An Introduction to the Creative Industries Sector - The Skills ...

3.0 ConclusionThe UK’s creative industries sector comprises thirteen sub sectors that cover adiverse range of activities. They are Advertising, Architecture, Art & antiques,Crafts, Design, Designer fashion, Film & video, Interactive leisure software, Music,Performing arts, Software & computer services, Publishing, Television & radio.In 1997 the Creative Industries Task Force was set up to initially define creativeindustries and identify their contribution to the economy followed by investigation ofthe problems and opportunities relating to these industries and devise a plan ofaction to enable the sector to promote and sustain growth and to enhance itseconomic impact.Over the last five years a considerable amount of study and strategic planningdown to regional level has been applied to the activities relating to creativeindustries resulting in the development from a rather isolated and diverse range ofactivities into an economically important and growing sector.In response to the National Skills Task Force requirements NTOs have addressedskills issues in a number of industrial sectors through the production of SkillsDialogues, two of which relate to the creative industries sector and haveconsequently provided a great amount of useful data.The latest development in 2003 has culminated in the creation of a Creative andCultural Skills Council that has already attracted considerable membership fromthe creative industries sector.In 2001 the creative industries sector employed 1.3m people in the UKrepresenting 4% of UK employment. The creative industries sector is one of thefastest growing parts of the economy both nationally and regionally. The sector inthe South West employs around 90,000 people, accounting for 5% of the region’sworkforce.There is a preponderance of self employed workers, freelance workers, part timeworkers and small and medium sized businesses in many parts of the creativeindustries. Around 90% of companies in the sector employ fewer than 10 people.Sub sectors that have shown above average increases in employment between1997 and 2001 are Software (incl leisure) and computer services, Design anddesigner fashion and Music and the visual and performing arts.London and the South East contain the majority of creative industries but the SouthWest is the only other region with 2 clusters of creative industry relating toestablished Antique dealing and exporting activities and embryonic TV/film/digitalmedia activities.Data on employment have been obtained from the National Statistics AnnualBusiness Register by matching the creative industries activities to the StandardIndustrial Classification codes. Of the thirteen activities defined by the DCMS, Craftand Design cannot be matched and the remainder have been amalgamated toform nine sub sectors that can be identified down to local level.23