The Government has announced a multimillion pound programme in a bid to boost the creative sector.
A £14m Creative Careers Programme is being set up to attract more diverse talent. While creative businesses in Greater Manchester will share an additional £4m with the West Midlands and Bristol to promote growth.
There will also be cash to support the games sector, with Digital Schoolhouse and UK Games Fund, powered by PlayStation.
The new funding comes following the publication of the Creative Industries Sector Deal earlier this year.
“Millions of people around the world enjoy our world-class creative and cultural output every day and we want to stay as a frontrunner in these vibrant sectors,” said Margot James, Minister for the Creative Industries.
“Our creative industries are a vital part of the economy, contributing over £100 billion to the economy so it is important we maintain the pipeline of talent. This package will take the sector from strength to strength by arming the next generation of creatives with the necessary skills and giving businesses in the sector the support they need to succeed.”
The Creative Careers Programme will see leading industry figures work with schools and colleges to raise awareness of employment opportunities in the sector. The aim is to reach more than 160k young people by 2020. It will boost the number of apprenticeships to 3000 across the creative industries by 2025.
The £4m regional scale-up programme is to help creative businesses in Greater Manchester, Bristol and the West Midlands to access finance and translate their ideas into investment.
“Greater Manchester is a proud city-region of innovation and our creative businesses are truly thriving. With almost 9,000 businesses, our Creative sector is the fastest growing part of the Greater Manchester economy. With more than 82,300 people and generating £4.1 billion of economic growth annually we are already home to the largest digital and creative cluster outside London,” said Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester.
“This new programme will help us accelerate our creative businesses with ambitions to grow. We are going to work with creative businesses at scale here in our city-region to help them become investment ready and linked with the wide range of excellent business support that is on offer across Greater Manchester.”
£2m will be invested to continue the Get It Right campaign until 2021. This is to educate consumers on the dangers of copyright infringement and direct them to legitimate sources of creative content online.
£200k will be used to upscale the Digital Schoolhouse programme being delivered by games trade body Ukie powered by PlayStation. This is to inspire the next generation of game creators, growing the programme to 50 schools by September of next year.
Finally £190k will go to the UK Games Fund to build on the new Pitch Development Programme. This helps promising companies gain industry support to receive UK Games Fund grants of £25,000.
“Creative industry businesses have the potential to deliver even greater growth, but too many lack the skills to secure the investment they need to take their business to the next level,” added Caroline Norbury, MBE, chair of the Creative Industries Council Investment Group.
“The creative scale-up programme gives us a fantastic opportunity to test how much more these companies can contribute to regional economies when they have access to the right expert advice and investor networks.”
