The geography of the UK’s creative and high–tech economies

This NESTA report is the first systematic analysis of employment in the UK’s creative and high-tech economies. It analyses their size, growth and distribution across the country.

The UK’s economic future depends on the performance of its creative and high-tech industries. These are sectors where the UK is recognised as a world leader. They are innovative, fast growing, and offer jobs that are less likely to be automated, providing sustainable future employment.

In The geography of the UK’s creative and high-tech economies, Nesta maps for the first time the geography of the creative economy according to the official classification, and the high-tech economy. The report covers the creative and high-tech economies’ size, segmentation, growth and geographic distribution around the country.

The report shows that the creative and high-tech economy are large and rapidly expanding employers, with creative economy employment growing particularly swiftly. It finds that the creative economy is unevenly distributed around the country, and as a result calls for government policy to better support creative clusters across the UK.