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Expecto pecuniam! Said Harry Potter never. The boy wizard and star of book, screen, stage and game did not want for money though, unlike the UK’s creative industries. The government aims to spend £380mn to generate £14bn of investment, it revealed in this week’s “modern industrial strategy” proposal. At least it is targeting a sector where magic wands exist and dreams come true.
The term creative industries spans segments ranging from advertising and architecture through to books, films and virtual reality. That it sits among the government’s eight anointed super sectors alongside defence and clean energy shows how the country’s perceived cultural soft power, which includes the so-called Potterverse, punches above its economic weight. This needs some perspective however: that £14bn goal, expected to take 10 years to reach, is only fractionally bigger than the $18bn (£13.2bn) US streaming giant Netflix plans to plough into content this year alone.
When it comes to identifying the source of funds, the plot thins. But some of the aims are potentially helpful, focusing on early-stage projects in various hubs across the UK by offering more finance and networking help. Better connections between start-ups in new technology — perhaps clustered around universities, or hubs such as the BBC’s MediaCity complex in Salford — could genuinely foster development.
Employment too is a virtuous goal. UK creatives account for 7 per cent of the jobs in the UK but 13 per cent of its total spend on research and development, says the government. That is the sort of ratio to get any policymaker swooning over the future employment generated by that cutting-edge outlay. A government that creates plentiful new jobs might even be forgiven for bandying about the unlovable word “Createch”.
Film and TV is an industry where tax breaks do help: behind every dreamy director is a shrewd producer whose bottom-line focus allows, say, Warner Brothers’ studios in Leavesden, Hertfordshire, to stand in for Barbie’s sun-drenched California. Netflix alone may be outspending the current UK creative sector in any given year, but some of that funding is crossing the pond: in the past five years US streamers and big studios have shelled out two-thirds of the total £9.9bn spent on production in the UK, according to the British Film Institute.
Like so many stories, some elements of the UK plans would benefit from additional development. A “creative content exchange” got several mentions, but given a current parliamentary row over copyright that pits the industry against Big Tech, details may have to wait for a sequel. That fight shows how hard it is to formulate a single coherent narrative covering groups ranging from writers to lab-based technologists. In the meantime though, just keep those tax breaks coming.
jennifer.hughes@ft.com
