Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what progress she has made on developing creative clusters, as announced in the creative industries sector deal.

The Creative Industries Clusters Programme is currently delivered by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of UKRI’s Audience of the Future Challenge and has made some remarkable progress over the last four years of its operation.

As of September 2021, the programme has identified that over 3,475 jobs had been created and safeguarded, over £176m of private co-investment has been leveraged from the initial public funding provided and 906 new business-led R&D projects have been supported through the programme.

We are working closely with colleagues in UKRI and AHRC to build on the success of this programme as part of the Creative Industries Sector Vision which was announced earlier this year.