Created in Birmingham brings news that the Creative Republic website has had a makeover…
…and now has news-feeds for updates and for news of the release of the membership package. Looks good. They’re set up as a company (West Midlands
“recent research
has suggested that the region could see 250,000 new jobs in the creative and cultural sector over the next seven years”
If there’s one thing that creative industries support agencies should have learned over the past seven years is; don’t offer inflated forecasts of the employment figures, and don’t simply accept the word of those who ‘magic’ them out of very dodgy datasets. Ignore the marketing dullards who persuade you to grab headlines in this manner, and to elide ‘arts’ into ‘creative’ into ‘cultural’ into ‘sports’ into ‘tourism’ jobs. Among others, Creative Cornwall were caught at it — and their funding’s just been axed.
The Sector Skills Council’s reasonably robust 2006 regional breakdowns of employment, The Footprint: A Baseline Survey of the Creative and Cultural Sector (PDF, 190kb) gives a figure for the West Midlands
But the idea that we can add 250,000 new jobs — i.e.: 35,000+ such new jobs every year over a sustained seven year period — seems ridiculous. Adding 25,000 in and around content origination would be a much more manageable (although still hugely ambitious) goal, over 10 years, if massive resources and the willpower were available.
* We may possibly get better employment figures when the 2008 DCMS Creative Economic Estimates Bulletin is released (late 2008), which will apparently add data from National Insurance records to the existing dodgy datasets. Perhaps sooner, as Dave Harte points out in the comments, in the appendices of the forthcoming DCMS Creative Economy Programme Strategy document.
by Dave Harte
03 Feb 2008 at 23:25
Are the figures from this Culture WM document? It gives an employment figure of 236,000 for the cultural sector (which includes tourism & sport and is a much wider definition than the DCMS creative industries). There’s a figure of 27% growth over 10 years cited which would get you to about 300,000.
I thought the upcoming DCMS Creative Economy Programme Strategy Document, or whatever it turns out to be, might make use of the NI figures. Whichever way they should reveal an increase, and might go some way towards a more realistic figure for the sector.
Dave
by Helga Henry
07 Feb 2008 at 18:45
Thanks for blogging about the new website, and yes, as Dave Harte says, the figures are not “ours” but those of Brian Woods-Scawen from a Birmingham Post article last summer.
Creative Republic is now incorporated, and I, as acting chair am working with the (voluntary) board and steering group to create a representative body that lobbys and influences, creates interesting and useful networking events and – crucially -commissions research. When we are up and running it’s our ambition that our membership will become the vital pool of “real” research material. So in future, when statistics like this are used, its having had reference to the people in the region who are really contributing to the the creative economy.
And the other thing we want to do is beat the drum about the massive wealth of talent, skill and down-right “coolness” that this region has. With the right conditions, the right profile, the right support and the political will, who knows, the 250,000 figure might now look so unbelievable to you after all!
Keep watching the website, the fun has only just begun.
by site admin
07 Feb 2008 at 23:51
Thanks for the pointer Dave. I’m aware of the document you mention, Growing The Cultural Economy In The West Midlands 2007. It uses a 27% figure, and it runs thus…
…and it footnotes this to the document “State of the Region, WMRO, 2006”. I presume this means the State of the Region Update Report 2006, the supplementary report to the main State of the Region Report (2004). In this update document the 27% statement reads thus…
…but this statement has a footnote that additionally states…
Ok… so now it seems that the figures derive from a two-digit Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code, and presumably they mean the code ‘Recreation, culture and sport’. Two-digit codes are incredibly broad, almost useless, without even taking into account the large sections of the creative industries that this one doesn’t cover. Then take into account that these are estimates, forecasts. All of which means that the figures might as well be built on air. However, the footnote might be misleading, as we’ll see.
Was the 27% figure actually regional? No, it seems it was a national estimate. Since the only 27% figure I can find — in any of the Working Futures reports — is an estimate for employment growth made by the Creative and Cultural Skills sector skills council, for the whole of the UK, for the period 2009-14. It occurs on page 61 (Table 3.11: ‘Projections of Employment by SSC’) of the Working Futures 2004-2014: National Report (2006).
Elsewhere, Working Futures reports say of the culture and sports area…
It would be nice to think, as Culture WM said in their 27th January 2007 press release, that a “27%” rise could mean the possible creation of…
But that’s still a very long way from the grand statement about “250,000 _new_ jobs in the creative and cultural sector over the next seven years” that’s prominent on the front of the Creative Republic website.
Now let’s scout around for some more realistic estimates. One comes from the West Midlands Regional Observatory’s Regional Skills Assessment 2006, which says about future prospects…
The WMRO’s source? Working Futures. That figure of 10,000 is a lot smaller than Culture WM’s “63,000 jobs” — yet the WMRO’s “recreational & cultural” category would appear to arise from the same Working Futures‘ fuzzy and wide-ranging SIC code estimates. A SIC code that, as we’ve seen above, omits large chunks of the creative industries.
So to get down to a more specific level, one that creatives might recognise, let’s look finally at the ‘LSC West Midlands Strategic Analysis 2007 Appendix 3: Creative & Media’ (Dec 2007). It states…
So — that “27%” nationally translates down to a informed forecast of between 5% and 3% growth for the West Midlands by 2014.
Even if we take that reasonable forecast of 1,539 jobs and bulk it up with possible ‘vaguely creative’ job growth via tourism, sport, wider recreation and suchlike, then subtract losses in some declining creative industries — at the current rate of support/growth we’d probably be lucky to top 10,000 new jobs in the West Midlands by 2014.