Manchester places

The BBC's moving five departments up from London and there's speculation that the likes of Sony, Google or MTV could one day join them.

But it's not a good time for media - newspaper groups are cutting jobs and ITV are discussing sharing resources with the BBC to cut costs, which means to date, the queue of people lining up to move to MediaCityUK has not been as long as the developers, Peel Media, had hoped for. Only the BBC and the University of Salford have confirmed they'll be there when the building work's finished in 2011.

Barges have been used to service MediaCityUK

That doesn’t stop Peel Media - whose parent company, the Peel Group, owns the Trafford Centre and Liverpool Airport amongst other things – being suitably upbeat about the complex, particularly in terms of funding, as the development is privately funded, so not at risk from falls on the stock market or government spending freezes.

"It's the largest privately funded construction site in Europe," says Peel Media spokesman Paul Newman, "there's nothing else like it in the UK bar the Olympics which is publicly funded."

And the backers of MediaCityUK also have a robust approach to the current recession causing problems with future tenancy, as they have long term ambitions - looking ahead five or ten years to when the economy is healthier.

"It's a community, not just a series of offices. It's the mix of people on the site that counts - the BBC, students, retail and leisure, a public plaza twice the size of Trafalgar Square," says Paul Newman.

"It will be somewhere to live, work and play, as opposed to just clock in at an office."

To that end, even in the BBC’s quarter of the site, there are a range of opportunities which, while being in the sphere of media, are a little different to what you might expect, thanks to the BBC's digital school classroom, 21CC.

"21CC is open to any school that wants to come in," says project manager Sally Briggs.

Children using BBC White City's 21CC

"We can work in traditional media like film-making and video, but also new media like web design. We're really big on podcasting and we use videoconferencing to link up with schools around the country."

The jobs attached to Salford's 21CC have just been announced. The staff will be based in Swinton until 2011 when they'll move onto the MediaCityUK site with other BBC departments and teams - including Sport, Radio 5 Live, Future Media and Technology, Children's, Formal Learning, Religion, Northwest Tonight and Radio Manchester – and make up a handful of the 2,000 BBC staff in Salford.

There’s no denying that MediaCityUK is still a gamble, given the current recession, but if this works and if it's as big as they hope, this could be hugely significant, as it would make Salford one of the most important media centres in the whole of Europe, something that couldn't fail to help raise the profile – and hopefully the economy – of the region in general.