Funding creativity

Seminar discussion following lecture with Lee Hornsby from Creatives UK

The question:

"Creative industries are vital to the UK economy (as the 3rd biggest contributor). Why does it not get the funding that other industries would get? With so many freelance and self employed people the gov should be supporting these creatives.

This feeds into creative education, will it become inaccessible for many people with cuts to art based courses and facilities"

In this discussion we talked about the current education system in the UK and the shared experience of UK students being encouraged to pursue academic subjects instead of creative ones at schools. This is puzzling to me as the creative industries are the 3rd biggest contributor* to the UK economy, how has it achieved this success when young people are actively discouraged from following this path?

It was also interesting to hear that many students from across the world had a shared experience in terms of being discouraged from creative subjects. However they also highlighted that creative education in many cases was not even an option at school or degree level. Many had chosen to come to the UK because of the opportunities within creative education. This highlights that the UK's creative industries and its creative education has a great reputation globally.

This is another this reason that I can't understand why so much of the Arts in the UK struggles financially with regular cuts to the industry and its education. If it is such a big contributor to the economy shouldn't it get support to continue to provide this economic growth?

There is a common belief that people who choose to go into the creative industries do so for the love of their work rather than the money they will earn. It was raised in our lecture as an accepted fact. I do believe that there is an element of this, that we love what we do. But why should someone in the creative industries be expected to struggle until they 'make it'. Why do organisations such as Creatives UK (who do great work on this) need to lobby the government for more investment when it is a fact that it is one of the biggest contributors for the country? If the UK's reputation for creativity is so strong surely we should be nurturing this.

There are so many great organisations that do support creatives and the creative industries but it is hard to feel optimistic about its future. Maybe thats just because I am writing this as the political leader of our country announces that all pupils must study maths until the age of 18.

This topic raises a lot more questions than it answers and it is hard to not get political about it but #fundthearts #fundcreativity

*This fact was taken from the Creatives UK lecture with Lee Hornsby on 20th January 2023 at Nottingham Trent University