New plans to maximise the potential of UK creative industries with a £50 billion investment boost

Enterprise M3 LEP welcomes ambitious government plans to build on the success and maximise the growth of the creative industries to the tune of £50 billion by 2030.

The Creative Industries Sector Vision unveiled this month, aims to support an extra million jobs thanks to £77 million of new funding. This builds on more than £230m in government spending on the creative industries since 2021.

Widely recognised as a British success story, the creative industries, which include the film, television and video games sectors, play a vital part in the prosperity of the EM3 economy.

The vision also announced Royal Holloway, University of London, as the preferred bidder for the national Convergent Screen Technologies and performance in Realtime (CoSTAR) lab, which will be based at Pinewood Studios, along with three regional research labs.

Royal Holloway – one of four universities in the EM3 region – will oversee the largest virtual production research and development network in Europe, putting the UK at the forefront of advancements in visual effects, motion-capture technology, and AI for the screen industries and live performance.

The CoSTAR opportunity will build on the university’s StoryFutures Academy, which brings together universities, leading creative and technology companies, to create new immersive’ story-telling techniques using Augmented, Virtual, Mixed and Cross Reality (AR, VR, MR, XR), and Artificial Intelligence, which EM3 contributed £900,000 in 2020.

The aim is to ensure the UK has the skills and infrastructure to stay on the cutting-edge of new virtual production techniques in film, television and live events, which involve using computer-generated imagery (CGI), Augmented Reality (AR) and motion capture to create virtual sets. 

Virtual production allows filmmakers and theatre directors to create large-scale digitally generated environments using LED panels that performers can interact with in real-time, as a quicker and less expensive alternative to green screens. The technology was used in the ABBA Voyage live concert and the Batman and Minecraft immersive experiences in the UK, as well on Disney’s The Mandalorian.

In addition, the government will invest at least £50 million in the next wave of UK Research and Innovation’s Creative Industries Clusters programme to grow clusters of creative businesses across the country and more funding to help start-ups scale up, alongside financial support for new video games studios. The government will continue to offer competitive creative industries tax reliefs to incentivise film, tv and video games production.

EM3 Head of Enterprise & Innovation Chris Burchell, said: “The creative industries are not only a UK success story but also a major cluster for the EM3 region, so we very much welcome the government’s Creative Industries Sector Vision.

Chris said the EM3 region is included in the Department for Business & Trade’s High Potential Opportunity Programme for gaming and VR industry aspects of creative industries, with the Guildford Games Cluster – dubbed the Hollywood of Games ­ – ­­hosting a number of key UK  studios.

He also highlighted world renowned Shepperton Studios, based in Spelthorne, Surrey, now part of the Pinewood Studios Group, has invested in a £500m expansion programme, positioning the company on a global scale to increase capacity for film and high-end television production.

“Netflix have also set up a dedicated production hub at Shepperton as well as opening a studio complex at nearby Longcross Park, one of our EZ3 Enterprise Zone sites,” said Chris.

“It’s incredibly exciting to see the growing success and recognition of our creative industries and we are sure the new vision will complement our work in supporting economic growth, providing more job opportunities and attracting talent across our region.”