Is the UK creative industry still too London-centric?

Creative talent exists far beyond London, but opportunity still clusters around the capital. Journalist Abbey Bamford reflects on growing up and studying in the North before moving south, speaking to Northern Design Festival founders Antonia Arbova and Niamh Cartwright about access, regional ambition, and what it really takes to build a creative career outside London.

I’ve always been a proud Northerner. I grew up in a small industrial town between Liverpool and Manchester, and studied at Lancaster University, but I still felt I had to move to London to give myself the best chance to succeed.

I never really wanted to live in the capital, but thought it was a necessity to be able to get a job in my chosen field. Journalism, like so many creative industries, seems to have this gravitational pull towards London. It’s where the jobs, the editors, the networks, the internships, and the “why don’t you come to this event” opportunities all seem to be.

Journalism was already a turbulent industry, and really I just wanted to make it slightly easier for myself to break into it. Even so, within two years of getting my dream job, I was made redundant, forcing me to pivot into freelance life earlier than expected.

The centre of gravity

After five years in London, the idea of leaving is actually pretty hard to comprehend. Moving back up north would likely mean a pay cut and fewer in-person opportunities, not to mention the voice in my head telling me I’ve failed if I can’t make it here.

But that is the problem. It’s not that creativity doesn’t exist outside London, but that so much of the industry still teaches people to believe proximity equals possibility and success.

Post-Covid, I thought that might change, because remote work was supposed to decentralise everything, meaning smaller studios could reach international clients and creative careers could (in theory) be built anywhere. Antonia Arbova and Niamh Cartwright, founders of Northern Design Festival, explain that shift from their perspective.

“We have seen smaller agencies reach international clients and clients across the country that they might not have initially, but from a job opportunity perspective, it’s still so prevalent that the jobs you feel really passionate about are often in London,” says Niamh.

Niamh felt this sharply after being made redundant in March this year. After years of championing northern creativity, the job market was a reality check. “I was like, okay, we’re not actually there yet,” she says.

Like me, Niamh had done everything she was supposed to do, getting a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and spending years building experience around the industry she wanted to work in. Yet even after following the “right” path on paper, both of us still found ourselves questioning where exactly stable creative careers were supposed to exist outside London.

The Design Council’s Design Economy report shows how uneven the picture remains. London’s design economy was worth £27.18bn in 2019, far outstripping every other region. The South East followed at £19.73bn, while the North West reached £8.04bn and Yorkshire and Humber £5.12bn. Growth is happening outside the capital – Scotland saw a 33% rise, the North West 14% – but the centre of gravity is still glaringly obvious.

Opportunity still comes with a postcode

Statistics only tell part of the story. The rest is experienced through ever-increasing train fares, unpaid placements, vanished junior roles and the assumption that if you really want it, you’ll find a way to get to London.

Surprisingly, both Antonia and Niamh actually grew up in London, but studied at Lancaster. “The festival itself was born out of understanding our privilege,” Antonia says. “I did two internships in London because my parents lived there. If they didn’t, I would have had to pay thousands just to take those opportunities.”

The fact that its founders are Londoners makes it impossible to say that Northern Design Festival is rooted in northern defensiveness. Their argument isn’t “North good, South bad”, but that access should not depend on your parents’ postcode.

Antonia says: “In London, there’s opportunity but no community. In the North, there’s community but no opportunity.”

One of the biggest issues, both founders say, is the shortage of junior opportunities. Northern studios often need people who can contribute immediately, making a “junior” someone with two years’ experience and the confidence to work without much support.

“At the end of the day, junior designers are the future of the design industry,” says Niamh. “But if you’re cutting out those junior roles or making them difficult to access, how is anyone going to get their foot in the door?”

So, now we’re left with this strange contradiction, where London feels unaffordable, but still offers more job security. Outside of the capital, the stakes feel higher because opportunities are fewer and networks more fragile.

How long will the North be “emerging”?

Regional creativity is still too often described as “emerging”, as if Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow or Newcastle have only just discovered design. Niamh pushes back on that, saying “using words like emerging can make it feel secondary,” and adding “Our North Star is making creativity synonymous with the North.”

The answer is not to replace one centre with another or to turn this into a tired North-versus-South argument. The question is whether every region gets to build creative careers with the same visibility and investment. That means studios working with local universities and paid internships, and media looking beyond London by default, not as a novelty.

The fact is, the UK creative industry is not short of talent outside London. It is short of structures that allow that talent to stay and grow there.

Until leaving London or staying up north stops feeling like leaving your career behind, we cannot honestly say the industry has decentralised.