Creative UK and the Mayor of London’s Culture Team announce partnership to support creative freelancers

Join our FREE webinar to support creative freelancers

Freelancers make up nearly half of the jobs in the capital’s world-leading culture and Creative Industries, but the pandemic has hit them hard. Up to 60 per cent lost all their work during the pandemic. Self-employed workers have been much more exposed to the economic shock of the crisis, and at least 200,000 self-employed Londoners have been excluded from Government support.

Creative UK and the Mayor of London’s Culture Team are delighted to announce a partnership to tackle systemic inequalities and to encourage under-represented groups to enter and stay in roles in the Creative Industries. Together, we are empowering organisations and freelancers working across London’s creative economy to create a more sustainable future for our growing workforce.

On 11 July 2022, freelancers and organisations are invited to join a free, online event where we will test, prioritise and develop ideas with the aim of creating a more sustainable creative freelance model. We are keen to hear from freelancers and employers across all the creative sectors including performing arts, music, visual arts, fashion, design and screen. Have your voice heard and shape key recommendations, please sign up here.

Our event will be an opportunity to hear from a cohort of freelancers who have been leading change for creative freelancing in London as part of City Hall’s Creative Freelancers: Shaping London’s Recovery programme. We intend to use this event to workshop recommendations, prioritise key actions, to help build momentum and agree next steps for positive and impactful change.

We will take your guidance and shape your ideas into a robust business case, as part of our Redesigning Freelancing programme.

The programme will:

Produce an industry-led, freelancers-shaped proposition, committing employers to a radical new solution.
Create a go-to freelance framework for the Creative Industries.

This will be developed with full visibility and support from freelancers, and designed to implement systemic change by:

Advocating for best practice in work and employment.
Developing policy recommendations around freelance work.
Signposting resources and best practice insights for freelancers and employers.

Before COVID-19, the creative sector contributed £115.9bn in GVA nationally, growing four times faster than the economy overall, and in every part of the UK. Since 2011, employment in the sector had grown by 35%, three times the national average, to over 2 million jobs. There is huge potential as well as risk but the fragility of the freelance model, which the Creative Industries rely on heavily, was revealed at the advent of the pandemic when many parts of the Creative Industries swiftly experienced a large drop in their volume of work and were left unsupported.

So please join our event on 11 July to guide us on this important project to support creative freelancers in London – and the UK. We also encourage freelancers and organisations based in London to share the event with your networks via our social channels: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

For press and media enquiries, please contact Matthew Horne, Press and PR Manager on matthew.horne@wearecreative.uk  / 07874 867947