Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has unveiled a “sector vision” review to be published in the summer as part of the Government’s commitment to levelling up.
Opening the Creative Coalition Festival 2022, Ms Dorries revealed she was intending to provide “close to £50 million” to support creative businesses across the UK.
The investment includes a £21 million UK Global Screen Fund and an £18.4 million extension for the creative scale up programme to “support the fastest growing creative businesses across the country”.
Ms Dorries said: “This will form the foundation for an ambitious creative industries sector vision which we are hoping to publish in the summer.
“The sector vision will have four key objectives, to ensure the UK creative sector is globally competitive, inclusive, environmentally sustainable and embedded within communities up and down the country.
“And I’ll be bringing my own clear personal priorities into this vision – I know, for example, it has to focus on improving accessibility.
“We have to do better at making sure people from deprived backgrounds instinctively feel that the creative industries are for them, too.”
Ms Dorries said that she wants the vision to ask how creative industries can regenerate left behind towns and communities and “drive growth across the entire UK”.
The sector vision review is part of the Government’s “levelling up” agenda seeking to improve the UK outside of its major cities.
She added: “After all, levelling up isn’t just about transport links and infrastructure projects, it’s about giving people the chance to live rich and fulfilling lives wherever they are in the UK, lives full of creativity and culture and good jobs in those industries.
“We want this piece of work to be really visionary, ambitious and optimistic.”
The Culture Secretary also revealed she has been working with singer Rebecca Ferguson who was a finalist on the X Factor in 2010, looking at the issue of music streaming to ensure “modern music works for everyone”.
Ms Dorries added that her department will be working with the Creative Industries Council on the review.
During her announcement at the Creative Coalition, she praised the UK’s creative industries as “the most celebrated around the world” citing Adele’s 30 as the biggest selling album of 2021 globally.
