Creative Corridors: connecting clusters to unleash potential

Despite a challenging national economic backdrop, the creative industries have bucked the trend with consistent growth over the last decade, albeit, this growth is not experienced equally across the UK.

The central mission of UK Government is economic growth, with the ambition to achieve the fastest growth in the G7 in the coming years. Creative Corridors is an emerging policy idea that could harness the creative industries' enormous potential to accelerate growth across places in the UK and contribute to this mission.

The UK is home to 55 creative clusters identified by the DCMS, and a further 700 creative microclusters, which have been the focus of policy intervention. In addition, the UK also has what's been referred to as a 'creative supercluster': London and the M25. London and the South East accounted for 68% of the UK creative industry's gross value added, or GVA, (£71 billion) in 2019. Despite the historic dominance of this supercluster - and indeed of London in the UK’s economy as a whole - the presence of creative industries across the UK makes it uniquely placed to unleash prosperity in places across the four nations, owing also to its unique economic dynamism and social impacts.

In this report by the RSA, Creative PEC and Arts Council England, creative corridors are offered as one potential mechanism for harnessing this growth. Our ambition is that creative corridors will stimulate economic growth by increasing linkages – supply chains, R&D partnerships, or networks of people in the labour market – between creative clusters and microclusters over a large geographic area. Through this, they aim to bring the agglomeration effects often seen in creative clusters to a larger geographic scale and provide a shared regional strategy. There are already examples of experimentation with corridors in the UK – such as the Northern Creative Corridor and the Thames Estuary Production Corridor – and international comparators from whom the UK can learn.

This report draws on a rapid evidence review, including the international comparators, and a national programme of stakeholder workshops that ran in early 2024 with over 100 participants from industry and policy, including representation from the four nations of the UK.

Two ways to read the Creative Corridors: connecting clusters to unleash potential report:

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