I’m sure that many of you have been keeping up-to-date with the various reports that have been emerging about the impact of Covid on our cultural and creative industries. We know that many of you have been adversely impacted by the pandemic, and so for many this is lived experience. The Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, led by NESTA, draws together expertise from the academic and cultural sector to provide independent research and policy recommendations for the UK’s creative industries. Their principal areas of work include: creative clusters and innovation; skills, talent and diversity; IPR, business models and access to finance; arts, culture and public service broadcasting, international competitiveness (led by Newcastle University Business School), and a number of cross-cutting themes.

During the pandemic they, and other organisations including the Creative Industries Federation, have been undertaking research and advocacy relating to the impact of the pandemic on the cultural and creative industries. Today, they have released findings from one of these research projects carried out in partnership with the Centre for Cultural Value, led by Leeds University. The results are devastating. Headline findings report that in the six months following the first lockdown 55,000 jobs were lost from the creative industries, and that the percentage of people leaving creative occupations was significantly higher than in previous years. While job losses and people leaving creative occupations are perhaps, sadly, expected, what this lays bare is the scale of the crisis that has to be faced – it provides considered analysis of the job losses for the creative industries as a whole, and specifically for the cultural sector (which the blog highlights has been most heavily hit), and the impact of the pandemic on the number of hours worked by those who were employed in the sector. We can all think through the potential implications of this on the sector – skills loss, the loss of expertise and knowledge, the impact on our cultural ecology and way of working…as a start. The blog report on the PEC site is the first in a series which will look at the emerging data and will begin to consider what it is telling us. Importantly, the teams are also looking at the lived experience and direct impact on those affected and more will emerge soon. All of this is important in helping us to better understand and support the cultural community moving forward.