A new £35 million fund has been launched to help creative industries in the UK, including the film and TV sector. This is great news for anyone who is interested in drama classes for adults, as it could potentially open up new acting roles and job opportunities. The funding will be available to the performing arts sector and games and digital media companies.
The funding scheme, known as the Creative Growth Finance II, will be delivered by Creative UK and follows the successful first round of funding in 2019. This scheme saw £17m invested across 30 creative businesses. The Stage reports that eligible companies will be able to apply for loans of between £100,000 and £1m to grow their businesses.
Caroline Norbury, chief executive of Creative UK, said: “Over the past decade, the UK’s creative industries have grown more than 1.5 times the rate of the wider economy, currently generating £108 billion in economic value and employing 2.3 million people.”
She added: “However, this country’s talented creative businesses are experiencing a significant gap between their immense growth potential and access to the vital capital they need to succeed.”
“In launching the Creative Industries Sector Vision, the prime minister Rishi Sunak acknowledged the ’enormous potential of our creative entrepreneurs and businesses’ and said that ’growing the economy means growing the creative industries’.”
The creative industries are vital to the British economy, and the government has recently outlined ambitious plans to grow the sector by £50bn and create one million jobs by 2030. The UK is home to world class cultural institutions such as the National Theatre, and is a leading maker of films, documentaries, and binge-worthy television dramas.
Collectively, the performing arts and other creative industries contribute £108bn annually to the British economy, yet all too often they are neglected, underfunded, or dismissed as lightweight and non-essential. Despite this, the creative sector in the UK is thriving and has grown at 1.5 times the rate of the wider economy, employing over 2.3m people.
In a statement earlier this summer, prime minister Rishi Sunak announced that he was determined to level up the creative sector, building on such landmark projects as the new British Library centre in Leeds. He also said that new creative clusters would be established across the country.
Currently, Leeds has a centre of excellence in film and TV that has put the city on the map as the UK’s leading media production centre outside of London. Whether you are interested in acting, writing, set design, costume design or production, there are a wealth of opportunities in Leeds.
In order to achieve these aims, the government has pledged a total of £75 m in new investment, and extra funding for apprenticeships and training in areas such as media, video games, and set design. This not only levels up access to the arts, but creates hundreds of other opportunities in related sectors such as marketing and props and costume design.
