The creative industries are jewels in the UK’s crown. They make an outsized contribution to economic growth, jobs and Britain’s soft power abroad. But a changing landscape globally means that this significant source of UK competitiveness is increasingly at risk, and a renewed strategic focus is needed. In this paper we propose four practical steps to cement the UK’s leading role in the global creative economy into the future.
To fully understand the strength of the sector as a whole, we have built a new definition – removing IT and software and including culture and sport – which we term the UK’s creative and entertainment sector. In 2023, this sector had Gross Value Added (GVA) of £94 billion and saw 31% growth vs. 22% growth for the UK as a whole, in real terms, between 2010 and 2022 (Exhibit 1). This means it was the third-fastest growing sector of the UK economy (after admin and support services and professional and technical services) in this period.
