The UK’s creative industries have never been stronger. British developers are behind some of the world’s bestselling video games, UK architectural companies lead on high-profile projects across the globe, while homegrown films are taking home the most coveted of international industry awards.
But there’s more to the creative industries than Grand Theft Auto developers Rockstar North, Zaha Hadid and 12 Years a Slave. Accounting for 1.7m jobs, contributing 5% of gross value added (GVA) to UK GDP and exporting £17.3bn annually (9% of total service exports), the creative sector outperforms the rest of the UK economy in both growth and job creation.
It’s also hugely diverse, encompassing advertising, architecture, craft, design, fashion, film, television and radio, IT, software, music, the performing and visual arts, publishing, museums, galleries and libraries. Any industry, in fact, with the “potential to generate wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property” – a definition from 1998, when the Labour government published the Creative Industries Mapping Document.
This document, the first attempt to measure the sector’s economic contribution to the UK, has itself been one of the major contributing factors to the success of the creative industries.
“They were the first government in the world to recognise it as a proper industrial sector,” explains William Sargent, co-founder and chief executive of Oscar-winning creative studio Framestore. “Now it’s recognised as a significant part of the British economy, so from the government’s point of view, they can articulate an engagement with it, where previously the sectors were seen as separate cottage industries.”
That said, cottage industries still operating at the top of their game and attracting talent from across the globe. “We have a very powerful cluster effect in London,” says Sargent. “Each successful manifestation and niche within the creative industries fed off the fact they were in a physical area with amazing stuff going on, which quite often cross-pollinated.”
Research and development (R&D) funding, tax credits and relationship brokering are just some of the ways that the government has engaged with the sector, creating a supportive ecosystem and facilitating growth in the years since mapping began, says Mehjabeen Price, chief operating officer at Creative England: “The argument over the importance of the creative industries and investment into those industries has been won.”
But more needs to be done if that growth is to continue, says Sara John, head of policy at the Creative Industries Federation (CIF). “It’s still not central enough to the government’s industrial strategy. It’s possibly because a lot of the industries concerned are seen in a cultural way: some of them are sponsored by the department for culture, media and sport (DCMS) rather than the department for business, innovation and skills (BIS), and then when BIS is doing its business plan for the future, they take into account parts of the creative industries like tech and games because they sponsor them, but they don’t put creative industries up front and centre the way they need to be.”
This affects not just the myriad small and medium-sized enterprises that make up the majority of the creative sector, but carries through to education policy too. While Price and John welcome the government’s championing of STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths), they’re worried about higher education cuts disproportionately affecting the arts and humanities and limiting the potential of universities to turn out what Price refers to as world-class creatives.
This imbalance is also in danger of “hurting” our wider economy, says John, drawing attention to the importance of creativity in industries like engineering. “It’s the Leonardo Da Vinci thing: you need to study the art of science and the science of art; you need both if you’re going to be successful.”
Sargent identifies a further concern, highlighting British universities’ shortcomings when it comes to producing employment-ready graduates with skills and practical experience relevant to the sector: “Universities are still a bit of a challenge because the courses aren’t always aligned [with the needs of the industry] as well as they are in Germany, France or Sweden.”
John would like to see a national strategy for England that links culture, the creative industries and education in a way comparable to those that exist in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. “[CIF has] members who are universities, arts organisations and industry. The three should be seen together because they’re completely connected,” she says.
“Investment in the arts helps wider economic growth because a lot of it is experimental – almost like R&D is in the science world – and so public arts funding is very important economically as well as culturally. What people do in schools and higher education institutions also has a knock-on affect on both arts and creative industries.”
Making the most of these links is more important than ever given the continuing climate of austerity. “We know that times are going to get tougher,” says Price. “Lots of arts organisations are coming alive to the need to diversify their portfolios, to be more commercial and more enterprising. Those who won’t look at exploring that option will find it difficult to survive.”
Collaborating with companies on the more commercial side of the creative industries has the potential to offer core culture organisations – those within the museum or performing arts sectors, for example – a route towards greater sustainability. Price adds: “Working with digital companies can open a lot of other avenues for art organisations. An example: advertising yourself differently to reach a target audience; creative industries do that all the time.”
Agencies like CIF and Creative England are well placed to broker those relationships. They can be particularly helpful, explains Price, for smaller core culture organisations that are open to collaborations but don’t have the headspace, the capacity nor the time to actually think of those innovative ways of working. Canny leadership and trustee appointments are another good way of promoting cross-industry thinking, says John, pointing to incoming Arts Council England chief executive Darren Henley, who comes to the funding body from Classic FM.
But it’s not just about economic sustainability. The fruits of collaborative working between the commercial and the purely cultural sectors of the industry range from familiar products like co-produced TV programmes to adventures in multiplatform storytelling that draw on expertise in technology, film, theatre and more. The possibilities are almost endless. It pays to think creatively.
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