location had much to do with their connections tothe BBC and the NHU, from which many had spun-offduring the 1980s and 1990s.

For example, Green Umbrella had been started in1978 by Nigel Ashcroft to do editing work for the BBC,and had then moved into production after the rulingthat the BBC had to put out 25% of its output to in-dependents. The firm employed around 27 in early 2000(though as is common in the industry, numbers hadfluctuated, reaching 40 for a period in 1999), and pro-duced wildlife and science films (such as the film of thebest selling book, ‘‘Longitude’’, shown on BBC). Thefirm’s Chairman had worked for the BBC as an Exec-utive Producer on ‘‘The Trials of Life’’, and its SeniorProducer had been a Researcher and Assistant Producerfor the BBC. The firm estimated that around 90% oftheir work came from the USA, and consequently theyhad recently opened an office in Los Angeles. They ex-ported around £2m worth of documentaries each year,with about 50% of their budget spent on travel andshooting expenses, and the rest spent in Bristol. Theirmajor ‘‘flagship series’’ at the time was ‘‘The UltimateGuide’’ for the Discovery channel.

Other firms in this same category, were Tigress,Scorer, Zebra, and Beeley Productions, variously estab-lished in the 1980s or early 1990s, and started by andoften still partly staffed by ex-BBC employees who hadleft for a variety of reasons. Some had become disen-chanted by what they felt was the increasing bureau-cratisation of the BBC; others saw commercial

advantages to be exploited by the increased quotas forsubcontracting work; others had left to exploit particu-lar technological developments. Wholesale resignationsby groups of staff to set up a firm had sometimes re-sulted in a period of poor relations with the BBC thathad taken time to repair.

Several of these firms were doing work for the BBC,but most of their production was for the US market.There was also some evidence of specialisation withinthe group, both in terms of locations and genres. Ti-gress, for example, had pioneered and were specialisingin the ‘‘celebrity plus animals’’ format, using Hollywoodstars like Julia Roberts to front their programs. Scorerhad a particular interest in Africa, with films in pro-duction on the Congo and lowland gorillas.

Finally, there were also production companies thatwere not local spin-offs from the BBC, but which hadbeen attracted to Bristol by its existing networks andinfrastructure. Icon Films, for example, had been startedin 1990 by a husband and wife team who had movedfrom the Lake District after deciding that Bristol wasthe best location for their work outside London becauseof its film-making facilities and networks. They hadbought a large house not far from the BBC and set uptheir business in the basement, producing blue chipdocumentaries on the Amazon for the US market, andprograms on ‘‘people-based wildlife’’, religion andspiritual journeys for the BBC.

Other examples could be taken, but the ones sum-marised here are sufficient to give some indication of thevariety of production companies, their different origins,their specialisms and their markets.

4.4. The wider network: facilities houses and freelancers

Both the NHU and the independent productioncompanies used the facilities provided by a range ofspecialist post-production companies which also formeda crucial part of the larger network. These facilities hadgrown rapidly over the previous decade, and most hadalso been started and staffed by ex-BBC employees.

One informant commented that when he had startedup his company near the BBC in the early 1980s therewere not many facilities houses in the city, but:

towards the middle of the 1980s a few facilitiesstarted opening in Bristol. Compared to now theywere fairly basic and unsophisticated. I used to goto London at least once a week in the late 1980s,to do a dub. Now I hardly ever go to London ex-cept for meetings. I hardly ever go for facilitieswork. The facilities we’ve now got in Bristol aresome of the best in the world. The things we’vemade, as a firm, are high end, and Bristol as awhole does a lot of high end stuff, so Bristol hasevolved a lot of sophisticated facilities houses.


4.2.2. was a prominent example of one of these facilitieshouses. The firm was established in 1988 by the formerhead of graphics at the BBC in Bristol and had grownfrom 2 to 80 employees in five locations, includingBristol, Manchester and London. However, Bristol wasthe largest unit and the head office, employing around45 in an elegantly converted Victorian church, just upthe road from the BBC. The Bristol unit specialised infactual program graphics for BBC series such as the‘‘The Life of Birds’’, but its reputation was nowworldwide and it also did work for the DiscoveryChannel and National Geographic. It had recently ex-panded into website support services, whilst the Londonand Manchester operations specialised more in com-mercial post-production.The firm had recently gonethrough a major £5 m restructuring involving a man-agement buy out and an injection of new capital.

Two other facilities houses, Film at 59 and BFV(Bristol Film and Video) also appeared in media surveysas having some of the best post-production facilitiesoutside London. Films at 59 provided a wide range ofservices, including equipment hire, crewing, productionco-ordination, online and offline picture editing, soundtracklaying and sound dubbing.They had recently ex-panded from their original premises near the BBC toinclude another editing suite in a converted scootershowroom, and had also acquired a large dubbing the-atre on the other side of the city centre, close to the HTVstudios, to serve ‘‘the growing media community’’ inthat area. Seven out of the 20 key personnel listed ontheir website in 2000 had formerly worked for the BBC.BFV had also recently announced an upgrading of theirediting suites to new hi definition standards, and theirsystems were coupled to a sister company, Spirit Pic-tures, in the same building, which provided digital filmcompositing, special effects, and digital audio services.They had also taken over another small Bristol com-pany, Oceanaire Diving Services, which specialised inunderwater filming equipment.

As well as facilities houses such as these there werealso specialist music companies such as Old Man Job-son’s Music Depot, a collective of composers who wrotemusic for feature films, television, and commercials.They had offices in Bristol and London, and internetconnections to a studio in Nelson, in the middle of theCanadian Rockies. Amongst their many film and tele-vision contracts they had provided music for a variety ofBBC wildlife programs.

Around these companies extended a wider, shiftingnet of individual freelancers, subcontracted for specialisttasks. For example, five cameramen who had worked onmost of the major wildlife series were based in Bristol orlived in nearby villages. As firms took on projects theyexpanded and contracted their workforces as necessary,so they fluctuated between a handful of key personneland perhaps 40 or 50 workers. Many of these freelancers

were reported to live locally in the Clifton area, andwere in regular contact with local firms.

In summary, in this section we have tried to showhow the cluster originated and how it has evolved overtime in response to changes in markets, technologies,and regulatory structures in broadcasting. The result hasbeen a distinctive historical trajectory that has tied thecluster to the Bristol area.

5. Cluster depth: economic and social interactions within

the cluster

Much of the recent research carried out on clustershas emphasised the importance of various forms ofnetwork interactions, both formal and informal, for thesustainability and development of such clusters. Fre-quent interactions within a cluster, it is argued, facilitatethe transfer of knowledge (both codified and tacit), en-courage forms of trust-based, co-operative behaviour,and leads to collective learning (Capello, 1999; French,2000). Here we explore the evidence for interactionsusing a now familiar distinction between traded anduntraded interdependencies (Storper, 1995).

5.1. Traded interdependancies

These typically include a wide range of economicinteractions, such as traditional customer/supplier rela-tionships, servicing, and subcontracting. In our casethey typically included commissioned or subcontractedwork for the BBC or HTV and a wide range of specialistservices provided by facilities houses. The precise natureof these interactions depended very much on the natureof the programs being produced.

In the case of the BBC series the‘‘Life of Birds’’, forexample, although the series involved teams filmingaround the world, there was a significant amount ofspending within Bristol. Although, as we noted earlier,much of this was spent on post-production work withinthe BBC, some editing work was contracted out to post-production firms such as Films at 59, and around£400; 000 was also spent on specialist graphics and 3Danimation provided by 4.2.2. The music for the sound-tracks was written by independent composers based innearby Bath. As another example, Partridge’s film on‘‘Giant Forest Hogs’’, had been shot in Uganda anddeveloped in Leeds (because there were no such facilitiesin Bristol). However, it had then been edited at the HTVstudios, telecined to tape by Spirit Pictures and soundhad been added by Sprockets and Bytes in Bristol.

Many of the smaller independent production com-panies made more extensive use of local facilities. GreenUmbrella has recently used other Bristol companiessuch as BFV, 4.2.2, Spirit, and Films at 59 and they hadalso drawn upon specialist insurance and banking fa-


cilities available in the city. On their Amazon films, Iconhad used a number of graduates from the university onshort term research contracts, had the film developed inLondon, carried out their own offline editing, and usedBFV for telecining and online editing, and Films at 59for soundwork. Overall, they estimated that around halfof their $1.68 m budget had been spent in Bristol.

Such subcontracting and servicing relationships be-tween firms within the cluster meant information abouteach other’s activities was widespread and new ideas andinnovations could spread rapidly. These economic in-teractions often merged seamlessly into social interac-tions, and for both forms of interaction spatialproximity was important.

5.2. Untraded interdependencies

Untraded interdependancies cover various aspects ofinformal networking which underlie relationships oftrust and reciprocity and tacit codes of conduct betweenfirms. (Keeble et al., 1999; Capello, 1999; Huggins,2000). Although the Bristol media community is smallcompared to London, such informal interaction seemedvery important. The personnel of firms that have spun-off from the BBC often maintained social contact withthose who had remained, and also often came intocontact with each other in visits to facilities houses. Anassistant producer at the BBC commented that, as aresult, the Bristol media scene was becoming more andmore like the London one, with lots of informal inter-actions, meetings and phoning, and complex webs ofpersonal relations. Although some work seems to havebeen transacted around the tables in the BBC restau-rant, there were plenty of alternative eating places in thenearby Whiteladies Road. One independent companyproducer remarked:

If you go to the eateries at the bottom of White-ladies Road you’ll see lots of TV execs, editors,cameramen, etc. You nurture people by eating withthem, breaking bread. . .

In the words of another:

The industry revolves around relationships – thefact that I can go down to the tapas bar everylunchtime and bump into someone. I only have towalk out onto the street and I bump into a coupleof cameramen. The network is so important. . .That’s what you get in Soho in London.

On the other hand there were also subtle variations inin the handling of social interactions that needed to belearnt. As one interviewee from a post-production houseput it:

We don’t lunch with BBC producers – they don’tlike it. . . its not the way they do business. Whatthey are interested in at the end of the day is youshowing an interest in their product.

5.3. Proximity and interaction

Both formal and informal interactions were facili-tated by spatial proximity. As one independent producerput it:

The costs of being in Clifton are relatively highcompared to being elsewhere in Bristol, but youcouldn’t possibly be anywhere else because that iswhere the BBC is. Because that is where all the pro-duction and post-production houses are.


If I were a mile away it would make a big differencebecause it would take you 20 min to walk to Filmsat 59 instead of 5 min. If I have to go down there 2or 3 times it would take 2 h out of my day just walk-ing. When we looked for this office, I just put a pinin the BBC and drew 50 yards around it.

Another post-production facility was considered a bit‘‘awkward to get to’’ because it was 15 min walk upWhiteladies road.

There were also stories recounted of firms that hadstarted up in cheaper premises near the city center andfailed because of their perceived remoteness from therest of the cluster.

6. Linking the local and the global: distribution networks

Having described the origins and development of thecluster and some of its internal relations we now turn toits global connections. As Scott (2000) has pointed out,although clusters of activities may be rooted in partic-ular cities, cultural industries clusters are typically tiedinto global markets through a handful of major, mediadistribution companies. Such distribution channels wereindeed vital for linking the Bristol cluster to the widerworld, providing sources of funding for film projectsthat may take years to complete, and outlets forscreening the final products. However, the distributionchannels varied with the type of company and program.

As we have seen, the BBC had its own networks fordistribution. Programs were commissioned for its ownchannels, and it also had distribution arrangements withits partner, Discovery Communications, in the USA.The BBC and Discovery had joined forces in 1998, withDiscovery providing finance and marketing skills and


the BBC its archives and program making skills. Dis-covery then had first pick of BBC programmes for itsDiscovery Channel.

Partridge also had a preferred distributor in ITEL(International Television Enterprises London), a part-nership between United News and Media and HomeBox Office, though they had also distributed their filmsthrough Adams Wooding (a Gloucestershire basedcompany) and US companies.

The smaller independent producers in the city soldmuch of their output to the USA, and were heavily re-liant for commissions and distribution on organisationslike PBS, Devillier Donegan, National Geographic TV,and Discovery Communications, most of which werelocated in Washington D.C. Devillier Donegan, for ex-ample, had been established in 1980 by two formerpublic television programmers and focussed on nature,history and science documentaries for PBS and cablenetworks. The company had formed a partnership withCapital Cities/ABC in 1994 and had come under theDisney umbrella in 1996 when Disney bought ABC. TheNational Geographic Channel, on the other hand hadbeen set up by National Geographic Television andNBC in 1996, and in April 2000 NBC, Fox and NationalGeographic Television announced plans for a furtherglobal expansion of the channel and its products.

The independents carefully cultivated personal rela-tions with the commissioners for these outlets. As oneput it, ‘‘I have three or four pet names that I am inconstant contact with and you are on buddy enoughterms to to ring them up anytime’’. However, althoughthe independents were heavily reliant on the big distri-bution companies and US broadcasters, this did notmean that the relationship was simply one way. The bigdistribution networks needed dependable suppliers, or‘‘bankers’’, to fill their programming hours. As one in-dependent in Bristol put it:

They come to us because of their ‘comfort factor’.They commission around 400 new programmes ayear and they have a team of about 50 overseeingthose projects. They don’t want too many disasters.You could say we are a safe pair of hands.


The commisioner has a problem – he is feeding ahungry beast that needs feeding every day. . ..

Finally, it was not only local film production com-panies that were directly linked to global markets. 4.2.2.Videographics, which had acquired an internationalreputation for the quality of its work on the back ofcommissions for the BBC, was doing 50% of its workdirectly for foreign, mostly US, firms.

7. Institutional thickness

Research on clusters has also pointed to the impor-tance of what has been called ‘‘institutional thickness’’in their sustenance and development. Amin and Thrift(1995), for example, have used the term to refer to websof supporting organisations such as financial institu-tions, chambers of commerce, trade associations, train-ing organisations, local authorities, and marketing andbusiness support agencies. Such institutional supportshelp to create synergy, and a collective sense of identityand purpose within a cluster. Scott (2000) has similarlyargued that the survival and growth of cultural industryclusters often depend upon various forms of more for-mal, institutional support, such as public–private part-nerships, media development agencies, trainingorganisations, professional bodies, and export promo-tion agencies. In the Bristol case, there was less evidenceof institutional thickness on this scale, but there werenevertheless some important, specialised institutionalsupports that helped embed the cluster in the city.

One of the most important supports in the specialistarea of film-making is a regular film festival. In naturalhistory film-making, wildlife film festivals are importantnot only for the award of prizes and the gaining ofpublicity for film makers, but also as invaluable sourcesof contacts and information on forthcoming commis-sions, new film-making techniques, and emergingbroadcasting technologies. The Jackson Hole film fes-tival in Wyoming, for example, seems to attract whatwas described to us as virtually the whole of the inter-national film-making community, with almost all ofthose from the UK coming from Bristol. However,Bristol is itself the location for one of the most impor-tant of all international wildlife film festivals, the bi-annual Wildscreen Festival.

The festival, begun in 1982, is run by The WildscreenTrust, in association with the Worldwide Fund for Na-ture. It now attracts around 900 delegates to the city andhas grown to include a week long programme of screen-ings, training workshops and masterclasses, lectures andseminars, social gatherings and trading opportunities.The so-called Panda Awards, which attract particularinterest, are given for various categories such as bestcinematography, best series, best scriptwriting, and bestnewcomer. The jury panel for the autumn 2000 festival,for example, included Chris Parsons, an ex-head of theNHU, and Ron Devillier of Devillier-Donegan Enter-prises, the major US distributor. The principal festivalsponsors were the BBC, the Discovery Channel, andUnitedWildlife, and the ‘‘additional sponsors’’ were a rollcall of locally basedwildlife and relatedmedia companies.Seven of the 17 ‘‘Panda’’ awards for different categories offilms were won by Bristol based film makers.

The 2000 Wildscreen festival was also the first tobenefit from the opening of the ‘‘Wildscreen’’ com-


plex, an imposing new structure located near the citycenter (see Fig. 1). This started life as a a proposal foran electronic zoo and wildlife film archive by ChrisParsons, the former head of the NHU. The projectfinally came to fruition because of the success of a£43m bid to the Millenium Commission for Lotteryfunding, and the building has formed part of a muchwider £400m redevelopment scheme for the CanonsMarsh area of the old city docks. The Wildscreencomplex, which opened in June 2000, includes anIMAX cinema and an international archive of naturalhistory films (which has just received an additional£1:6m of support from the Heritage Lottery Fund).Overall, the Festival and the complex not only providean important focus for formal and informal interac-tion, but also help to reinforce Bristol’s image as aworld centre of production.

Also important in consolidating the local cluster hasbeen the construction of formal, technical networksbetween local firms. Many of the natural history pro-duction and facilities companies we have referred toabove were also members of the recently formed BristolCreative Technology Network, along with companieslike Aardman Animation, the University of Bristol’sDepartment of Computer Science and the University ofthe West of England’s Faculty of Art, Media andDesign. The BCTN was an optical fibre network whichused the latest broadband technology to link itsmembers together, and to other broadband networks inLondon and the rest of the world. Supported withmoney from the government’s National CreativeTechnology Initiative, the network allowed rapidtransmission of information between members of thenetwork, and had already been used by wildlife filmcompanies such as Green Umbrella to send programsto US partners for rapid comment and approval.However, the major area of development was seen asthe field of interactive television, with Green Umbrellahoping to use the network to add an interactive di-mension to a recently completed, natural history series‘‘Living Europe’’. The network was still in its infancyin 2000, and much of the work experimental, but hopeswere high that Bristol could build a significant tech-nological lead in this multimedia area.

Evidence for other forms of institutional thicknesswas more fragmentary. For example, attempts to pro-vide a regular forum for social interaction and infor-mation exchange within the cluster have provedunsuccessful. An organisation called ‘‘Bristol Channel’’was set up to provide a regular forum, but reportedlycollapsed because of the pressure of work on its indi-vidual members. Although there have been recent at-tempts to revive it, the small size of the cluster and thedensity of personal contacts and relations within itmeans that much information can anyway be exchangedover the caf�ee or dinner table.

8. Current dynamics of change

Our analysis has shown how the natural historycluster came to be established in the city, how it grewover time, and something of how its different elementswere connected together in 2000. To understand currentdynamics of change we have been monitoring changes inboth the external context and local firm responses, andwe re-interviewed some firms in early 2001. The currentpatterns of change appear complex, reflecting both cy-clical and structural factors.

First, there has been the influence of corporate re-structuring. The NHU, for example, has had to survivethe recent reorganisation of the BBC under its new Di-rector General, Greg Dyke, but remains as a separateunit within the new Factual and Learning Division.Employment has remained steady, but the commis-sioning process within the Division has become moreopen, meaning the Unit has to work harder to sell itsideas in comparison with other genres of output. As aresult the Unit has somewhat less autonomy than in thepast to produce what it likes, and has had to becomemore flexible and responsive to the different demands ofdifferent BBC channels (which have increased in numberand become more clearly defined in terms of their targetaudiences). There is a recognition within the Unit of theneed to experiment with new genres, presenters, andtechnologies in order to maintain audiences.

Partridge, on the other hand, has been affected bychanges of ownership and consolidation within thecommercial media sector. HTV, its parent, was acquiredfrom United News and Media by Granada, which hasdecided to close the Survival unit in Norwich and con-centrate natural history production in Bristol. The unithas been re-branded as Granada Wild. Its new head isthe former head of the BBCs Wildvision unit, and itsaim is to supply more global markets with a muchbroader range of natural history and environmentalprograms than traditional blue chip. Although this re-structuring seems to consolidate natural history film-making even further in the city, rumours are rife that theBristol unit may be restructured in turn, with a resultingloss of jobs.

Second, there have been significant changes in thelevel of demand for natural history programmes. TheBBC, committed to making £1:1b of cuts, has reducedits natural history output at the same time as there hasbeen a worldwide downturn in demand. This downturnhas had major impacts on the smaller production firmsand post-production facilities in the city. Although thosewe interviewed could remember similar cyclical down-turns in the past, the feeling was that the downturn thistime was much more severe, partly because the previousboom had been so high and partly because of inflatedforecasts of what the market could bear. As one infor-mant commented, the audience for natural history films


was still mainly the over 40s in spite of attempts to at-tract younger viewers with more personality frontedprograms. As a result commissions have become harderto get, fewer independents are doing any work for theBBC, competition has become more intense, and somefirms have had to make deep cuts in their workforce.Zebra Films, for example, has had to cut back to four,and Green Umbrella to 14. Whereas Green Umbrellahad 17 programmes in production two years ago, theyare now completing three, with no further programmesyet confirmed (though in an interesting reverse of pre-vious trends the last 6 people who had left had all gotjobs at the BBC). Partly as a consequence of these cut-backs, one of the facilities houses, BFV, has had to callin the receivers, although at the time of writing parts ofthe company are already in the process of being rebornunder new names.

Third, there is also some evidence of changes in thestructure of demand for natural history programs. Somecommentators have argued that there is a ‘‘real seachange’’ underway in the market, with traditional bluechip programs and series increasingly displaced by more‘‘story-driven’’ animal dramas and ‘‘celebrities-meet-animals’’ type programs. This decline in demand forblue chip programs has been reinforced by the relentlessproliferation of channels, which it is thought might leadto an increased demand for relatively cheap programswhich re-use existing archive footage. Such trends poseparticular problems for the NHU, and those we spoketo at the NHU were certainly concerned by the impactsof such channel proliferation on the fragmentation ofoutput and audiences. With many more, but smaller,specialised audiences for specialised programs it wasfeared that it might become increasingly difficult tocommand the resources to continue to make top-of-the-range, blue chip series for a mass audience, the kind ofbig budget series that had been the hall mark of the Unitin the past.

Smaller firms have responded in various ways to thischanging context. One response has been for film pro-duction companies to increasingly diversify their out-puts, with films on history, art, travel, or as one put it‘‘dead white scientists’’. Another response has been totry out innovative, new techniques, using disguised‘‘boulder cams’’ to film close-ups of lions, and even ex-perimenting with smaller ‘‘ant-cams’’. Facilities housesare also diversifying into new areas. Films at 59, forexample, are expanding into new media services such asencoding and compression, CD authoring and websitedesign, internet publishing and broadcasting.

All firms within the sector are also faced with un-certainties over the impacts of new broadcasting tech-nologies such as high definition television, interactivetelevision, and the convergence between television andthe internet which would enable programs of choice tobe downloaded at will in any order. The only agreement

was that it was impossible to predict the future withany certainty, making investment decisions increasinglyrisky.

9. Concluding comments

First, our analysis has shown that natural historyfilm-making in Bristol forms the core of a small, butspecialised cluster of activities, whose products never-theless command an international market, and which istied into global networks by distribution channelsdominated by large public and private corporations.

However, a distinctive element of our cluster is thekey role played in its origin and development by a largepublic service broadcaster. In Markusen’s terminology,the Bristol cluster might therefore best be described asan example of a ‘‘State-Anchored Industrial District’’,with the BBC acting as the main, public service anchorfor a network of smaller producers and facilities houses(Markusen, 1996). However, as we have seen, althoughthis may have been a reasonable categorisation in thepast, the situation is now becoming more complicated.The BBC has cut back on commissions and is doingmore work in-house. The smaller production companieswhich originally spun-off from the BBC have diversifiedtheir outputs and are often more closely tied throughcommissions to US distributors and channel outlets. Atthe same time, the level of formal and informal inter-actions amongst small producers, facilities houses, andfreelancers within the cluster is also characteristic of amore Marshallian Industrial District. We seem, there-fore, to be dealing with a type of hybrid cluster, simul-taneously subject to a variety of public service andcommercial influences.

In terms of the categories used in the DTI report(DTI, 2001) the cluster would be best described as ‘‘es-tablished’’, ‘‘relatively deep’’, and ‘‘internationally sig-nificant’’. Until very recently, it would also have beendescribed as ‘‘stable’’ in terms of employment, after aseveral decades of growth, but as we have seen em-ployment growth has recently been checked and evenreversed in some areas. A key question is whether thisrepresents a temporary downturn, followed by a re-newed burst of growth, or a longer term structuralchange. Although the evidence is conflicting on thispoint, most of those we interviewed still felt that a dis-tinctive natural history cluster would continue to be apowerful presence in the city for the foreseeable future,though it might be considerably different in form andstructure.

Our analysis also has some implications for publicpolicies towards clusters, particularly at the local level.The presence of this cluster seems to show that smallercities, further down the urban hierarchy than worldcities, can still be important sites of self-sustaining cul-


tural production, able to maintain a considerable degreeof autonomy from metropolitan dominance. However,our analysis also suggests that such sustainability de-pends on favourable local circumstances that cannot beeasily replicated elsewhere. As we have seen, Bristol’ssuccess has been heavily dependent on the historicalaccident that the city became the location of the NHU.The proliferation of small, independent firms was thenmade possible by changes in the rules of public servicebroadcasting which encouraged sub-contracting, and ithas been possible to retain these firms and attract skilledpersonnel, even from London, because Bristol is an at-tractive city, with good amenities, suitable and some-times elegant premises close to the BBC, and with goodaccess to London and Heathrow.

Our Bristol example also points towards some of thedifficulties faced by local authorities in devising policiesto support such clusters. Through a network of public–private partnerships the city has been highly successfulin attracting funding for festivals and supporting phys-ical infrastructures such as the Wildscreen complex,which have helped to raise the city’s international profileas a centre of specialist, highly quality, film production.However, the power of global distribution networks, thevolatility of markets, the local fallouts from corporaterestructuring, and the pace of technological change alsopoint up some of the limits to the effectiveness of localpolicy initiatives. In the end, such specialist clusters canonly survive by continuous adaptation, innovation andgrowth, perhaps into new areas of activity.

Acknowledgements

This research was carried out as part of the BristolIntegrated City Project, one of the projects funded un-der the ESRC Cities: Competitiveness and CohesionResearch Programme.

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