Creative PEC Policy Adviser Emily Hopkins attended the Labour Party Conference in September 2025. These are her personal observations and may not represent the official position of Creative PEC.
This week, I joined over 20,000 attendees in Liverpool for the Labour Party Conference. Beyond the headline speeches from the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, there was a whole programme of fringe events which put a spotlight on the importance of the UK’s creative industries. I spent my time dashing between the Creative UK Pavilion, sessions sponsored by Sky Arts, the National Theatre and UK Music, and events hosted by the AHRC-funded CoSTAR Network and the BBC team. Dr Mark Taylor, our State of the Nations Research Lead for Arts, Culture and Heritage, also spoke at a fringe event unpacking the lack of working-class representation in the UK’s creative sector.
It was a chance to hear about potential directions of future policymaking for the sector, to take note of upcoming opportunities and understand which challenges persist. Here’s my summary of what I heard and what it may mean for our creative industries.
Setting the Stage: PM and Secretary of State speeches
Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for DCMS, made a strong push for the regions and is eager to make sure that access to culture and creative investment is UK-wide. She spotlighted her desire for more creative opportunities for young people, the strengths of place-based creative growth and the need for more creative education and skills training. Her key announcements included:
- A new UK Town of Culture competition designed to boost pride in place and give towns a platform to tell their story
- Reconfirmation of £150m for the Creative Places Growth Fund, with £25m each for six priority regions in England (Liverpool City Region, Greater Manchester, North East, West Yorkshire, West Midlands and West of England). £8m in grants were announced for more than 100 creative SMEs across 12 UK regions, including Devon and Cornwall, Hertfordshire and Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.
- Reconfirmation of a £132m youth package via the Dormant Assets scheme, framed as ‘Every Child Can’, to expand access to sports, arts and music activities.
Meanwhile, Keir Starmer’s leader’s speech focused on the big picture narrative of national renewal and community cohesion. Within this, he framed the UK as a country of “boundless creativity” across art, culture and music. His references to creativity symbolised the UK Government’s positioning of the creative industries as a key part of national DNA and as a critical industry for economic growth, as also recognised in the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy.
On the Fringe: Key themes
Fringe events were an opportunity to dive into more specific policy conversations with creative practitioners, industry leads and MPs (including Ian Murray MP, in his new post as the Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Arts at DCMS). Here are some of the key themes emerging from the sessions.
Education and skills
A common theme was that too many young people, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds, are missing out on creative opportunities. The decline in creative education was a common talking point, with references to a 42% drop in Art GCSE uptake since 2010, and a 66% fall in expressive arts teacher training since 2020. There were calls for curriculum reform and investment into extracurricular opportunities to engage children and young people in creative activities both in and out of school.
Representation, access and inclusion
Speakers stressed that exclusions persist in creative audiences and workforces, which are not representative of the UK’s diverse communities (an issue we have covered in depth in our reports and State of the Nations series). Diversity and inclusion interventions require upfront investment, whether it’s adapting infrastructure or reforming recruitment processes, which risk being de-prioritised given the challenging fiscal environment faced by parts of the sector.
AI and Intellectual Property
AI and its impact on the creative industries was a hot topic across panels, spoken about both optimistically and with caution. In their fringe panel, UK Music shared how AI tools are emerging which help artists and the industry track popularity, innovate in production and even recreate past works. Despite the opportunities of AI, there was collective concern about intellectual property and AI: how do we make sure creatives give permission, get recognised and get renumeration for their work? This is an area earmarked for future research and policy debate.
Finance and investment
It is well known that access to finance is consistently harder for smaller creative businesses, grant-reliant organisations and early career creatives (our report with Creative UK goes into more depth on this). Tax reliefs across the sector were recognised as helpful, but there was a growing call for innovation in funding models, particularly around recognising IP as an asset to unlock loans and investment into creative industries.
Place-based creative growth
Examples of place-based case studies were used often during panels, showing where creativity has transformed local areas through the repurposing of disused buildings, the building of community-focused initiatives or the development of multipurpose cultural spaces. A common thread was the importance of political buy-in at all levels, from MPs to mayors, alongside community buy-in. Without both, projects risk being short-lived.
What next? Key takeaways for the creative industries
Across the speeches and panels, there were cross-cutting threads highlighting ongoing policy implications for the UK’s creative sectors.
- Cross-departmental working across central government is critical, especially when there are common objectives. In the light of new Government announcements and the Creative Industries Sector Plan, DCMS must advocate within government and collaborate further with departments like DSIT, DfE, Treasury, DBT, DESNZ and the Home Office to embed support for the creative industries.
- Increasing creative education opportunities and skills training is crucial for growth. For children and young people, access to creative activities should be a core part of their lives both in and outside of school. For adults, access to creative skills provisions must be improved to improve career pathways.
- Devolution must be about all places. The Secretary of State’s announcements signal a shift to place-based support which includes rural, coastal and smaller towns, which will need local government buy-in.
- AI regulation is increasingly key. The creative industries want clarity on how AI will be governed, particularly around creative protection and reimbursement.
- The UK’s creative soft power remains a real strength and requires more support for cultural diplomacy and export strategies.
- While there were numerous fringe programmes on net zero policy and climate change, environmental sustainability wasn’t a major feature of discussions around the creative industries this year – something to watch given the sector’s increasing call for green initiatives.
Wrap up on Labour Party Conference 2025
The Labour Party conference this year made it clear that the party is positioning creativity as central to the socioeconomic renewal of the UK, with a focus now on how sector-focused policy will be delivered by Government at the local level. With the implementation of the new Creative Industries Sector Plan and Industrial Strategy, we hope to see more opportunities emerge to support our cultural and creative industries.
Read more from Creative PEC’s policy team.
