EU fact of the week
date: 13/07/2018
Creative Europe in the UK
Creative Europe is the European Commission programme which supports culture and the audiovisual sectors. It builds on the achievements of the previous Culture and MEDIA programmes and currently has an overall budget of €1.46 billion (£1.2 billion). It has three sub-programmes: one for culture sector initiatives which promote cross-border cooperation and literary translation; a second one for the audiovisual sector which supports the development, distribution and access to audiovisual works and a cross sectoral strand which includes a guarantee facility and transnational policy cooperation.
On 10 July, the British Council published two reports on the impact of Creative Europe in the UK. They show that in 2017 alone the UK's audiovisual, creative and cultural industries received €16.6 million (around £15 million) funding from Creative Europe. But their findings also highlight that funding by this programme greatly outweighs its monetary value by for example amplifying the circulation of UK films and cultural projects outside of the UK. On average, some 60-70 UK films receive EU support for distribution in Europe every year. UK movies that have received various types of support from Creative Europe include The King's Speech, Pride, Two Faces of January, The Iron Lady, Paddington and most recently Revolting Rhymes, an adaptation of the Roald Dahl book, and Loving Vincent, both of which were in the Oscars' 2018 selection.