Heading out to Austin

Leaving tomorrow for the UK Arts Council’s second delegation of artists and producers to SXSWi.  So, on the eve of this portentous moment, what’s it all about then?

The UK has one of the brightest and most significant creative industries economies in the world – contributing nearly £60bn a year into the UK economy, about 7.3% of the whole.  To put it in context, that’s twice as much value as tourism and about as big as the financial services sector was at its peak.

The creativity, expression and ideas that underpin the creative economy in the UK comes from the hundreds and thousands of artists making, showing and performing all over the country.  4,500 gigs happen in the UK every night, arts and cultural festivals spring up in every town, home grown digital and internet content is created in people’s houses up and down the country.

This wealth of creativity is represented by the people on this trip, who are off to Texas to drink in all that’s happening on the frontiers of digital.  The trip is about learning what’s going on in the rest of the world as well as connecting with each other.  And it’s about making the links between individual artists, the cultural industries that produce and show the work, and the creative industries beyond.