All the latest news and research from the craft sector
This month we highlight:
- For every £1 generated by maker businesses the supply chain supports another 70p made elsewhere: new evidence on the potential for creative industries’ and crafts’ power to regenerate places, but only if support is put in place. – all in the We Are Creative campaign.
- Student numbers increase yet funding cuts go ahead in education.
- New reports on the power of arts and culture to address health inequalities and wellbeing
- ACE guidance on opening up.
Making the case for support to the creative industries and craft
The UK Creative Industries: Unleashing the power and potential of creativity, new research from the Creative Industries Federation, describes how essential the UK’s creative industries are and makes a series of employment and investment related recommendations. The We Are Creative campaign aims to maximise creative businesses’ potential to regenerate places and rebuild the economy. The evidence on the impact of Covid and Brexit, the importance of visas, IP rights and businesses’ role in placemaking make a good case for support from the Government’s Spending Review later this year. The report includes two Crafts Council craft innovation case studies – Piñatex sustainable textiles and Bentley Motors.
Craft businesses’ Brexit challenges (VAT charges, changes to rules of origin, delays, paperwork confusion etc) and the lack of access to Covid support for sole traders are highlighted in the accompanying Oxford Economics report, Developing Economic Insight into the Creative Industries. It shows what increased investment in the creative industries could achieve. And how for every £1 generated by craft businesses the supply chain currently supports another 70p made elsewhere (a GVA multiplier of 1.7, shown in Fig 5 p15).
These challenges are echoed in our summary of five years of Crafts Council makers’ needs surveys. Makers need support to navigate the complexities of with trading with Europe. This represents a shift, even though funding and marketing advice and help on working with galleries remain important to the sector. The summary recommends sector support organisations focus on providing:
- access to marketing resources relevant to post Covid-19 advice
- a comprehensive guide for craft businesses to navigate Brexit trade implications
- more accessible business resources
- new resources around funding and mental health awareness, particularly advice on managing stress.
The Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre's Creative Places campaign gives a clear sense of how the creative industries are critical to the levelling up agenda. They call on the Government to target funding to creative microclusters around the UK. The Creative Radar shows that creative industries businesses largely weathered the storm, but face real challenges over the next year. However, the impacts of COVID-19 were uneven and freelancers (including sole-traders) bore the brunt. In addition, increases in online cultural consumption during lockdowns may not have translated into financial benefits for all creative businesses, as it decreased for Design, Crafts, Architecture and Museums and galleries.
Meanwhile, the Government’s new Innovation Strategy for the UK recognises how the design and creative sectors are instrumental elements of the innovation system and it announces an increase in annual R&D investment to £22bn.
Student numbers increase yet funding cuts go ahead in education
Applications to study creative arts and design degrees have reached their highest level in a decade according to data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). Yet the number of European Union students applying to study art and design in the UK has fallen by more than half compared to last year, as shown in a Dezeen analysis of UCAS data. Applications from the EU fell 52 per cent from 22,860 in 2020 to just 10,940 this year.
This comes as cuts of £17 million are confirmed by the Government to grants for higher education creative courses: a cut of £122 per full-time student per year. The Cultural Learning Alliance (CLA) highlights how funding is to be re-prioritised ‘towards high-cost provision that supports key industries and the delivery of vital public services, reflecting priorities that have emerged in the light of the coronavirus pandemic’. These subjects included STEM (Science, Technology, Maths and Engineering) subjects, IT and public health.
Last month we picked up on the CLA’s analysis of the decline in the number of Design & Technology teachers and hours taught in schools. The Labour Party is now warning of a "creativity crisis" with the number of creative arts students and teachers down by a fifth in some subjects.
Guidance for schools from the Department for Education, Teaching a broad and balanced curriculum for education recovery, includes a focus on Art & Design and Design & Technology. It ‘offers suggestions to help schools decide how to prioritise elements within their curriculum for education recovery’ and says on Art & Design that ‘Schools should make strategic decisions about what practical knowledge is core to their curriculum’.
Calls for the more efforts to tackle digital poverty and improved business support are made by the Skills Commission in a report about careers information and guidance, Transition to Ambition: Navigating the careers maze. With less money in the creative industries there are concerns that unpaid internships will rise again, disadvantaging many of students
The power of arts and culture participation to address health inequalities and wellbeing
The Boundless Creativity project examines the role of innovation in shaping cultural experiences during the pandemic, with new evidence to inform the recovery. Set up by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and DCMS, the project recommends new funding calls and research and that arts and culture interventions help to address the health inequalities that have been amplified by the pandemic.
There are seven key factors that affect cross-sectoral collaboration for arts, health and wellbeing activities, according to a new study in Public Health journal: value and legitimacy, relationships, policy and system complexity, power, capacity, resources and alignment.
Culture become a more recognised part of local visitor offers according to Arts Council England’s evaluation of its Cultural Destinations Fund which encourages collaboration between the culture and tourism sectors. The programme has enabled people from a wider range of backgrounds to experience local arts, culture, events and organisations.
ACE guidance on opening up
As the law has changed to relax Covid-19 restrictions Arts Council England (ACE) has responded to concerns about revisiting creative and cultural spaces or returning to work. Organisations now have more discretion, so ACE has set out its expectations of the support and flexibility that cultural organisations offer to disabled and clinically extremely vulnerable people to feel safe to return.
