We helped the Creative Industries emerge from the pandemic with resilience, innovation, and purpose. From freelancers to start-ups to established organisations across games, film and TV, and the arts, we mentored, supported, and invested in over 600 creative businesses and the freelancers working for them, enabling them to develop their talent and ideas, creating new products, jobs, and businesses. By exposing local creative communities to national networks, we helped to ensure post-pandemic survival and growth for both freelancers and businesses alike.

A highlight was the North of Tyne Culture and Creative Investment Programme, the first of its kind in the UK to offer business support combined with grants, loans, and equity investment. 39 SMEs have participated in business development opportunities, 12 of whom received financial support amounting to £2.6m.

Creative UK's programmes also helped generate business growth in other parts of the country including Wakefield, Cornwall, Plymouth, and Manchester working with key partners from the BFI (funded by the National Lottery) to Manchester Growth Hub, Wakefield Council and Cornwall Council. Programmes included Games Scale Up, helping games leaders grow their businesses and compete on a global stage, Female Founders, providing intensive coaching and workshops, tackling the inequalities faced by female entrepreneurs, and Evolve, preparing screen businesses for investment with mentoring from experts covering commercial planning, financial control and investment.

Our BFI partnership programme, Filming in England, supported a record-breaking 82 feature films and 164 TV dramas to film on location in the English regions outside of London during the post-pandemic production boom, leading to economic benefits estimated at £130m creating 4,000 working days for freelancers across the country. Productions included Mission: Impossible 7, Masters of the Air, Becoming Elizabeth, Dungeons & Dragons, Indiana Jones 5, Andor, Bridgerton (Season 2), Peaky Blinders (Season 6), All Creatures Great and Small (Series 2), The Witcher: Blood Origin, House of the Dragon, The Crown (Season 5), Fast & Furious 10, Wonka and hundreds more, all of whom were able to harness the studio infrastructure, diverse locations, talented crew, and production services expertise available throughout the English regions.

Our film team committed £400k to film and high-end TV production in the regions through our West Midlands Production Fund, including D.I. Ray, the new ITV crime show set in Birmingham, Small Axe, an anthology of stories capturing the experiences of London's West Indian community between 1969 and 1982 directed by Steve McQueen, which won five BAFTAs and an Emmy nomination, Perfect Ten, which was nominated for a Scottish BAFTA, and Benediction which premiered at international festivals. 

In 2021/22 we invested over £3.53m as loans into early-stage creative companies.  Backing success stories across a range of creative sectors based in the North East, North West and South West of England, our objective was to ensure that investment was available to creative entrepreneurs wherever they are based.

Our Creative Growth Finance Fund, established in partnership with Triodos Bank, provided 10 early-stage and scaling companies with vital growth finance, unlocking an additional £6.5m in private investment. The annual turnover of those we invested in grew by an average of 119%, enabling their long-term survival.

We forged a new relationship with the British Design Fund as part of our commitment to partner with sector-specific funders, which enabled us to invest in nine early-stage purpose-led design businesses tackling a wide range of social, environmental and consumer problems with innovative products.

In response to the growing demand for start-up finance and support across the creative sector, we worked with the British Business Bank, Creative Industries Council and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport to establish a pilot with the Start-Up Loans Company to provide loans of £25k to creative start-ups.

3.5million

invested in Creative businesses