Nope. They did not.
Does that matter though, aren’t the Creative industries useless things like Kate Bush whining and artists sticking pictures of their facial hair onto your Nan?
The Creative Industry accounts for a massive amount of GDP “The creative industries contribute 6% of GDP, employ over 2 million people and export over £16bn annually.”
http://www.cbi.org.uk/business-issues/creative-industries/in-focus/
The UK’s Creative Industries are projects like Gromits around Bristol, shows at London’s O2 and Star Wars being filmed in the UK and all that music clanging away in your tiny white headphones.
More relative to Bristol, it’s projects like the PM studio and their Techno magicians, the arena our mayor George Ferguson is championing, every small band trying to find their way to the big time, your kids going to the Hippodrome every crimbo’, all the lovely art Bristol can be proud of and probably… that music clanging away in your tiny white headphones still…
But aren’t EDM’s a joke? Sometimes it seems, yes. To be honest, the title of this EDM is a bit… meh’, but at least it’s to the point.
The good thing is though, some of our Bristol MPs went one stage better than the EDM. Dawn Primaralo MP only went and bloody chaired the debate in Parliament around the Arts and Culture budgets. Also, my local MP, Kerry McCarthy was on it, talking more than just numbers of budget spent by recognising the unique culture in Brsitol…
“we need acts that are innovative and edgy and that have something important to say” and “that those involved [in Bristol] did not need or want public funding” but that the Government needed to support them through other means, if only by not hindering their creativity.
http://www.kerrymccarthymp.org/news/westminster_news/news.aspx?p=1091118
Arts and Culture can’t be ignored, and whilst it’s not the size of the construction industry in economic value it’s still important. Also, we just ain’t human without arts and our creativity, how would you value that?