AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 48

GVA
50
45
Gross Value Added in the
DCMS’s ‘creative industries’
& sport categories, as well
as by the whole UK, £bn
59.9
40
35
Key
30
2010-17 rise,
per cent
2010
2015
25
2017 (Provsional)
20
15
Total creative industries, £bn
30.5
66.3
113.9
13.4
68.6
10
5
40
100.6
69.6
8.1
12.6
90.3
102
2010-17 rise: 53.1 per cent
The whole of the UK, £bn
0
Chart 12
Source: DCMS, DCMS
Sector Economic
Estimates Provisional 2017:
GVA Sub-sectors, 2018,
and DCMS, DCMS Sectors
Economic Estimates 2017
(provisional): Gross Value
Added, 2018
Sport
1430
£bn
1692
1840
2010-17 rise: 28.7 per cent
been raising the value of what they produce twice as fast. And while
not every job in the arts and sport is necessarily about events, it seems
likely that events have fully participated in the dramatic rise in
productivity that has marked the arts and sport as a whole.
In fact, with GVA growth for the whole UK economy not double,
but triple total UK jobs growth, the GVA-vs-jobs trajectories of the arts
and sport are actually not quite as brilliant as that of the whole UK
economy. But what the data still confirm is that the arts and sport can,
as a sector, square an important circle: they’re able to improve their
productivity at the same time as adding jobs, just not as fast as UK plc.
That’s important for two reasons. First, while it’s hard to
automate the arts and sport – especially in the case of events,
which are labour-intensive compared with, say, manufacturing or
financial services – the two broad sectors have undoubtedly become
more efficient. Moreover such automation as has been brought to
the arts and sport, for example in ticketing, appears to have been
accompanied by an increase in jobs, not a decrease. In fact, that’s
been the pattern for jobs in general in the UK – and elsewhere.
Second, the record shows that the arts and sport have the capacity
to re-invent themselves. They not only change their ‘output’ more
frequently than many other sectors; the events that arts and sport
put on have the potential, at least, to carve out for themselves
a whole new wealth-creating sector in its own right, with high
productivity, durable jobs, plenty of customer demand, and new
skills in the making.
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