The creative arts sector is more important than they think (they just don’t know it yet)

Rethink why we voted for them in the first place.

Reskill those in power.

Reboot our Government’s sensitivity for the creative arts sector.

When this first came out and was littered amongst my social media, I undoubtedly laughed it off. But as I started coming across it more and more, my smile soon faded when I realised – it wasn’t a joke at all. It was in fact real, and was a campaign made by our very own in Parliament.

The Government are dishing out career advice, rather than providing funding to the freelancers and are informing people to retrain, give up on their livelihoods, their dream jobs and settle for one in an office. All the while, live entertainment in the arts sector is being lost – the very thing that keeps us sane in our day-to-day lives.

It seems utterly crude, patronising and crass to advise professional creatives, writers and explorers to do an abrupt u-turn, give up on what they’ve devoted their whole life to, and start something entirely new. Utterly incomprehensible to imagine that the Government would ever conjure up a thing.

I think it’s not about us rethinking our choices but more for the Government to rethink their whole attitude to the creative sector, because in one swoop, this sinister message has literally offended every person who has ever thought themselves as creatives.

The bold artists, actors, musicians, dancers, designers, stylists with their bold, brash ideas that do nothing but provide a necessity. Creativity and experiencing creativity is a necessity. With those in power ready to throw down the gauntlet and cast aside the creative sector, it may be high time for us to start thinking just how indispensable those in power are, too.

If you took away all things creative, what effect would that have on our mental health as a society? Surely that would just impact the NHS just as much? We don’t know it, but we appreciate them more than we think we do, and they should be here to stay.

This outlandish attack of some sorts is completely unwarranted too.

With the creative sector providing £10 billion a year to the UK economy, it seems that the Government have lost their place to how viable these unviable jobs really are.

With Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden reassuring this message is splayed to all individuals from “all walks of life” to get into cyber security jobs, it is hard to be reassured when the picture they don for the campaign, just happens to feature an individual who is within the creative sector – a sector that has been affected the most throughout.

And of course, the public has rebutted back in their way to such a campaign. And it’s bloody great.