Funding For UK's Growth-driving Creative Industries Confirmed In The Budget

1st November 2024

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has welcomed confirmation in the Budget of the government's commitment to support the creative industries - as part of the Industrial Strategy - recognising the key role it can play in economic growth.

Budget funding to help thousands of creative businesses grow across the UK.

£3m scheme to improve awareness of creative career paths for school children.

£25m devolved local growth funding, which the North East plans to use for new Crown Works film studio to be built in Sunderland
Grants to continue for start-up video game studios, grassroots music venues and for regional clusters of creative firms outside of London.

New VFX tax credit confirmed, UK's world-leading film,TV, theatre, orchestra and museums tax reliefs continue.

The creative industries are worth £125 billion to the UK economy and were named as one of the government's eight growth-driving sectors in its Industrial Strategy.

At the Budget the Chancellor confirmed that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's spending programmes to grow the creative industries will continue, with additional funding to improve access to creative careers for young people across the country.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said:

This was a Budget to fix the foundations, stabilise our economy and put us on the path to prosperity for years to come.

The Creative Industries will play a critical role in helping us turn the corner and deliver on the national missions of this Government - driving economic growth into our towns and cities; drawing on the wealth of talent that exists everywhere; and flying the flag for British culture and values on the world stage.

The Chancellor’s Budget underscored just how important these sectors are going to be with funding extended for vital programmes and tax reliefs, an expansion of the Creative Careers Programme and a £25 million investment in the CrownWorks Studio in Sunderland that will make the city one of the centres of our TV and film industry for years to come.

This government recognises that for millions of people, geography has become destiny. That while talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. This Budget has put the Creative Industries front and centre of how we write those people back into our national story and drive opportunity, jobs and prosperity into every community, in every region.

The government will continue to broaden and diversify the talent pipeline in the creative industries by expanding the Creative Careers Programme, providing 11-18 year olds with the opportunity to learn more about the full range of jobs in the creative industries and directly engage with the workplace.

The programme has helped 25,000 students meet industry professionals in 2023, trained over 200 careers professionals on roles in the sector and registered over 500 employers to take part in the annual Discover! Creative Careers Week.

Funding for the Creative Careers Programme will be increased to £3 million, meaning it can boost its awareness-raising efforts and provide even more schoolchildren with information, advice and guidance on creative career routes.

The £25 million funding for the North East Mayoral Combined Authority (NEMCA) has been confirmed. NEMCA plans to use the funding to remediate the Crown Works Studio site.

The North East is already a backdrop for major blockbusters - with Indiana Jones, Harry Potter and Transformers all filmed in the region. Crown Works is set to be one of the largest film studios in Europe and is expected to lead to around 8,000 new jobs in the region.

The DCMS will also continue to fund the following creative industries programmes:

The Create Growth Programme, which supports thousands of businesses, enabling them to convert their creative potential into creative growth, boosting their access to private finance and helping turn today’s creative entrepreneurs into tomorrow’s CEOs.
The BFI’s Global Screen Fund helps innovative independent filmmakers showcase the best of Britain’s screen sectors on the global stage by boosting international development and distribution opportunities.
The Dundee-based UK Games Fund, which develops talent and awards grants to high-potential, early-stage video game studios, helping them turn their drawing board ideas into working prototype games and unlock private investment.
The Supporting Grassroots Music Fund, which enables grassroots music venues, recording studios, promoters and festivals to apply for grants of up to £40,000 to develop new revenue streams, make repairs and improvements, and enhance the live music experience for millions of gig-goers across the UK.
More details will be set out in due course by DCMS on the specific funding for its programmes going forward.

Elsewhere the Creative Industries Clusters programme, supported with at least £50 million and delivered by the Arts and Humanities Research Council on behalf of UKRI, will continue to fund creative clusters in new sub-sectors and regions over the next six years. The first round of the scheme supports nine regional hubs of business specialising in creative subsectors, such as film and high end TV in Cardiff’s Clwstwr and fashion in the Future Fashion Factory in Leeds, helping entrepreneurs and businesses in these areas innovate with new technologies, secure investment, and access global markets, with further clusters to be announced.

DCMS will also continue to contribute funding towards the hosting of the London Film Festival and London Fashion Week, as well as providing continued funding for the British Film Commission, National Film and Television School and the BFI’s Certification Unit.

The Budget has confirmed that the government remains committed to the UK’s regime of highly-competitive tax reliefs for film, high-end TV and video games, including the recently-announced Independent Film Tax Credit, as well as reliefs for animation and children’s TV production.

Yesterday the government also confirmed that a new VFX relief will go ahead in April 2025, with costs incurred by VFX firms from 1 January 2025 eligible. It will incentivise more film projects to draw on the UK’s post-production expertise - potentially generating hundreds of millions of pounds in additional revenues and creating thousands of jobs.

The UK’s visual effects industry has grown substantially in recent years and it is now home to six of the world’s biggest visual effects studios. British firms have created CGI and visual effects for global box office hits such as Barbie and Wonka.

In addition, the Chancellor has increased support for the national museums and galleries by raising their Grant-in-Aid to help support their long-term sustainability. A package of cultural infrastructure funding will also support cultural organisations across the country.

The Chancellor also announced yesterday that the government will continue to provide generous tax reliefs to museums, galleries, theatres and orchestras, which will support cultural sectors and help to ensure they can share their world-class productions and collections with more audiences up and down the country.

From 1 April 2025, theatres, orchestras and museums and galleries will benefit from higher tax relief rates of 40 percent for non-touring productions, and 45 percent for orchestral and touring productions.

Creative Careers Programme
The Creative Careers Programme (CCP), launched in 2018, tackles information and coordination barriers to providing specialist information, advice and guidance about creative careers to young people, targeting 11-18 year olds, as well as their parents, carers, teachers and careers advisors.

The programme delivers Discover! Creative Careers Week annually in November, alongside a website with lesson plans and resources, monthly online insight Q&A panels, and training for careers advisors.

The programme operates UK-wide, with current priority focus given to areas in England where young people face particular challenges in accessing information about the Creative Industries
It is delivered by ScreenSkills, with co-delivery partners Creative UK and Speakers for Schools. Further partners include: National Careers Service, Careers and Enterprise Company, Design Council, Into Film, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Advertising Association, the Publishers Association, UK Fashion and Textiles Association, YouTube, UK Music and UK Theatre/Society of London Theatre.