Creativity - not counting - is the West Midland's strong point.

By David Harte on Feb 27, 08 09:50 PM in Creative industries

As someone who leads a regional project aimed at developing the region's media and music sectors I get to read a lot of reports and government strategies about the Creative Industries.

Reading them is never the most exciting of jobs but making sense of them can be even trickier to say the least. Given that the government, regional development agencies and a whole host of other bodies love to talk about the Creative Industries there'll be plenty to make sense of and I'll be using this space to do just that.

The Government estimates that the UK's Creative Industries are the same in scope and scale as the financial sector (about 7.3% of the economy with two million employees). Impressive.

The trouble is that when it comes to this sector the figures seem to change all the time. A recent report reckons we've been doing the counting wrong and that the figure is slightly higher but with more creative workers in 'non-creative' companies than in creative ones.

Another problem is that not all ways of counting include the 28% of freelancers who work in the sector.

But in the West Midlands we've apparently got nearly quarter of a million workers in the 'Cultural' economy.

Wow!

Trouble is the counting is done differently from the national picture - they've got sport, leisure and tourism workers in there making up half of that total figure.

Yet whatever the statistical truth it's refreshing to see that at last we've got something close to a 'Creative Class' developing in Birmingham and the region. But if you think we're a match for the financial sector yet I'd beg to differ.

Ask yourself, which is busier of a lunchtime: the Custard Factory or Colmore Row?