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Britain’s world-leading creative industries are set to consolidate the country’s position as a global creative powerhouse, following a groundbreaking new Industrial Strategy deal agreed between government and the Creative Industries Council (CIC) on behalf of the sector.

The launch of the Creative Industries Sector Deal sees more than £150 million being jointly invested by government and industry to help cultural and creative businesses across Britain thrive.

The UK Games Fund and Tranzfuser projects both feature in the paper with detail on increased government support; additional funding of £0.5m will be provided in 2018/19 and, as announced in the Budget, the government will provide an additional £1m to extend the programmes until 2020.

Paul Durrant, UK Games Fund Chief Executive, said:

The Creative Industries Sector Deal is great news for our community. The confirmation of funding through to 2020 also means we can run Tranzfuser this year and next year. The Deal is a platform for us to build other opportunities and initiatives upon and we’ll be contributing to the Access to Finance programmes and anything else that supports the early-stage games development community.

The Sector Deal aims to double Britain’s share of the global creative immersive content market by 2025, which is expected to be worth over £30 billion by 2025. To seize on the opportunity of this expanding market, government is investing over £33 million in immersive technologies such as virtual reality video games, interactive art shows and augmented reality experiences in tourism.

Britain is already leading the way in developing immersive technologies. PWC has predicted that the UK’s virtual reality industry will grow at a faster rate than any other entertainment and media industry between 2016 to 2021, reaching £801 million in value, and that by 2021 there will be 16 million virtual reality headsets in use in the UK.

Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Matt Hancock, said:

Britain’s creative industries are an economic and cultural powerhouse and this ambitious deal will make sure they continue to thrive as we build a Britain fit for the future.

Our creative industries will help develop the talent of the future, ensure people are rightly rewarded for their creative content and give our firms the support they need to compete on the global stage. Millions of people around the world enjoy our world-class artistic and cultural output and we want Britain to stay a frontrunner in these vibrant sectors.