The Government has today announced a multimillion pound programme in a bid to boost the creative sector. The funding comes following the publication of the Creative Industries Sector Deal earlier this year.
The funding programme includes:
- A new £14 million Creative Careers Programme led by industry that will see leading industry figures working with schools and colleges to raise awareness of employment opportunities in the sector, reaching more than 160,000 students by 2020. Around 2 million young people will be able to access better advice about pursuing a creative careers.
- A £4 million programme to help scale up creative enterprises in Bristol, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands – helping creative businesses to access finance and translate their ideas into investment.
- £2 million to continue the successful ‘Get it Right’ campaign with industry until 2021 – helping to educate consumers on the dangers of copyright infringement and direct them to legitimate sources of creative content online.
- £200,000 investment to upscale the Digital Schoolhouse programme being delivered by games trade body Ukie powered by PlayStation – inspiring the next generation of game creators, growing the programme to 50 schools by September 2019 and reaching an extra 7000 pupils next academic year.
- £190,000 to the UK Games Fund to build on the new Pitch Development Programme. This helps promising companies gain industry support to receive UK Games Fund grants of £25,000.
Dr Richard Wilson OBE, Chief Executive of TIGA, said:
“We are happy to see the Government’s efforts to increase diversity within the sector’s workforce. As a result, we will be able to access a pool of fresh creative talent in an industry that now contributes more than £100 billion to the UK economy.
“The continued success of the video games industry depends on having access to creative, skilled workers. By upskilling those from a wide range of backgrounds, we can ensure that workers are coming into the video games sector with different perspectives.
“However, the Government could still do more to support growth within industry and attract talent from overseas. We want to see the introduction of a Games Investment Fund to improve developers’ access to finance and a liberal migration regime that allows the industry to maintain access to the best and brightest talent from abroad post-Brexit.”
Further details available here