The Cultural and Creative Industries in Europe and Norway

I participated in the event WISE x HOUSE OF NORDIC VISIONS at the Nordic Embassies in Berlin yesterday. During the opening speech, Philipp Grefer mentioned various numbers for the size of the cultural and creative industries in Europe. His argument was tht the cultural and creativ industries are often treated as a “soft” policy area. However, economically speaking, they are not soft at all. Here is a blog post summarizing some numbers.

The cultural and creative industries

To begin with, here are some definitions from UNESCO’s 2005 Convention, Article 4:

• Cultural activities, goods, and services are those that embody or convey cultural expressions.
• Cultural industries are industries producing and distributing such goods or services.

In EU (and Norwegian) policy, the cultural and creative industries are operationalized into sectors such as books, media, music, audiovisual, architecture, design, games, performing arts, visual arts, and related creative services.

European numbers

According to EY/GESAC’s Rebuilding Europe study from 2021 (EU-28, pre-COVID baseline), here are some relevant numbers:

• Turnover (2019): EUR 643 billion
• Gross value added (2019): EUR 253 billion
• Share of EU GDP (turnover basis): 4.4%
• Employment (2019): 7.6 million people

Top turnover sub-industries in 2019:

• Visual arts: EUR 138 billion
• Advertising: EUR 129 billion
• Audiovisual: EUR 119 billion

Largest employment sub-industries (2019):

• Visual arts: 1.9 million
• Music: 1.2 million
• Audiovisual: 1.1 million
• Performing arts: 1.0 million

This is how it compares against sectors usually seen as “core industry”:

• CCI is about 1.4x GDP and 8.4x employment as telecommunications.
• CCI is about 2.3x GDP and 2.9x employment as automotive.

It should be mentioned that during the 2020 shock, the cultural and creative turnover fell by around 31% (from EUR 643 billion to EUR 444 billion), making it one of the hardest hit sectors.

Norwegian numbers

According to a SSB 2024 article, 93,600 people were employed in the cultural and creative industries in 2023, which accounts for around 3% of all employment in Norway. A Norwegian government roadmap from 2024 writes the following:

• Value added: NOK 52.2 billion in 2018 (about 2.9% of total value creation)
• Up from NOK 41.6 billion in 2008 (about +25%)
• Turnover: NOK 140.4 billion in 2018 (up from NOK 121.4 billion in 2008, about +15.7%)

Looking at some more SSB details, including Table 28 (turnover + employment) and Table 8 (employment by cultural area, incl. 2023/2024), we get the following numbers:

Figure: Turnover by selected Norwegian creative-industry sub-sectors (NOK billion, 2021).

In sum

The final panel at WISE focused on policy and investment. This is far outside my expertise, but it is interesting to note the following:

1. The cultural and creative industries are macro-economically large in Europe (~4.3% of EU GDP), not niche.
2. The numbers are slightly lower in Norway, but still about 3% of employment is within the cultural and creative industries.
3. The cultural and creative industries are diverse, covering “high-volume” segments (media, design, architecture, and advertising) and “high-cultural-value” segments (performing/visual arts)

In addition, it is important to note that the cultural and creative industries have significant impact beyond the economy and employment numbers. They are key for cultural heritage and development, and they also benefit greatly to education, well-being and the public health.

Thanks to CoPilot with Claude Sonnet 4.6 for help with scraping the numbers.