Report tells Labour “commit to the creative industries”

The Government must re-establish the arts as a priority sector and devolve arts funding and strategy decisions away from Whitehall, says a new report, ‘Leading the Field: Review of the Creative Industries’. Commissioned by Labour to inform policy in the run-up to the election, it notes that the creative industries are “set to grow steadily over the next decade” and “successfully and regularly” generate wealth and new jobs. To take advantage of the commercial opportunities they bring, the report says that it is “imperative” that “the next Labour Government…commit loudly and unequivocally to champion the creative industries.” Report author John Woodward, ex-head of the UK Film Council, insists that no further grant-in-aid cuts should be made to key arts and cultural funding bodies, including Arts Council England (ACE) and the British Film Institute (BFI), stating that “…the long term health of regional theatre is an important guarantor of regional cultural diversity”, a key driver of national prosperity.

Among Woodward’s proposals is a recommendation for devolving funding and strategy decisions from centralised departments to specialised sector networks and Non Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs). He refers to the distorting effect of London’s success, recognising that it is “increasingly challenging to attract significant investment into new creative businesses outside the London super-cluster.” The report offers two solutions: one practical, working within the current system, and the other encouraging more significant reform. The former – reform from within the current system of funding – echoes the themes in the controversial 2013 report ‘Rebalancing our Cultural Capital’  and calls for the DCMS to lead an audit process with ACE to determine how a more equitable balance of arts funding can be achieved between London and the rest of England. Such a move is, it says, necessary to address the reality that Londoners benefit from £69 of cultural spending per head, compared with just £4.50 in the rest of England.

The latter addresses the more specific challenges presented by the impact on regional strategies and funding structures of the disbanding of Regional Development Agencies and the apparent “failure” to produce adequate regional replacements. The proposal is for a policy of coordinated devolution from centralised government departments to “local regions, local authorities and cities, in line with recommendations of the recent Adonis report”, in the interests of both fairness and efficiency. In addition, and to encourage investment in the regions, the report argues for the value of sector-specific tax relief outside London and the South East to be increased by 5% for the next five years.

Calls to re-establish the arts as a political priority extend beyond strategy and funding. In education, the report argues for arts to be integrated into the STEM (Science, Technology, English and Maths) subjects, to generate the acronym STEAM and emphasise the need for “fusion skills” in society. A more centralised response to the reality that the majority of the creative industries workforce is freelance is also encouraged, with skills training coordinated across the UK, merging two existing Sector Skills Councils – Creative Skillset and Creative & Cultural Skills – into “one entity charged with delivering improved efficiency and value for money.”

Responding to the report, Labour’s Harriet Harman MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said: "Our creative industries are a huge success story at home and abroad. They punch well above their weight in terms of international success and help put Britain on the map. They have also grown faster than the rest of the economy in difficult times and we want to create the best conditions to allow them to continue to flourish which will help us earn our way to a better future.”