UK’s cultural and creative industries are strategic national asset

After a complete marketing campaign of state assist and tax credit, the UK’s cultural and creative industries are paying main dividends on the funding. Based on a brand new examine, during the last decade, tradition has returned gross worth added of twice the speed of the broader financial system.

The cultural and creative industries symbolize greater than 3% of the worldwide financial system and present jobs for over 6% of the world’s workforce, a whitepaper from FTI Consulting and the World Governments Summit has proven. Financial knowledge signifies that investing in these sectors yields excessive returns; each greenback spent on creative tasks generates an estimated $2.50 in whole financial exercise. This progress supplies secondary advantages to different areas, together with tourism, native retail, and metropolis providers.

And the UK is a major instance of this. Sectors together with music, movie, gaming, publishing, structure, and digital content material have turn out to be important engines for the nation’s financial well being. In June 2023, the UK’s creative industries employed 7.9% of the workforce, round 2.5 million folks, and contributed to five.7% of the GDP.

Supply: FTI Consulting Evaluation

Unsurprisingly, London hosts the lion’s share of the UK’s cultural trade – and so the capital additionally advantages most from the creative sector’s financial contribution. Greater than 10% of London’s financial system is predicated in tradition – double the portion of the second-placed South East of England – at slightly over 5%. Nonetheless, the work which the trade helps, and the tax revenues that yields, profit the entire nation.

Based on the researchers, the UK financial system has seen a gross value-added progress fee of 21.5% between 2010 and 2022. Nonetheless, the GVA of the creative industries have yielded a 50.3% GVA enlargement over that point: a serious pay-off following the federal government assist the cultural sector has additionally loved in that point.

Nations use totally different institutional fashions to strengthen their creative sectors – and the UK is a robust instance of the whole-of-government strategy, the researchers contend. Spearheading its efforts is its Creative Industries Council, which was established in 2011 as a joint discussion board between authorities and trade. Co-chaired by the Secretary of State for Tradition, Media and Sport and trade leaders, the Council operates via specialised working teams addressing entry to finance, mental property, expertise, and export progress.

Supply: FTI Consulting Evaluation

This construction enabled coordinated coverage responses, together with the Creative Industries Sector Deal (2018), a part of the UK Industrial Technique, which dedicated greater than £150 million alongside trade matching to assist expertise, regional progress, innovation centres and export assist. In the meantime, the UK maintains one of many world’s most complete fiscal frameworks for the creative financial system, that includes Company Tax reliefs and expenditure credit score schemes that stimulate funding, innovation, and international competitiveness throughout creative sectors.

The meteoric fee of return on that complete stage of assist exhibits that public funding within the sector can and will yield main financial advantages. This was echoed by Antoine Nasr, a senior managing director with FTI, on the report’s launch.  

He famous, “This report exhibits that creativity is not only an asset for tradition, it’s a cornerstone of national financial technique. By integrating governance, financing, expertise improvement and international engagement, governments can unlock transformative worth from the creative financial system, driving innovation, job creation and worldwide affect.”