The Government has released its Creative Industries Report prepared by the Department for Exiting the EU. You can read it here.
The opening paragraph makes it clear that this is not a sectoral impact study, so don’t expect ‘excruciating detail.’ It also covers a number of sub-sectors, so music is rather infrequently mentioned. A few interesting statements from it, however:
1. Apparently, amongst the creative industries, ‘Music, performing and visual arts have the lowest proportion of EU nationals working in the sector, with 4.1%.’
2. ’The Creative Industries exported £14.7bn worth of goods in 2015, 38.6% more than in 2010, and this represented 5.2% of total UK goods exports.’ Of these ‘“Music, performing and visual arts”, “Crafts”; and, “Publishing”’ were the highest export sub-sectors.
3. Whilst total exports to the EU are 39.4 (i.e. 60.6% to the rest of the world), in the realm of all Creative industries the ratio is 45% to the EU, 55% to the rest of the world. This rises to a whopping 56% to the EU in the case of ‘Music, performing and visual arts.’
The first statistic misses the point, I think—most musicians are coming and going and not settling in the UK i.e. they are still making use of freedom of movement. So this wrongly suggests that Brexit will not have a big impact on the sector. The second points to the relative strength of music, amongst others, as a sub-sector. We should be mindful of this when making our voices heard. That last statistic is perhaps the most troubling; because more than half of the sector’s exports go to the EU, it suggests that musicans may have greater exposure to the consequences of Brexit.