REGENERATION
Workforce – games developer Double Eleven now has 350 staff and takes up the whole of the stunning Boho X building.
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WORDS: SARAH WALKER
The growth of Middlesbrough’ s Boho Zone and the surrounding area is playing a key part in the town’ s regeneration.
New and growing businesses in the creative and tech sectors are taking up more and more space – and employees of these companies moving into the high-specification apartments nearby – all with continued strong support from Middlesbrough Council.
And now, there is even more good news to come for creative digital and tech businesses, including startups, growing or long-established firms, as large empty high street buildings are set to become places in which more fantastic businesses can thrive.
Amazingly, it is now more than 15 years since the Boho Zone was first set up in 2009 – but it has come a long way since then.
Middlesbrough Council has led the charge, overseeing the town becoming one of the fastest growing creative digital and tech clusters in Europe.
Games developer Double Eleven, Behaviour Interactive, Big Bite and Wander Films – all hugely successful businesses that have been on a journey through Boho Zone in the past 15 years – are just a few whose exciting growth can demonstrate the heady heights companies in the sector can reach.
Double Eleven started life in Boho One, which has incubation centres for growing businesses, under the support and guidance of Middlesbrough Council and Teesside University.
The global firm now has 350 staff and takes up the whole Boho X building – its main headquarters – while it also has additional headquarters in Malaysia and south-east Asia.
Debbie Ingoldsby, strategic business manager at Middlesbrough Council, said:“ When we launched the Boho Zone, our aim was to support the growth of the creative digital and tech sector – and that’ s what we have done and continue to do.
“ Before we launched Boho One, we knew it was a growing sector, but we didn’ t have the infrastructure to support the businesses within it at that time.
“ We have great links with Teesside University, and we needed to think about how we were going to enable these businesses to grow, scale up and create jobs that would support our local economy.”
The council linked with the university to provide an incubated space – Boho One – which still offers space for new upand-coming businesses.
“ This was the first step in the creation of the Boho Zone, which would allow us to create a community and encourage collaboration in the creative digital and tech sector,” Debbie says.
Now, as businesses grow out of the Teesside University-incubated space in
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