The Future Skills Agenda of the Creative Industries
Senior figures from Channel 4, ScreenSkills, and the Creative Industries Council unveil major new research on skills gaps across UK creative sectors at the RSA.
Why we picked this
Rare policy-facing discussion where the people who actually train and fund creative workers — from ScreenSkills to Channel 4 — argue in public about what the sector actually needs from the next generation.
The UK creative industries generate over £100 billion annually and employ more than two million people — yet debate about how to train and sustain that workforce rarely breaks out of specialist circles. This RSA event changes that, gathering the senior architects of creative education policy alongside industry leaders to share findings from a major new study spanning museums, music, publishing, performing arts, and beyond.
Sir Peter Bazalgette and Baroness Shriti Vadera co-chair the Creative Industries Council and will anchor a discussion that promises to range across questions that rarely get answered honestly in public: where are the genuine skills gaps, how much of the skills crisis is actually a pay crisis, and what obligations do cultural institutions have to train workers when public funding is diminishing? Laura Mansfield from ScreenSkills and Sinéad Rocks from Channel 4 bring operational realities that sit in useful tension with the Council’s strategic view.
The event runs from 2:00 to 3:30 PM, followed by a networking reception until 4:30 PM — an unusual format for the RSA and a sign that this is designed to function as a working convening, not just a public lecture. Bernard Hay of the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre chairs.