STUDIES – ARTS & CULTURE
(listed in date order – most recent fist)
Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre - The State of Creativity - April 2023
The State of Creativity reflects on creative industry policy over the last 10 years and asks where next for the creative sector. It includes contributions from 24 creative industry thinkers from seven UK universities and across the creative sector. In the report, researchers highlight the priority areas for creative industries policy, and research. These short essays are supported by on-the-ground case studies from those working in the creative sector, including Syima Aslam from Bradford Literature Festival, entrepreneur Tom Adeyoola, and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Sarah Ellis.
The report suggests that priority areas for creative industry policymakers over the coming years include the need to focus on creative education in schools and universities, ending unequal access to the arts and the regenerative power of the creative sector, if the UK is to fully realise the potential of its world-leading creative industries.
Evaluation of the Cultural Recovery Fund - April 2023
The Cultural Recovery Fund (CRF) stopped hundreds of culture organisations from going under and supported almost 220,000 sector jobs, according to an independent evaluation into the scheme.
The £1.57 billion package – delivered across three rounds to cultural and heritage organisations at risk of insolvency due to the adverse effects of the pandemic – was shared between 4,473 cultural sector organisations.
Research consultancy Ecorys’ full report states organisations in receipt of CRF supported over 110,000 full-time jobs during 2020, alongside almost 108,000 contractors and freelancers.
The Arts in Schools: Foundations for the Future - March 2023
This new report finds evidence of inspirational practice across the country, but also deep concern about the principles and provision underpinning the arts in schools today. It shows that progress isn’t always linear or lasting. In a context of financial crisis and profound societal change, arguments won in the 1980s must be championed again.
We hope the findings from this report will contribute to a reconsideration of the role and value of the arts in schools in the UK and, as with the original report, have relevance to similar debates in other countries and contexts, highlighting the need for greater and more equitable access for all.
Structurally F*cked - an inquiry into artists’ pay and conditions in the public sector - March 2023
In 2020, Industria submitted a Freedom of Information Request to the Tate asking for information on their pay structures for artists. They responded that it was not in their ‘commercial interest’ to divulge this information. Troubled by this lack of transparency from an institution in receipt of significant state funding, we devised Artist Leaks as an attempt to uncover this information directly from artists themselves. We launched an open call on all our channels for artists to come forward and anonymously share with us their experiences of pay and conditions in publicly funded institutions and visual arts programmes in the UK.
This inquiry is based on that data collected between 2020 and early 2022.
Culture Radar - Review of Fair Work in the creative and cultural sectors in Scotland - February 2023
The Review took place between August 2021 and March 2022
Fair Work was launched by the Scottish Government in 2015. Its vision is for Scotland to be a leading Fair Work Nation by 2025 with its people having a worldleading working life where Fair Work drives success, wellbeing and prosperity for individuals, businesses, organisations and society.
A Culture Strategy for Scotland highlights strengthening culture as one of its key ambitions. To achieve this, Scottish Government committed to considering ways to support the cultural workforce, and continue work on making the culture sector part of Scotland as a Fair Work Nation. One of the actions underpinning this commitment was to undertake a status review of the cultural workforce.
To guide this process Creative Scotland commissioned Culture Radar to consider Fair Work, leadership, workforce, and skills development across the creative and cultural sectors. This work reviews the current status, with baseline findings from which further work and research can develop
The Good Work Review - Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre - February 2023
The Good Work Review is the first examination of job quality across the entire creative industries. The Review is based on 40 separate indicators, from evidence submitted by 120 organisations, and focuses on issues including fair pay, flexible working, paid overtime and employee representation.
Following a call for evidence, 120 organisations from across the UK, and representing a wide range of creative sectors, contributed their expertise to the Review. These experts and creative representatives called for industry and government to invest in people, skills, diversity and well-being if the UK is to remain a creative powerhouse.
The Review also found that people working in the Creative Industries tended to have higher job satisfaction than workers in other sectors, could work more flexibly, and found their work to be an outlet for their creative passion.
However, the Review also found that there was lower than average pay in some sectors, long hours, evidence for poor workplace culture, and unequal access to the creative industries, with many people needing to work for free to get a foot in the door.
At risk: our creative future - The Communications and Digital Committee - January 2023
The House of Lords Communications Committee warns that Government complacency risks undermining the UK’s creative industries in the face of increased international competition and rapid technological change.
In a report published today, the Committee says that the UK’s creative industries should sit at the heart of the UK’s economic growth plans. But the Committee sounds the alarm over missed opportunities and a failure among senior Government figures to recognise the sector’s commercial potential.
The UK’s creative industries were worth more than £115bn to the UK economy before the pandemic, and make up as many as one in eight businesses across the country. Their contribution to the economy in 2019 was more than the aerospace, life sciences and automotive industries combined. The sector also delivers higher levels of innovation than many other areas of the economy.
Arts attendance in England October 2020 - September 2022
The Participation survey is the new flagship survey by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
It is designed to provide a central, reliable evidence source that can be used to analyse cultural, digital and sporting engagement of adults aged 16 and over in England.
Fieldwork involving over 8,000 people has been conducted quarterly since October 2021.
This report, published by Campaign for the Arts and Data Culture Change, analyses attendance at arts events using the first full year of Participation survey fieldwork (October 2021 to September 2022).
Stage Directors 2023 Census - January 2023
The journey of this census has been eventful. Have we asked every pertinent question? No. Pertinence has shifted throughout the process, and we have tried to adapt along the way.
SDUK (Stage Directors UK) began this journey with the desire to understand where the stage directing profession is in a nearly post-Covid 19 world. The participants included members of SDUK and non-members; this is not a survey of SDUK members but of the profession as a whole.
The data we have gathered is an essential tool to help us understand the questions which need to be asked, the provocations which need to be launched, and the support which needs to be provided. 523 directors participated in the census.
We would like to extend our gratitude to all who participated in the census, and we hope that the results will be a useful tool in creating a safer, more equitable and healthier U.K. theatre.
Pulse report: ArtsPay 2022
Periodically, Arts Professional undertakes Pulse research to gather important data about the arts and culture sector.
This latest Pulse research – ArtsPay 2022 – comes at an important moment. Unlike the previous survey run in 2018, these results are published at a time of rising inflation and during significant ongoing pandemic-related challenges. Both are affecting the spending power of individuals and organisations alike.
Two pictures emerge from this research.
The first comes from the hard numbers relating to pay. These show salaries largely keeping pace with national averages, and progress on gender pay gaps and pay differentials. Where there are departures from these headlines, we have highlighted them. But overall, the numbers tell a story that, even if not overwhelmingly positive, isn’t particularly negative.
The second picture emerges from the personal stories respondents shared, away from the checkboxes and drop-down menus, reaching into areas of compensation beyond headline pay. They are stories of struggle, inequities, challenges in career progression, insecurity and precarity, poor terms and conditions, insidiously eroded hope and more than a little despair. They reveal a strong sense of injustice and provide context for understanding the talent drain which has undoubtedly affected the arts and culture sector post-pandemic.
ALL OUR FUTURES – CREATIVITY, CULTURE & EDUCATION
National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education:
All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education
This report from 1999 about Creative and Cultural Education still has much relevance today.
“This report argues that a national strategy for creative and cultural education is essential to that process. We put the case for developing creative and cultural education; we consider what is involved; we look at current provision and assess the opportunities and obstacles; and we set out a national strategy.
By creative education we mean forms of education that develop young people’s capacities for original ideas and action: by cultural education we mean forms of education that enable them to engage positively with the growing complexity and diversity of social values and ways of life. We argue that there are important relationships between creative and cultural education, and significant implications for methods of teaching and assessment, the balance of the school curriculum and for partnerships between schools and the wider world.”
Download “All Our Futures” here: All Our Futures
Better data on the cultural economy: scoping study (DCMS May 2022 study)
Coronavirus (COVID-19) exposed the need for the government to have access to better data about the cultural economy.
This study was commissioned by DCMS to develop an understanding of possible ways forward to strengthen data on the cultural sector to better understand its value and contribution to the UK economy and society, which would, in turn, enable more effective policy development.
Responsibility for data on the cultural economy is shared among a whole array of data holders within and outside the sector (such as cultural organisations or arm’s-length bodies and regulators or funders) as well as other parts of government (such as the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, the Office for National Statistics or Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs).
The report sets out a number of short, medium and longer term recommendations, for relevant stakeholders to progress discussions on how to create a better evidence base for England’s cultural economy in a collaborative way.
CREATIVE INDUSTRIES - POLICY AND EVIDENCE CENTRE: Social mobility in the creative economy: Rebuilding and levelling up? - 9 September 2021
This report concludes phase 2 of the PEC’s ‘Class in the Creative Industries’ programme. Led by PEC researchers at Work Advance, the University of Edinburgh, and the Work Foundation, and co-funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the research provides definitive evidence on the causes of class imbalances and sets out an ambitious and wide-ranging programme of change to enhance social mobility into Creative roles.
CREATIVE INDUSTRIES - POLICY AND EVIDENCE CENTRE: Comparative analysis of pay and conditions: London's West End and New York's Broadway
This discussion paper feeds into our wider research on freelancers, considering the employment conditions and wages of freelance musical theatre performers.
The paper compares the employment situations of musical theatre performers in London’s West End with those working on New York’s Broadway. Based on a combination of in-depth interviews, ethnographic research and sector-specific data, it shows that freelance performers in the UK are paid less and experience greater job insecurity than their counterparts in the US. Further analysis shows that the employment conditions for UK musicians in the West End are more favourable than those of other performers. The paper offers insights into the reasons for these disparities through an exploration of business strategies, employment relations and political structures. It suggests a range of responses to address the problem.
Heidi Ashton is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies at the University of Warwick with over 25 years of experience as a freelance worker.
CREATIVES IN CRISIS
Creatives in Crisis is a research project which aims to explore the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on creative freelancers, and to look at how freelancers are mobilising online communities in response.
Creatives in Crisis is a research project which aims to explore the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on creative freelancers, and to look at how freelancers are mobilising online communities in response.
The project is led by Dr Holly Patrick of Edinburgh Napier University and is funded by the Creative Informatics research and development programme.
CREATIVE MAJORITY: An APPG for Creative Diversity report on ‘What Works’ to support, encourage and improve equity, diversity and inclusion in the creative sector.
The Creative Majority report is the culmination of a collaborative research project, commissioned by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Creative Diversity. It represents a partnership between the APPG Creative Diversity chaired by Baroness Deborah Bull and Labour MP Chi Onwurah with King’s College London and The University of Edinburgh, alongside support from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and NBCUniversal. The partners have worked together to address the question of workforce equity in the creative and cultural sector. Much has been written about inequality in this workforce, with extensive evidence already demonstrating the barriers to employment and leadership opportunities across the industry. The Creative Majority report addresses this issue through a ‘What Works’ approach. It aimed to understand what has worked to improve equity in the creative and cultural sectors, and what can be learned from other sectors to transform the creative labour forces of the future.
CREATIVES SPACES FOR NATURE
How creative organisations and artists can support biodiversity, habitats, and ecosystems
The report draws a picture of extraordinary loss, with nature declining at rates that have never been seen in human history and that are accelerating, propelled by five key human-driven activities. The IPBES ranks these, in descending order of impact:
(1) changes in land and sea use
(2) direct exploitation of organisms
(3) climate change
(4) pollution
(5) the spread of invasive alien species
“The Report also tells us that it is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global. Through ‘transformative change’, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably – this is also key to meeting most other global goals. By transformative change, we mean a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values.”
– Sir Robert Watson, Chair, UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
Cultured Communities - The Crisis Of Local Funding For Arts and Culture
This report presents new research on the cuts to local government funding of arts and culture between 2009-10 and 2018-19. We have also analysed Arts Council England spending. The report also reviews the importance of arts and culture for local areas to boost recovery after coronavirus. Throughout the report, there are insights from Hull UK City of Culture 2017 and Waltham Forest London Borough of Culture 2019. The report makes recommendations on how national government and local government can place arts and culture at the heart of a post-Covid-19 recovery and ensure that every pound spent on arts and culture is used effectively.
Digital Access to Arts and Culture
‘Digital Access to Arts and Culture’ is the first major UK research project dedicated to investigating the accessibility and inclusion implications of the rapid growth in online arts and culture during the pandemic.
The final report summarises an 18-month research project into the role of digital arts and culture in the UK during the pandemic, focusing on its accessibility implications.
The report pays particular attention to the ‘pivot’ to online programming undertaken by many arts and culture organisations following the onset of COVID-19. It also explores how online and live programmes have interacted with each other, how digital accessibility tools are finding their way back into in-person activities, and what the wider accessibility implications of the on-going hybridisation of arts and culture may be.
Equality and Diversity in Concert Halls - 100 Orchestras Worldwide - DONNE
This latest research by Donne – Women in Music has been prepared to get a better understanding of how classical music is responding to the current and very important issue of equality and diversityin concert’s repertoire worldwide. It builds on previous research carried out in 2018/2019 and 2019/2020.
The new results presented here were determined by in-depth analysis of composers’ works scheduled for the 2020-2021 season in 100 orchestras from 27 countries.The results show thatonly 11.45% of the scheduled concerts worldwide included compositions by women. 88.55% included solely compositions written by men.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion data report - Arts Council England (2022)
This report features data on:
• The diversity of applicants for assistance from our own Emergency Response Fund and the UK Government’s Culture Recovery Fund
• The workforce of those organisations that make up our current National Portfolio, including the diversity of people at different job levels and governance, and overall figures of those working in the sector
• The diversity of those applying to National Lottery Grants and Developing Your Own Creative Practice
• The make-up of audiences from our National Portfolio Organisations
• Diversity within the Arts Council’s workforce, leadership, and our governance: our National and Area Councils
Impact of COVID-19 on DCMS sectors: First Report
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and its associated public bodies
Sport, culture and tourism all operate to some extent by bringing people together for shared experiences. All have been hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis. While this report focuses on sectors within the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s remit, it is important to remember that their difficulties will spill into the wider economy, and the health and wellbeing of the population as a whole
IN-BETWEEN SPACES - Inclusion and Representation of Central and Eastern European (CEE) Artists in the UK Creative Economies
This report was produced in a collaboration between the University of Birmingham (UoB) and Centrala Space. The project has its origins in an AHRC M4C Creative Economies Engagement Fellowship delivered by Dr Jakub Ceglarz with Prof. Sara Jones (Department of Modern Languages, UoB) as Academic Lead. The AHRC funds world-class, independent researchers in a wide range of subjects: history, archaeology, digital content, philosophy, languages, design, heritage, area studies, the creative and performing arts, and much more.
Mind the Understanding Gap - The Value Of Creative Freelancers - Aug 2021
This report summarises our investigation of the contribution of creative freelancers to the economic, societal and place-based impacts of the creative industries
This Report sets out: – The range of value generation for the economy and for society of creative freelancing – A typology of creative freelancers based on their generation of different types of value – Policy directions to support the full and sustainable contribution to the economy, society and places of creative freelancing
Roundhouse - Roundhouse Creating Futures Report
Young people have been hit hard by Covid-19 – especially their mental health and future job prospects. But we know that creativity can play a part in helping improve mental wellbeing and also in building the skills needed to take on future challenges and employment opportunities.
The Roundhouse Creating Futures report evidences, for the first time, the importance of our creative projects and the value of creativity on the future of the young people who take part in them – especially when it comes to getting a job.
We believe that young people should not be left behind in this crisis and we wholeheartedly believe that creativity has an intrinsic role in helping young people to become more resilient for the challenges that lay ahead.
Take a look at the report to find out how young creatives benefitted from their time at the Roundhouse and what we’re calling on the Government, funders and businesses to do, to support young people’s futures.
Theatre Access 2021
Between 17 May and 16 August 2021, VocalEyes, Stagetext and the Centre for Accessible Environments ran a survey of UK theatregoers who use access facilities, services or support. Over 500 people responded and shared their views on using public transport, getting vaccine passports and a range of other factors that would influence their decision to return to theatres. They also told us about their experiences of digital theatre, access services online, the accessibility of various online platforms, and whether they would continue to seek out and pay for theatre online in future.
Alongside the survey findings, the report also provides an access guide for theatres, key theatre website access information, a directory of access and disability arts organisations and recommended reading.
The Theatre Green Book
We’re living in a climate crisis. Theatre makers – like everyone else – want to respond to that emergency. But for theatre, the need to change is particularly urgent. If theatre is to be part of the most vital conversation humanity faces, then it has to change its practice. The Green Book provides clear standards for that change. In other volumes it will show how to improve the sustainability of theatre buildings and theatre operations. This volume is about making productions more sustainably
UNESCO - Culture & working conditions for artists
The UNESCO study Culture & Working Conditions for Artists uncovers persisting and emerging challenges artists and cultural professionals face and examines how countries around the world are addressing these issues through policymaking. The study is based on a quadrennial global survey conducted in 2018 on the impact of the 1980 Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artist, designed to track developments and identify emerging trends related to the status of the artist: over 90 responses from UNESCO Member States and non-governmental organizations were received.
WE SHALL NOT BE REMOVED - UK Disability Arts Alliance 2021 Survey Report
The UK Disability Arts Alliance is marking the first anniversary of its campaign by revealing the findings of a new survey that highlights significant threats to the continued participation of creative deaf, disabled and neurodiverse people in the cultural sector.
The UK Disability Arts Alliance 2021 Survey Report is the first to focus specifically on the impact of the pandemic on disabled people and organisations in arts & culture. The survey reveals an alarmingly fragile cultural environment for disabled people, full of intersectional inequalities.
The Survey Report has been compiled by Alistair Gentry and edited by Andrew Miller.
WELL LONDON – BE CREATIVE BE WELL REPORT
Be Creative Be Well – Arts, Wellbeing and Local Communites
All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education
This Arts Council report from 2012 “describes and evaluates the Be Creative Be Well project and the key role it has played within the integrated, community-led Well London programme.”
“The influence of Be Creative Be Well has been significant: not only in the direct impact it has had on working with communities over the three-and-a-half years of the project, but also in the contribution it has made, as a key theme, to the success of the overall Well London approach. The emerging evaluation of the Well London programme suggests that it has been highly effective in increasing community engagement and in improving health and wellbeing, in even the most deprived communities; this report highlights that the quality of the arts and cultural activity has an important relationship with the quality of that engagement.”
Download “Be Creative Be Well” here: Be Creative Be Well
WHERE ARE THE WOMEN? PART 2 - Women in Scottish Theatre
Stellar Quines and Christine Hamilton Consulting
Stellar Quines commissioned Christine Hamilton to carry out the research as a follow up to her original Where are the women? report released in 2016 which covered the year 2014/15.
The new research covering 2019/20 was carried out by Christine Hamilton Consulting and Fraser White of Consult:Result. Quantitative data were collected and analysed for 26 companies and included 1,338 creative roles. The research findings show that, in many areas, there has been an increase in the percentage of women in roles in 2019/20 compared to 2014/15.
See the full report here: Where are the women – Part 2