Unit 1 Task 9

 Cultural Policy

The last thing to think about when it comes to creative businesses and how they run within the various creative industries is how cultural policy is run here in the UK. Mentioned several times throughout this unit is something known as the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport within the UK government, who create and manage most of the cultural policy for the UK. But what exactly do they do and how do they do it?

The DCMS

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (otherwise known as the DCMS) is a department within the UK government that "helps to drive growth, enrich lives and promote Britain abroad". This is an extremely broad way of describing what they do, of course. The department goes into further detail on the UK government's website, stating that they "protect and promote [their] cultural and artistic heritage and help businesses and communities to grow". From this, we can quite clearly tell that the DCMS aims to help creative businesses and enterprises like the ones we aim to produce by investing in them and attempting to "give the UK a unique advantage on the global stage", giving businesses within the UK some well needed help.

They've recently made quite a lot of announcements regarding the creative industries and cultural policy in general. To name a few examples, the DCMS made an announcement on the 12th of November this year that Natalie Ceeney CBE and Dr Rashmi Becker MBE have been appointed to the Sports England board. Whilst this isn't something that particularly interests me, it shows the department giving out information about the sports industry and how members have been reappointed. For something more related to the creative industries, we go back to the 21st of October this year, where the DCMS announced that the country has been invited to "a major celebration of creativity across the UK in 2022". In more detail, the DCMS announced that a festival called Unboxed: Creativity was aiming to take place in 2022 with "ten spectacular projects across the UK". This shows the DCMS giving an announcement about something relating to the creative industries, and potentially helping smaller businesses by giving them an opportunity to plan to visit the festival to potentially gain ideas for their own business.

Conclusion

To conclude, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport provides lots of announcements for creative busineses and creatives across the UK that aims to inform them about what's going on throughout the nation, providing them with opportunities and news that will help them to stay informed and ahead within the creative industries.