The Creative Industries Sector Plan sets out an ambitious plan to double investment and position the UK as the best place in the world to create and invest in creative content by 2035. For the visual arts—often underrepresented in industrial strategy—this plan includes explicit recognition, growing policy traction, and significant opportunity for future shaping, particularly in infrastructure, education, and innovation.
Visual Arts Recognised as a High-Potential Growth Sub-Sector
Visual arts are formally recognised as a high-potential growth sub-sector alongside music and performing arts for the first time. The UK’s position as the second-largest art market in the world is highlighted, as is the broader role of visual arts in exports, place-making, and talent development.
This recognition reflects years of work by CVAN and the wider sector to position visual arts as cultural infrastructure and an engine for innovation, regeneration, and economic value.
CVAN will work with the Creative Industries team at DCMS to explore how this designation can be translated into meaningful investment—connecting visual arts to programmes led by UKRI, the British Business Bank, and other strategic institutions.
CVAN’s Policy Influence Recognised
Many of the commitments align with long-term policy goals laid out by CVAN in:
- Reframed: Visual Arts Policy Priorities
- Framing the Future: The Political Case for the Visual Arts
- Our submissions to the Curriculum and Assessment Review
- The sector’s formal response to the Industrial Strategy consultation
These policy interventions have helped shape the Government’s focus on infrastructure, education, freelance equity, and data visibility.
Unlocking Investment and Finance
Working alongside Creative UK, CVAN is actively exploring how to unlock new sources of investment for artist-led and IP-rich enterprises. The government’s commitment to increasing access to IP-backed finance and expanding British Business Bank support for the creative industries is a step in the right direction.
The visual arts sector—particularly those outside London and the South East—must now have access to an industry-led “single front door” for investment advice and clearer public-private pathways.
CVAN London and the Supercluster Opportunity
We strongly support the government’s move to champion London as a “Creative Industries Supercluster”, backed by over £10 million in new investment. CVAN London has a vital role in ensuring the visual arts ecosystem—studios, curators, galleries, institutions, and artist-led spaces—is fully represented in the capital’s growth plans.
As investment flows into the East Bank, Smithfield, and beyond, this is a chance to embed visual arts into London’s global creative leadership, ensuring inclusion, affordability, and diversity remain at the core.
Influencing Frontier Industries
The government identifies key Frontier Industries—screen, games, music—as focus areas for accelerated growth. CVAN sees enormous potential for the visual arts to intersect with and influence these industries, particularly through:
- Cross-sector working in digital production, XR and AI;
- Visual artists contributing to games, theatre and immersive media;
- Innovation in IP, licensing and collections-based storytelling.
We will continue to advocate for visual artists to be recognised as creative R&D drivers rather than just content suppliers.
Six Mayoral Authorities: Strategic Leverage
The new £150 million Creative Places Growth Fund, devolved to six mayoral strategic authorities—West Midlands, West of England, West Yorkshire, the North East, Liverpool City Region and Greater Manchester—is one of the most significant local levers for the visual arts.
CVAN’s regional networks are already active in these areas. We will ensure that visual arts are embedded in their creative growth strategies, with place-based investment going into studios, public programmes, education partnerships, and new infrastructure.
Education and Talent: Building the Pipeline
CVAN welcomes the renewed focus on creative education and the refreshed £9 million Creative Careers Programme. Our submission to the Curriculum and Assessment Review (via the Creative Education Coalition) clarified the urgent need to protect visual arts in schools and build future talent pipelines.
We will continue campaigning for curriculum reform and early career development that opens access to the sector, supports diverse talent, and recognises the value of visual literacy.
Business Rates: An Ongoing Barrier
The strategy recognises business rates as a barrier to growth, particularly for creative SMEs and physical spaces. CVAN has been actively working with DCMS to explore reforms that would support artist studios, project spaces, and non-profit visual arts infrastructure—spaces that often fall outside traditional relief frameworks.
As part of our national advocacy, we will continue to push for a business rates system that recognises the social and economic value of the visual arts and ensures equitable treatment for creative workspaces—especially in light of rising operating costs across the sector.
Freelance and Climate: Campaign Wins
Two key campaign wins have been included:
- The appointment of a Freelance Creative Champion, responding to years of pressure from CVAN and others to address precarity.
- The endorsement of the Creative Climate Charter validates the leadership role artists and visual arts organisations play in climate-conscious practice.
Making the Data Work for Visual Arts
Through our engagement with the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council and the Creative Industries Council, CVAN continues to advocate for data reform. The visual arts must be visible in national metrics, especially their freelance labour force, artist-led models, and regional diversity. Without this, access to investment and policymaking influence remains limited.
What’s Next
The strategy marks a significant shift: the visual arts are now formally recognised as a sector of strategic value. But this is only the beginning.
Delivery will happen at the local and institutional levels. CVAN will work with DCMS, UKRI, Creative UK, and the six Mayoral authorities to ensure the visual arts are actively connected to growth, finance, innovation and education systems.
The visual arts are not peripheral—they are foundational to how the UK will grow creatively, economically, and socially. CVAN will continue to ensure the sector is seen, supported, and embedded in the national strategy for decades.