UNESCO report: the challenges faced by creative and cultural industries, strategies to recover
The creative and cultural sectors are considered as the youngest yet fastest growing economic sector in the world. According to data by UNESCO, these industries account for 3.1% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 6.2% of all employment.
Despite it all, these sectors were among the hardest hit by the pandemic, with over 10 million jobs lost in 2020 alone.
Moreover, the creative economy is considered as one of the most vulnerable sectors, as it tends to be overlooked by public and private investment. Public investment in culture has been declining over the last decade.
Hence, UNESCO came up with several goals and strategies needed to overcome such challenges, highlighting the importance of addressing culture as a global public good.
The first goal is to support sustainable governance for culture, by for instance protecting and promoting the diversity of cultural expressions and encouraging active participation. This can be done by partnering with civil society organisations (CSOs).
However, CSOs are faced with challenges such as fundings that are needed if they would like to be involved in cultural policy-making, monitoring and evaluation. Opportunities to co-create policies are also rather limited - this needs to be addressed soon.
The next goal is to achieve a balanced flow of cultural goods and services and increase the mobility of artists and cultural professionals. The global flow of cultural goods has been stagnating in these past three years.
In these sectors, the disparities between developed and developing countries are also still significant. Developed countries account for 95% of total employment exports of cultural services, leading the trade in these sectors.
The lack of aid for trade is one of the reasons that lead to such imbalances. For instance, lack of investment to support cultural MSMEs in developing countries, although such enterprises being essential for increasing local cultural production. This limits the overall capacity of the cultural and creative sectors to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth.
The third goal focuses on the efforts to integrate culture in sustainable development frameworks. It is a fact that these days, a lot of national development plans and sustainable development strategies have recognised the contribution of culture in advancing social or economic development outcomes, however, it tends to be not specific.
To add, intersectoral coordination mechanisms tend to overlook the needs and priorities of cultural stakeholders. This then hinders the holistic implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Moreover, climate action and environmental sustainability are still considered as blind spots in cultural policy. These areas are mostly ignored in climate strategies and environmental policies due to a lack of awareness, expertise and capacity.
Lastly, the last goal is to promote human rights and fundamental freedom, which are considered essential in order to promote cultural diversity. Here, gender equality and artistic freedom are used as the measures.
In terms of gender equality, although it started to be recognised as a priority for these industries, women are still under-represented in positions of leadership. In the culture and entertainment sector, for instance, 48.1% employers are women, yet gender equality is still considered as a distant prospect.
Women also have less access to public funding, and achieve less visibility and acknowledgement for their work than male counterparts, while suffering a disproportionate impact from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, in terms of artistic expression, although countries have revised laws affecting freedom of artistic expression, attacks on freedom of artistic expression still continue to prevail or even rise.
Creative professions also tend to be unstable and under regulated. The job status as artists also remains ambiguous, only a few that provide schemes for income protection or career transition for artists.