The new Sector Plan pledges to nearly double business investment by 2035, promising skills programmes, research funding, and local support to ensure the UK’s creative industries thrive across every region.
From grassroots music venues to world-class film studios, a new £380 million package of investment is promising to fuel growth and resilience in the UK’s creative industries, setting out a decade-long vision for a sector that not only entertains and inspires, but drives the national economy.
The funding underpins the Creative Industries Sector Plan, an ambitious roadmap that aims to almost double business investment from £17 billion today to £31 billion by 2035. That’s no small feat, but with creative industries already delivering £124 billion a year and supporting 2.4 million jobs, the sector’s potential is clear.
Published alongside the government’s broader Industrial Strategy, the plan signals a step change for creatives, with targeted backing for research and development, skills pipelines, new routes to finance, and a renewed focus on levelling up opportunities outside London.
Among the headline measures is a £150 million Creative Places Growth Fund, devolved to six Mayoral Strategic Authorities including the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. This will empower local leaders to support creative businesses with mentoring, investment connections, and skills programmes designed to keep creative talent flourishing close to home.
Further boosting regional powerhouses, the plan will allocate £50 million to expand the Creative Industries Clusters Programme across the UK. With a focus on collaboration between universities, businesses and policymakers, these clusters aim to accelerate research and unlock innovation.
The plan also sets aside £25 million for five new CoSTAR R&D labs and two showcase spaces to explore emerging technologies in live entertainment, from the boundary-pushing visual wizardry of Abba Voyage to stagecraft inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Another significant pillar of the plan is the establishment of a Creative Content Exchange, a trusted marketplace where digitised cultural and creative assets can be sold, bought, licensed, or accessed under clear permissions. Culture secretary Lisa Nandy described this as “opening up new revenue streams and allowing content owners to commercialise and financialise their assets while providing data users with ease of access.” In practice, this could help fuel the next wave of creative innovation while also supporting the development of high-value AI models, with early adopter testing backed by UKRI’s R&D Missions Accelerator Programme.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy visits Wakefield’s Production Park to launch the Creative Industries Sector Plan
Speaking about the scale of this investment, Lisa described it as placing creative industries “at the heart of our Industrial Strategy”, highlighting that it will “boost regional growth, stimulate private investment, and create thousands more high-quality jobs.”
That ambition was echoed by Sir Peter Bazalgette, Co-Chair of the Creative Industries Council, who called the plan “a coming of age for the creative sector”, particularly praising its focus on R&D and finance access for SMEs.
For the film and TV world, a dedicated £75 million Screen Growth Package will support UK content creation, expand the Global Screen Fund, and enhance the BFI Film Academy for young talent from underrepresented backgrounds. Meanwhile, music will see up to £30 million of targeted support to help emerging artists tour, record, and reach new audiences, with an uplift in funding for small venues. Even video games get a boost, with £30 million earmarked to grow start-up studios and attract global investment.
For many in the design sector, the announcement couldn’t be timelier. Speaking to Creative Boom, Lisa explained that while product and service design can sometimes feel overlooked in policy circles, they are absolutely part of the plan.
“Design is a major contributor to the UK economy, and we’re really good at this,” she told me. “There’s a huge amount of talent already across the country, but particularly in areas like fashion, there are major challenges for talented young designers to go from start-up to scale-up.”
She highlighted support for initiatives like the British Fashion Council’s NEWGEN programme and the upcoming World Design Congress in September, which the government will co-fund. Crucially, Lisa emphasised a commitment to expanding UK Research and Innovation’s role, directing more support into design businesses that are currently underserved compared to tech sectors.
Beyond funding, the plan recognises the skills pipeline must be rebuilt from the ground up. A £10 million investment in the National Film and Television School is set to train 2,000 new apprentices and trainees, while a £9 million creative careers service will aim to inspire and inform young people.
Lisa reflected on why this matters, recalling a recent visit to Wakefield’s Production Park, a world-class creative and manufacturing hub built on the site of a former mining village. “I met young people there who had never dreamt that they could do this,” she said. “But because of the work that company’s done, they’ve had those opportunities opened up to them. That’s the future of our country and the future of our economy.”
The question of protecting craft and traditional skills alongside technological change is also firmly on the agenda. As many creatives wrestle with the rapid advance of AI, Lisa was clear that “no robot or computer is going to replace human potential”, stressing that the plan aims to safeguard what makes British creativity so unique.
Copyright frameworks, transparency around remuneration, and the voice of freelancers are all being considered as part of the wider Industrial Strategy. A new “freelancers champion” will sit on the Creative Industries Council to ensure independent creatives have a say in future policy decisions.
That should resonate with the thousands of freelancers and small agencies working across the UK, who often drive design and innovation but risk being overlooked. Lisa acknowledged this directly, calling out the creative freelance workforce as a priority and promising that its voice will be “heard loud and clear” when shaping the plan’s next stages.
Critically, the Sector Plan also promises to report annually to Parliament, tracking metrics from jobs created to business growth, exports, and workforce diversity, according to Lisa. It’s a move designed to keep the vision on track and avoid creative communities feeling left behind.
For designers and creative entrepreneurs who have long felt that policy overlooks their contribution, the Sector Plan might just mark a new chapter. From support for local ecosystems to a focus on skills and a renewed respect for creative IP, there is reason to be cautiously optimistic, provided the momentum is maintained and the right voices stay at the table.
As Lisa put it: “We are betting big on the creative industries as the future driver of growth in our economy. Not just in one part of the country, but in every part of the country. We see enormous potential.”
It’s an optimistic note for a sector that has weathered enormous challenges in recent years. If delivered with care, this £380 million boost could help ensure the UK’s creative industries remain not just a world-class export, but a powerful local engine for opportunity – from Glasgow and Cornwall to Birmingham and Belfast.
