We speak to CREW CEO, Niamh Costello, as it announces what it describes as ‘Ireland’s first-ever creative economy summit’, Edge26, in May.
CREW (Creative Enterprise West) is a relatively young innovation and enterprise hub based out of Galway, but it has serious global ambitions to grow start-ups and scale-ups in the digital creative sector, according to its CEO, Niamh Costello.
With its current home in Atlantic Technological University (ATU) School of Creative Arts and Media, CREW was founded as a not-for-profit organisation by the Western Development Commission and ATU, with funding support from Enterprise Ireland.
“That covers anything from film and TV, animation, immersive content creation, music technology, digital design – it’s quite broad in terms of its coverage,” Costello tells me when I ask what’s meant by the ‘digital creative sector’. “We support start-ups in these sectors – we have run a lot of incubation programmes – with identifying their product market fit, their audience, commercialisation, investment, getting going and then scaling, of course.”
The hub opened its doors back in April 2024 and launched its strategy in May of last year, focused on strengthening the digital creative start-up ecosystem within the west and the north-west of Ireland and helping those companies to connect, scale and collaborate, says Costello. “While we’re Galway based, we do have a regional and national remit in terms of our agreement with Enterprise Ireland as well,” she adds, so the hub works with IADT, University of Galway and ATU among others.
Today there are about 85 people based out of the CREW hub and last year some 38 companies went through five incubation programmes there, according to Costello.
Edge26
Now CREW is setting its sights on creating an annual international event that will bring together the entire creative enterprise sector in Galway in May 2026, Edge26. With a tagline of ‘Where creative industries, technology and enterprise converge’, Costello says it will be the first event of its kind in Ireland.
“We are focusing on the fact that we’re on the edge of Europe, we’re on the Atlantic edge, and that we can grow a creative industry sector from here to be globally significant,” says Costello, who is busy curating the speaker roster when we speak, for the event which will take place in the brand new Dexcom Stadium in Galway.
“The creative industries can be quite fragmented,” she says. “You have a number of different departments, you have a number of different agencies that are supporting across the various different sub-sectors, and in each of these sub-sectors there are very strong industry representative bodies and conferences, but there was no overarching event that was bringing together all of the different groups within the commercial creative industries.
“We want to look at where we are now within the west and the north-west of Ireland and Ireland as a whole, where the opportunities are. I mean, the speed of change, it’s the same in tech, it’s so rapid, with AI in creative industries for example. There’s so much opportunity, but there’s also a lot of challenges.”
Costello is aiming to bring everyone across the sector together, from policymakers to investors, start-ups to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in one room to talk about these very challenges and opportunities, what needs to happen and “what we can do to deliver on the huge potential for growing the sector”.
There will be an immersive technologies zone, an expo of creative technologies, activities and networking for start-ups and plenty of policy discussions, says Costello. “Of course we will have the great international speakers too, but overall it’s really about collaboration and trying to bring everybody together.”
Edge26 takes place on 21 May 2026 at the Dexcom Stadium in Galway.
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