To the Editor,
On the eve of a General Election, it is time for a national reset - relaunching our national brand and reinvigorating our international reputation. But unless we urgently invest in the creative industries, widening access and shaking off complacency around the UK’s creative superpower status, we put that reputation at risk.
Creative industries from art to architecture, fashion to film, music to museums, video games and online video are at the heart of the UK economy (worth £124.6bn and accounting for 5.7% of UK GVA). But not everyone has access to the creative industries, and the economic potential and the fulfillment they can bring. Too many children go to schools which don’t offer the arts; too many universities are having to cut key creative subjects; too many people have no access to training to enter the creative industries later in life.
Yet, economic value alone is not the sole reason for creativity to become central to our politics. Creativity is not a national luxury. It cannot be entertainment for the few who can afford it. Politics is downstream of creativity, but all too often politics has not considered how important it is to be creative. Rethinking creativity - as a huge asset of UK soft power, as a good in itself, as a way to tackle an epidemic of loneliness, or to increase net national happiness (and, in turn, GDP) - will help us rethink our relationship to culture.
We believe the creative industries have the answer to two critical questions for UK politics: what does it mean to be British, and how can we grow our flatlining economy?
And in this critical election year, let’s be a nation that’s proud to be creative. Politicians must embrace their creative sides to understand just how precious the UK's creative ecosystem is.
Yours faithfully,
Tom Adeyoola, (Entrepreneur)
TommyD, (Music Producer/TokenTraxx)
Danielle Dodoo, (AI technologist/The New Blxck)
Eliza Easton, (Founder, Erskine Analysis)
Mike Harris, (Agency Owner 89Up/The Lead)
Kim Willis, (Writer/Cedar-Omnicom)
(Together we are the collective Land of Hope and Story and organisers of this letter)
