More findings on creative skills needs, careers advice and supporting creative freelancers
The Government’s new Industrial Strategy prioritises leading growth sectors including the creative industries. The Creative Industries Sector Plan increases support for the sector with a £100m fund for creative clusters and a new £150m Creative Places Growth Fund in Mayoral Strategic Authorities. Crafts Council will continue to advocate for the importance of making as an essential key component of the Creative industries eco-system.
The Department for Education’s Skills England report looks at the skills needs of the creative industries and the barriers to entry. It points out that that ‘young people face significant barriers to entering creative careers due to inadequate career guidance, stemming from a lack of awareness of the routes available into the sector, limited resources for advisors, and weak industry connections’.
Recommendations focus on ‘strengthening partnerships between education providers and industry, while establishing clear professional development pathways’; and ‘making training accessible for the high numbers of freelancers and SMEs working in the sector’. (For freelancers we would include sole traders too.) The report also notes that ‘the training landscape in creative industries is increasingly recognised as multifaceted, emphasising both established craft skills and emerging digital technologies’.
Crafts Council contributed to a Creative PEC research programme on skills challenges and priorities for England’s Creative Industries. Key points included the need for an ‘entrepreneurial skillset’ (particularly for micros and freelancers) comprising leadership, financial planning, time management, business development, marketing and promotion and fundraising. Skills issues were compounded by a lack of relevant careers advice for those seeking to enter or progress in the creative workforce and the benefits of targeting support to the needs of creative microclusters.
Creative UK’s Forging Freelance Futures reports on the freelance economy of the cultural and creative industries (this includes all those who are self-employed). A higher proportion of people in these sectors are freelance than in the rest of the economy. Recommendations include establishing a Freelance Commissioner, revising the curriculum, sick pay changes, an extension of parental leave and payment protection.
On this last point, the Scottish Trades Union Congress reports that 69% of creative freelancers have experienced late payments from clients. In Freelance and Forgotten, the General Secretary says freelancers are being subjected to “bullying, sexual harassment and abuse within a sector built upon precarity and inequality”.
A new Creative PEC report on Higher education and the arts and culture sectors shows that arts and culture graduates are more likely than others to say they've gone on to apply what they learned as a student in their jobs. The report recommends that the Government’s narrow focus on earnings to measure graduate performance should be broadened to consider ‘multiple graduate motivations’. Crafts Council makes the same point in our report Crafting professional practice through higher education (2018).
And - where you live determines how likely you are to do an expressive arts GCSE or A Level, according to new evidence in the Cultural Learning Alliance’s Report Card 2025. Take-up is lowest in the areas of highest deprivation (with the exception of London). The findings also reveal a crisis in arts teacher recruitment as teacher training numbers fall. The Cultural Learning Alliance have produced a useful briefing note on the benefits of studying arts subjects and a blueprint for an arts rich education.