Creative UK and Triodos Bank launch new £35 million Creative Growth Finance II fund
Creative UK and Bristol-based ethical bank Triodos have launched a new creative industries investment fund to support the UK’s ambitions to grow the sector by £50 billion and create one million extra creative jobs by 2030.
The £35 million Creative Growth Finance II (CGF II) fund aims to provide the crucial investment needed to meet the targets set out in the UK government and Creative Industries Council’s recently published Sector Vision.
Delivered in partnership with Triodos Bank, CGF II is the largest single fund to be delivered by Bristol-based Creative UK, following its investment of more than £50 million into the UK’s world-leading Creative Industries over the past decade.
CGF II continues the success of the first Creative Growth Finance fund, which launched in 2019 and has since invested over £17 million into more than 30 creative businesses located across the UK and operating within sectors including Film & TV, Virtual Production, narrative-based Video Games, Advertising and Software.
As of August 2023 the existing CGF fund portfolio has experienced an 108 per cent improvement of average monthly revenues, a 39 per cent headcount growth average with more than 225 jobs created, and nearly £19 million raised in further third party funding.
The success of Creative UK’s private investment activity builds on its legacy of using public financing to catalyse further private investment.
Between 2012-17, Creative UK invested £20 million in public funds into creative companies, achieving a 99 per cent loan repayment rate, a three year business survival rate of 83 per cent - compared to a national average of 60 per cent - and generating an additional £4 of private capital for every £1 of public money.
Creative UK CEO Caroline Norbury OBE said: “Over the past decade the UK’s Creative Industries have grown more than 1.5 times the rate of the wider economy, currently generating £108 billion in economic value and employing 2.3 million people.
"However, this country’s talented creative businesses are experiencing a significant gap between their immense growth potential and access to the vital capital they need to succeed.
“In launching the Creative Industries Sector Vision, the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak acknowledged the “enormous potential of our creative entrepreneurs and businesses” and said that “growing the economy means growing the creative industries”.
"However, the potential of the Creative Industries risks being unfulfilled if the creators and innovators whose talents power our growth are unable to access the capital and financing they require.
“That’s where Creative UK comes in. We know that with the right investment, the power of the sector to drive growth and innovation across all corners of the UK can be truly transformative”.
Phillip Bate, director of business banking at Triodos Bank UK, said: “Four years on from the launch of the first Creative Growth Finance fund, our partnership with Creative UK goes from strength to strength and continues to support companies at the forefront of innovation.
"For a bank only focused on financing projects with positive impact, we can see the social importance of these organisations to the UK. Creative UK’s expertise has been key to helping us grow our funding of this important sector.”
Among the recipients of the Creative Growth Finance fund was Bristol-based visual effects studio Moonraker VFX, which has worked with many of the world’s top directors and film makers in the creation of computer generated imagery for world renowned broadcasters, including the BBC, Apple TV+, Netflix and Disney+.
Needing funding to support ambitions of creating its own IP – an immersive film to tell the story of future Moon landing missions and the permanent base being created there – Moonraker successfully applied for loans worth £700,000 through the Creative Growth Finance fund and released their ambitious film, Moonbase: The Next Step in December 2022.
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Jon Grafton, MD and co-founder, said: “We wanted to partner with an organisation that understood the creative industries.
"A high street bank is unlikely to appreciate the film-making and creative process, whereas working with Creative UK, it’s obviously an area they know incredibly well.
"They understand the model of what we were doing and it feels so much better to work with a party who really get what’s going on behind the scenes.”
