We need to address the skills void in the cultural and heritage sector

It’s been a year since the closure of Creative and Cultural Skills (CCSkills), an organisation that championed the development of talent and workforce in the cultural and heritage sectors. Its closure marked a shift in the landscape of skills development for these sectors, leaving a void that has yet to be addressed.

The early years of CCSkills involved a rigorous body of research, analysis and consultation with employers, government, education, unions and creative and cultural stakeholders. This culminated in the publication of Creative Blueprint England, a sector skills agreement for the creative and cultural industries that was published in 2008.

The blueprint identified critical skills and workforce issues inhibiting the growth of the cultural and creative sectors which, over the course of its twenty-year history, CCSkills focused on addressing.

Connection industry and education

CCSkills played a key role in advocating creative careers and helping educators and careers professionals to understand the routes into them. It worked to connect industry and education, developing and promoting apprenticeships and other work-based entry routes.

It also supported employers in navigating these pathways as well as wider workforce planning, while showcasing best practice. In its final years, CCSkills acknowledged the need for its own change and was working in partnership to renew its work at the local level while reestablishing a research role. Unfortunately, time was not on its side.

Soon after the announcement of its closure, the late Pauline Tambling, former CEO of CCSkills wrote an article highlighting the deeper story behind the closure. She pointed out “the sector’s unwillingness to engage with mainstream government skills policy, preferring to do things its own way – however much it costs, and however much influence it loses“.

Creative skills are a priority

The cost of staying away from the education and skills mainstream has never felt more perilous in a political environment so focused on breaking down the barriers to opportunity and creating growth.

Creative skills are prioritised in Labour’s arts, culture and creative industries plan. And the Green Paper towards a new industrial strategy identifies the creative industries as one of eight growth-driving sectors. Creative industry-led growth is also increasingly important locally, with devolution giving local leaders the economic tools they need to drive it.

Skills England is part of a wider push to create a new, streamlined skills system, underpinned by devolution while strengthening central coordination to drive change at all levels.

Sector representative bodies are gearing up to play a more engaged and pivotal role, likely to include sharing sector-informed intelligence, developing new skills initiatives, piloting trials and contributing to the roll-out of subsequent full-scale programmes.

It is unclear how sectors outside of the Skills Federation family can engage in these strategic conversations, connect with the national skills plan and participate in programmes. In other words, without CCSkills at the table, this new system will evolve without the cultural and heritage sectors.

No mechanism for making its voice heard

So, despite a political landscape that recognises the power of creative industries-led growth, and the importance of nurturing creative skills, the part of the creative industries previously covered by CCSkills has no mechanism for making its voice heard.

This might not be a cause for concern if the threats to the creative workforce originally identified by CCSkills had been resolved. But many of them remain just as challenging today, and there is growing evidence of a skills exodus of arts professionals from their increasingly ‘joyless’ jobs.

A literature review, commissioned by CCSkills in 2023, was designed to explore whether there had been any changes to the recruitment challenges and skills gaps facing the sector since 2018, when CCSkills had last investigated. Because of the organisation’s sudden closure, this work has been lost, but the conclusion was that the challenges are largely unchanged.

More evidence has emerged since, with several reports pointing to the looming supply crisis for creative talent due to a decade of declining creative education. And the recently published Clore Leadership Report Imagine It Different underscores the many challenges facing the sector.

The radical and systemic change called for by cultural leaders involved in Clore’s study requires a sustained focus on the nature of work and how best to attract and develop talent and build creative workforces.

Diminishing talent pipeline

We believe it remains critical to have a body advocating for the cultural and heritage sectors in a rapidly evolving skills landscape, and that there’s an urgent related need to focus on good work and healthy workforce development. Indeed, this is long overdue, as the Policy and Evidence Centre’s seminal examination of Good Work in the Creative Industries shows.

Without also focusing on good work, initiatives promoting workforce entry routes will continue to fall short. And without having an advocate for skills, the sector will miss funding and programming opportunities that other growth sectors will quickly swallow up.

A diminishing talent pipeline will mean fewer people entering the sector and an ongoing picture of low levels of investment in training, unclear career and progression pathways and sector complexity will continue to make creative careers more difficult than they should be.

Research has shown that good work helps individuals and communities withstand short-term shocks and adapt to long-term transformations. It supports good health and fosters a sense of cooperation and solidarity, conditions that our sector badly needs as it imagines alternative futures.

It also needs to be able to access the opportunities in a new skills landscape so that the host of future skills interventions are accessible to all, from solo freelancers to hustling micro-businesses, as well as those within the industry giants.

So, how are we addressing the gap left by the closure of CCSkills? And where do skills rank on the extensive agenda to ensure that culture and heritage continue to thrive, innovate, and contribute meaningfully to society?