Having employment within a creative
industry takes more than just being creative, in such a fast moving, dynamic
and changing industry an individual needs multiple skills and qualities such
drive, ambition, communication, organization, time keeping and organization.
The creative market is one that is constantly expanding, but to maintain on the
top workers should also be willing to accept instability and risks – the market
is ever changing and sometimes work can be infrequent, whether self employed or
within a company, so the key is communication. The skills of creativity and
communication go hand in hand.
The creative economy may seem to be all
about arts and crafts to an outsider, but still there are a fair few numbers to
crunch. With innovation and growth booming, the UK economy is boosted £71.4
billion from the creative industries, generating approximately £8 billion a
hour which is up 15.6% since 2008. For the masses, art and design may seem a
risky lifestyle path, however the sectors employees now equates to 5.6% of
those employed in the UK (1.6 million jobs). The creative industries provide 8%
of total UK exports – and between
2009/2011 exports from the creative industries increased by 16.1%. This compares with an increase of 11.5% for
total service exports.
With the industry having such an impact on
the UK’s economy, for an outsider with the market being so big it’s hard to see
specifically how. The creative industry is a story of three parts:
1.
Originators
2.
Experience creators
3.
Content producers
These three sectors make up the whole
industry, in chain that links each stage to stage to provide with the total
revenue. The originators provide the ideas, creating new concepts and designs;
the experience creators are those who accommodate the ideas creating museums,
theatres and concerts to provide an experience for the customer relating to the
product and finally the content producers provide the products to showcase,
across a range of mediums from film, writing, music and games.
The creative market is an economy welcome
to such fast expansion due to the adaptability of the products – the content
created can be made on a range of media platforms, allowing all areas of the
market to be saturated. For instance, this is the case in the world of film, it
is transferrable across a number of different platforms – therefore generating
more exposure and more money. The money each product can make is up to business
negotiation, as in undisrupted markets the platform is more open, allowing more
expansion on the prices.
The fashion realm of the creative economy
is a large proportion of the whole. Fashion generates £26 billion up from £21 billion
in 2009 with the UK fashion alone supporting 797,000 jobs however, this is a
decrease of 2.3% from 2009 as a trend within the creative divisions is that a
large majority of previously man powered skilled jobs are replaced by
technology for example, pattern cutters
become laser cutters.
Despite the increase in the use of
technologies, employees wage income is estimated to have risen to over £46
billion. It is a result of the fact employees have had to adjust to the
changing environment of the creative industry, needing to become more adaptable
with transferrable skills, having to have flexibility to switch from job to
job, merging and using an amalgamation of skills to be fit for whatever purpose
the industry currently requires.
Another factor for the rise in wage is due
to the number of jobs being scarce in comparison to the amount of people
interning. The interns are a massive support and benefit to the industry due to
their willingness to work for free, proving a large amount of free labor. The company’s
acceptance of using interns for free has meant a lot of companies being stung-
high profile examples of this are Vivienne Westwood, a large fashion company
who has been penalized due to not providing minimum wage for full time interns.
But surprisingly it’s not the big companies
that make up the most of the creative industry, with 84% of creative businesses
have less then 10 people and only 2% of all creative businesses employing more
than 100 people. Employees of the creative industry are also likely to be self-employed
too, with 34% of those in the industry being their own boss. The industry can
be broken down into numbers of:
-
48% portfolio working
-
23% self employed / free lance
-
18% running own business
-
44% want to have own business
These statistics showing how the skills of
motivation, time keeping and dedication are truly needed.
With the large amount of self employment, a
lot of creative individuals have been in need of a working environment, or a
third space, somewhere which is not an office but not home either – which has
in consequence seen the rise of the coffee shop. There are now over 5.8
billion, 10 times than what it was 10 years ago, being the true emergent of
freelance economy. The coffee shop is not the only new emergent in the changing
construction of the working environment, the creative market has become more
digitally focused meaning that consuming products online has lost the human
quality that retail has – allowing the prominence of social media to emerge.
Social media is no longer a tool just for connecting, businesses are able to
use social networks as a tool to develop a realistic customer profile – now
that its lost from the lack of face to face product consumption. Businesses use the social media to track
customer’s site visits and previous purchases to develop an idea of their taste
to promote future products.
This has disrupted business models that
previously existed for example, the original ‘market’ business model (where you
purchase all the stock at the beginning of the day, sell what you can but
product ends life span and has to be destroyed therefore loosing money) is now
effectively redundant as customer profiling and the digital technology allowing
businesses to track all of a customers purchases enables an insight into what
products sell and which don’t, so that only the profitable products can be
stocked and no money is lost.
Social media had also benefitted the
industry in the realm of networking – enclosing the industry, making it easier to
connect to others. For example, Linked In has benefitted the creative industry
by easing collaboration, artists can find exhibition creators and designers can
find promoters at the click of a button.
The creative economy is all about
innovation, creation, communication and collaboration – as one of the biggest
sectors of the UK economy and constantly changing its bound to grow more and create
new concepts. When thinking creatively, who knows where it will go next…
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