The last twelve months have been a period of change for Baltic Creative CIC. We welcomed new creative and digital businesses into our community, said goodbye to some long-standing staff and board members, and welcomed new people into our team. We also closed a major chapter in our history with the handover of Northern Lights in August.
Throughout the year, we continued to strengthen our partnerships locally, nationally and internationally through visits, events and delegations. Alongside this, we invested further in tenant support and connection, introducing new events and delivering Bloom 2025 in March.
Everything we do is focused on creating space, opportunity and support for creative businesses to grow. Read on to find out what we got up to this year – and thank you to everyone who made it possible.
Growing Our Creative Community
This year we welcomed seven new tenants from across six diverse creative sectors. Each business brings something unique to our community, and we’re delighted to have them here. Our buildings are buzzing with energy and are now mostly full, with just a small number of spaces available.
One of our new tenants, marketing agency The Nice Exchange, joined in May. At the time, founder Rian Bailey-Weir said:
“I started my marketing career just a few doors down from our current office as an intern for a local marketing agency… Over a decade later, the area still has the cool, calm, collected vibe that fits exactly with our ethos. Not only that, but it also puts us closer to like-minded organisations and new opportunities.”
Meet the newest members of our community:
In August, we also welcomed Adam Gannon to the team as Property Assistant. Adam quickly became a key support for tenants and has made a brilliant contribution in the latter part of the year.
We were also pleased to welcome two new members to our board of directors. Bastian Weinberger joined us as Chair, and Lisa Shoko came on board with a specialist focus on equality, diversity and inclusion.
Partnerships & Collaboration
In 2025, we continued to grow our network and connect with creative hubs and organisations beyond the city. We hosted international delegations from Sligo and India, sharing our spaces and introducing visitors to the Baltic Creative community.
Closer to home, we welcomed local university groups and emerging creative professionals for talks and tours, sharing the Baltic Creative story and our approach to supporting the sector.
In September, we hosted Power to Change and Social Enterprise UK for two Labour Party Conference fringe events in our Shed space. These sessions brought together community leaders and social value enterprises from across the UK to exchange ideas and experiences.
As a team, we also made time to look outward and learn from others. Visits included the Docklands Trail and Make CIC’s North Docks earlier in the year, followed by a trip to Campfield House in Manchester to explore the impressive transformation of the Grade II listed former warehouse.
Supporting Tenants & Bringing People Together
At Baltic Creative, we invest in our community by offering year-round business support and opportunities to connect. Well, 2025 was no exception.
We kicked off the year by hosting Bloom 2025 on Thursday 6th March, delivering the event for the second time at Camp & Furnace. Bloom brought together inspiration, practical support and meaningful connection in one future-focused day. With over 100 attendees from nine sectors, and guests travelling from across the UK, the event featured important conversations about the future of the North’s creative and digital industries.
Across the rest of the year, the team delivered a broad programme of tenant support and wellbeing activity. This included summer yoga sessions, Liverpool City Council business support drop-ins, coffee mornings, financial advice clinics, and opportunities for tenants to connect informally.
We also hosted our first Looking Ahead event – a tenant forum designed to gather feedback and ideas directly from the community to help shape our future work.
In October, we launched Bloom Talks, a new series of practical support sessions created to keep the momentum of Bloom going throughout the year. Our first session, AI That Pays You Back, delivered in partnership with In4 Group, explored how creative businesses can use AI tools to save time and refocus on creativity.
Looking Ahead
The team at Baltic Creative CIC would like to thank everyone we worked with this year for their support, partnership and collaboration. We’re excited to continue this work into 2026, with more opportunities to support our community and help the creative and digital sector thrive.
If you’d like to be part of it, get in touch!
