Andy Burnham has said that Britain will value the hard hat every bit as much as the graduation cap in a swathe of new education reforms announced to tackle the one million young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs). But when we face a crisis so large, we can’t limit the definition of technical training to a hard hat, argues Olivier Robert-Murphy, CEO and Vice-Chancellor of BIMM University.
Technical Pathways Must Include Creative Roles
From 2028, 14-year-olds in England will be able to choose technical pathways alongside English and maths, giving pupils vocational skills, work experience and direct links to employers. It’s a positive start, but the success of this initiative depends on what we picture when we think ‘technical’.
Robert-Murphy, who has more than 20 years in the music and film business and now runs a university that trains musicians, filmmakers, performers and games artists, sees a sound engineer balancing a live mix in front of 10,000 people, a games developer, and a virtual production technician lighting a scene that exists only inside a computer. These are inherently “technical” jobs that just happen to live in the creative industries.
Creative Industries Leading AI Adoption
Over half of creative businesses (51%) already use AI compared with 33% of UK businesses overall. Rather than being swallowed by it, the creative industries are leading the way in AI adoption. AI can generate a track or a script in seconds, but it needs creatives to deliver taste, nerve, timing or soul.
The creative sector adds nearly £146 billion into the UK economy every year, and since 2010 its output was more than double the wider economy (60.3% vs 24.3% GVA). Within individual industries, the UK video games industry is the largest in Europe. Film and high-end television attracted £5.8 billion in inward investment in 2025, making Britain one of the biggest production locations outside the US. Music employs 220,000 people and generated £4.8 billion in exports in 2024. Creative services exports were worth an estimated £59.4 billion in 2023.
CreaTech Sector Forecast to Create 160,000 Jobs
CreaTech, the fusion of creative and technology skills from games engines to AI-assisted design tools, is forecasted to create 160,000 jobs over the next decade, growing around 10 times faster than the rest of the creative industries. It’s a sector that’s actively growing in the AI age, and yet, it is treated as nothing more than a “Mickey Mouse” field.
Robert-Murphy says Burnham’s reforms must seriously consider the creative sector as one of its greatest national assets that continues to grow – 14-year-olds should be able to see the route to the recording studio and the building site. Burnham risks missing out on one of Britain’s strongest assets. Parity between the hard hat and the graduation cap must include the creative sector. That is where Britain's future is already being made.
