Tell us about the Creative PEC, what do you do?
The Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (Creative PEC) is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to provide independent evidence to support growth of the creative industries. With the UK government highlighting the creative industries as one of the growth priorities in the new industrial strategy we know our research is cutting through.
Our principal stakeholders are policymakers, creative sector professionals and researchers. The Creative PEC was first established under the 2017 UK industrial strategy and led by the innovation foundation, Nesta for its first five years.
In 2023, AHRC stepped up its commitment and provided a further five year’s funding from our new home in Newcastle University in partnership with the Royal Society for Arts (RSA). Distributing the team across Newcastle and London allows us to pilot our distinctive model of knowledge exchange and policy influence, working across the UK policy landscape while growing regional ties to help unlock growth potential across the UK.
What’s innovative about the Creative PEC approach?
A distinctive feature of our approach to evidence-based policy work is what we call ‘embedded knowledge exchange’. As the enormous growth potential of the creative industries becomes centre stage, we are in almost daily contact with policymakers such as:
- at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
- increasingly at the Department for Business and Trade
- the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
- the Department for Education
Government representatives also sit on the Creative PEC’s Advisory Board and are active partners in shaping our research agenda, including the timing of our publications. This gives our research the very best chance of landing at the right stage in the policy cycle.
Creative PEC research was cited throughout the previous UK government’s sector vision for creative industries and in the first publications coming from the new government (such as Skills England’s first skills assessment and the industrial strategy green paper).
Your new State of the Nations series has generated a lot of interest. Tell us about this programme of research
Our State of the Nations series is our new flagship publication series. We’ve introduced this series following our observation that a seeming lack of data sometimes underlies policy inaction.
There are indeed important data gaps, some of which the Creative PEC is trying to fill through our own data collection, such as the Creative Business Panel (see section: What’s next in the pipeline at Creative PEC?), but in a number of key policy areas there is in fact a lot of data. We want to bring this point home to policymakers through regular, set-piece, quantitative data-rich State of the Nations reporting.
To deliver these publications we work with a consortium of research specialists each leading on a key policy area of importance to the success of the creative economy in the UK. These research areas were chosen partly because they are fields where we feel the data is mature enough to be able to support meaningful evidence-based policy interventions.
Our Newcastle University team focuses on internationalisation and produces reporting on international trade, foreign direct investment and migration. Colleagues at Work Advance, a spin-out from Lancaster University, report education, skills and talent, The University of Sheffield works on the arts, culture and heritage sectors and the University of Sussex produces State of the Nations on research and development (R&D), innovation and clusters.
We publish eight State of the Nations reports a year, two across each theme. Equality, diversity and inclusion and the creative industries and the climate emergency are Creative PEC research priorities that cut across all our research priorities. We’ve now published our first full cycle of the State of the Nations series and the data is already being used by policymakers at local, regional, national and international levels.
Can you tell us more about some of your State of the Nations reports?
In our first State of the Nations report – Geographies of Creativity – we presented data supporting policymakers to invest in ‘creative clusters’ at different levels of geography across the UK, including the mayoral combined authorities (such as the new one in the north-east) in England. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy welcomed the report’s vision to use the creative industries as a mechanism for inclusive growth and cultural access, and we have built on this through further work with the RSA and Arts Council England on how economic growth can be stimulated through increasing linkages between creative clusters and microclusters.
In UK Trade in a Global Creative Economy, we confirmed the creative industries as a UK export success story, but warned against complacency, with the report finding increased global competition in key sub-sectors. It also noted the need for better prioritisation of data collection on trade in digital creative services, which we have made recommendations on through a policy brief published in parallel.
Alongside our Arts, Culture and Heritage: Audiences and Workforce report we also published an interactive dashboard which enables every local authority in England and Wales to better understand their cultural workforce down to the electoral ward level, providing valuable insights on local specialisms and gaps. The report was covered by both Channel 4 News and The Observer, while the Culture Secretary referred to the findings in her keynote speech at the Royal Television Society Conference.
Our State of the Nations report on Creative Further Education across the UK nations, again covered by Channel 4 News, has generated widespread discussion on the health of creativity in colleges. It is well placed to provide valuable insights to policy development in areas such as apprenticeships and the growth and skills levy, as well as helping make the case for greater investment in creative further education more generally.
For our most recent State of the Nations report focused on Foreign Direct Investment and the Creative Industries; we were joined by Dan Thomas, Global Media Director at the Financial Times for the launch, which you can watch on YouTube.
How do you ensure your work has real-world impact and remains at the forefront of research innovation?
We believe our research has value to the extent that it improves the policy landscape for creative practitioners and creative organisations, and therefore growth in the creative industries, across all regions and nations of the UK. An important component of how we work is via three networks comprising individuals respectively at the cutting edge of industry, academia and international good practice.
Our Industry Champions network allows us to understand pressure points in the sector, and through the network we learned for example that more data was needed regarding the public value of cinema, following huge disruptions to cinema-attendance following the pandemic. This led us to co-commission new research with the British Film Institute (BFI), which showed that cinema creates great value for the public in ways that are not fully captured in ticket prices or attendance numbers, such as contributing to a sense of pride in place. The study used social cost-benefit analysis techniques that are recognised by HM Treasury, making the public value estimates useful for cinema venues in developing business cases for public investment.
Together with British Council, we lead the Global Creative Economy Council (GCEC), comprising creative industries experts from 12 countries who share knowledge of developments on creative economy and practice from across the world. One thing that sets our GCEC apart from multilateral bodies like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is that its membership is drawn from both the Global North and South, ensuring more inclusive policy deliberations – something that is very important given many of the challenges facing the creative industries are global in nature.
The Creative PEC’s Research Fellows Network comprises leading researchers from diverse backgrounds, areas of specialism (within academia and beyond) and from across all parts of the globe. They facilitate knowledge exchange through seminars, blogs and discussion papers and, in the near future, smaller thematic or regional research sub-networks.
What’s next in the pipeline at Creative PEC?
We’ve got a really busy programme of research coming up with new data-led insights on creative education, R&D, artificial intelligence and the creative industries, and the climate emergency. We’re excited for our deepening relationship with CoSTAR Foresight Lab at Goldsmiths, London and its partners at the BFI, Loughborough University and The University of Edinburgh, with whom we’re collaborating on a new longitudinal survey initiative. The Creative Business Panel is intended to quickly become the dataset of choice on business intelligence on the UK’s creative industries.
It was New Labour in 1997 which introduced the concept of the creative industries to national policymakers. Fast forward 27 years, we are back with a Labour government, and the creative industries are no longer the new kids on the block. As the creative industries have come of age, so has the evidence base, and I’m proud that the Creative PEC has, thanks to the support of AHRC, played no small part in helping to bring this about.
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