First published on October 2011.
The first P is for Pounds
The digital creative industries in particular need access to finance in order to scale up to serve and monetise global markets. Investors must learn to understand the value of creativity and digital content.
The second P is for People
You can’t build a digital economy with a nation of digital illiterates. Creative digital content requires a skilled workforce with an understanding and knowledge of art and science. It is vital that computer science is brought into the National Curriculum as an essential discipline. It is the lingua franca of competitive, innovative businesses. It is from the combination of computer programming skills and creativity by which world-changing companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Zynga were built.
The third P is for Property
Property in the sense of Intellectual Property. The UK excels at creating world-beating IP but is not very good at retaining ownership of it. So often foreign companies see greater value in the IP that is created in the UK than we do ourselves. The UK is arguably the most creative nation in the world. Witness the success of UK fashion, music, design, film, TV, games and advertising. The UK receives the accolades, the Oscars, the BAFTAs for its artists yet, more often than not, the global revenues from this most creative nation reside offshore. IP ownership builds value, not work-for-hire.
The fourth P is for Pipes
Super-fast broadband is essential for both uploading and downloading content.
The fifth P is for Perception
For too long the creative industries have been seen as ‘fluffy’ and run by ‘luvvies’. For too long, governments have failed to support content companies in the video games industry for fear of negative headlines in the popular press. Designers, artists and geeks have come of age and should be celebrated for their creativity, innovation and wealth creation.
Creativity Money Love: Learning for the 21st Century by Creative & Cultural Skills is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Illustrations by Paul Davis - http://copyrightdavis.blogspot.com/