The Government’s latest Creative Industries Sector Plan, launched with much fanfare, makes for an impressive read on the surface. Packed with investment figures, metrics, and high-profile promises of export growth, inward investment and innovation corridors, it presents a confident case for the UK’s creative prowess. But once the press release sheen wears off, we are left asking: who is this strategy actually for? And more importantly, who is missing from the picture?
For places like Leicester – vibrant, capable, but often situated outside the inner circles of government-defined “growth hubs” – the answer may well be: not us.
The strategy leans heavily on the idea that economic growth flows from concentrated investment in clusters, corridors and centres of excellence. The assumption is that if we pump capital and attention into high-potential metro areas, creative energy will radiate outward. Yet in practice, the benefits often stall at the city edge.
It’s a familiar pattern. Those already in possession of influence – city regions with universities tuned to Westminster, regional mayors who can marshal pitch decks and leverage networks – are rewarded with funding, infrastructure, and the policymaking narrative itself. Meanwhile, middle-tier towns, semi-urban communities, and those working outside established institutional channels are left to chase smaller crumbs – if they can access them at all.
But even more fundamental than the uneven spread of resources is the unspoken model of economic development underpinning the strategy. In the rush to measure GVA, exports, and innovation metrics, we risk overlooking what sustains the creative economy as an economy – not simply as a source of cultural prestige or content.
Here’s the reality: much of what is labelled as “creative industries” on government spreadsheets is in fact deeply integrated into everyday economic life. Design supports engineering. Media production underpins community engagement. Software development enables logistics, transport, healthcare and education. These activities are not just precursors to glossy adverts or streamed content – they are the connective tissue of a functioning civic economy.
In this context, adopting a Foundational Economy lens shifts our attention. Rather than seeing creativity as a standalone export sector – reliant on international visibility, headline commissions and metropolitan approval – we begin to understand it as embedded, place-based, and often mutual in nature.
This brings consequences. If we treat creative enterprise primarily as a showcase sector to attract external capital, we encourage a model of development that is speculative, extractive and overly dependent on subsidy. Local creative practitioners end up spending more time navigating grant forms and “approval committees” – often controlled by university boards or local authority panels – than they do actually producing, selling, and refining their work within a meaningful market.
This is not to diminish the value of public support. In a functioning foundational economy, the state has a vital role in ensuring fair access, correcting imbalances, and stepping in where markets cannot reach. But the danger comes when public funding defines the creative economy, rather than enabling it.
When this happens, we inadvertently produce an ecosystem where bureaucracy takes the place of enterprise. Well-meaning civic officers and programme managers – often themselves committed advocates of culture – become bottlenecks in the name of safeguarding outcomes or protecting reputational risk. The result is a generation of local creatives who must first win the approval of panels before being allowed to test their ideas in the open market. Entrepreneurial initiative is filtered through soft-power gatekeeping.
What we need instead is a more regenerative model of local economic development. This means recognising when creative practice already meets a market demand – whether in local communications, public service design, or neighbourhood media – and stepping aside to let that market mature. It also means investing in economic infrastructure that facilitates participation: affordable premises, peer networks, cooperative financing, local commissioning frameworks.
Crucially, regeneration must be grounded in value retention, not just value generation. The Foundational Economy teaches us to follow the money: who earns, who spends, and where the pound lands next. A community media co-op that pays local wages and buys from local suppliers might appear modest on a national dashboard, but it may do more to sustain a neighbourhood than a new “content lab” whose profits leave town before the ink is dry on the launch banner.
So where does this leave cities like Leicester? Rather than compete for a place in the government’s creative hierarchy, perhaps we should reframe our ambitions altogether. Leicester already has strategic strength in design, engineering, defence supply, transport logistics, and digital telecoms. The creative economy here is not separate from these domains – it is their companion. Rather than seeking flagship projects with eye-catching branding, our priority should be integration – making sure that creative methods and practitioners are embedded in every part of our economic ecosystem.
That might mean shifting investment away from cultural showpieces and toward design partnerships in manufacturing. It might mean backing communications apprenticeships within the NHS or City Council. It might even mean relinquishing the label “creative industries” altogether in favour of a more honest description: applied creativity within a civic economy.
In the end, we must choose between two futures. One in which we chase the hyperbole of cluster-led growth, hoping to catch the attention of central funders; the other in which we build locally rooted markets that generate social and economic value on their own terms. If the Creative Industries Sector Plan is serious about inclusive growth, then it must acknowledge that creative vitality does not only reside in its branded zones and designated hubs. It also lives in the small, persistent work of people and communities who create not to be seen, but because it matters.
Let’s measure what matters. Let’s support what lasts. Let’s grow where we’re already planted.