Lights, Camera, (Government) Action: A Modern History of Creative Industrial Policy in Britain

After months of increasingly desperate pleading by industry insiders, July 2020 saw the Johnson government bow to pressure and announce £1.57billion worth of investment to protect arts, cultural and heritage institutions from the economic ravages brought by the Coronavirus pandemic. Justifying the price tag, Oliver Dowdon (Secretary of State for the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport) (DCMS) described arts and culture as ‘the lynchpin of our world-beating and fast-growing creative industries’ acknowledged by Rishi Sunak (Chancellor of the Exchequer) as ‘critical to keeping our economy thriving, employing more than 700,000 people’. Hot on the heels of this creative industry bailout was the July announcement of a £500m Film and TV Production Restart Scheme to insure losses incurred by projects that re-commenced shooting but were further delayed by Coronavirus.