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The Sharpie® Creativity Index Charts the Rise of Britain as a Creative Super Power and identifies the UK’s Top 20 Creative Towns

Cool Britannia? Creative Britannia more like… From the Beatles to Brit Pop, from David Hockney to Damian Hirst - we’ve always prided ourselves on being a creative nation - now the first report of its kind attempts to measure how creative we really are and can reveal Britain’s top 20 creative towns.

The Sharpie® Creativity Index is a unique piece of research carried out by Future Laboratory and Sharpie® Markers using an extensive panel of experts and sources.

It definitively reveals how important creativity is to business and as part of the social fabric of British lives:

• In 2006, over 42 million of us visited an art gallery, more than attended a football match
• Creative industries are growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy and contribute 8.2% of GDP (according to government body UK Trade & Investment)
• The creative industries are also now an acknowledged strategic priority for Regional Development Agencies (many worked with us on the Sharpie® Index)
• The number of design and art students climbed by 35% between 1995 and 2002
• A total of £826m was spent on arts and craft products, up £400m from 10 years ago (according to the Arts Council)
• Art investment is becoming increasingly popular with 11% of the population buying a piece by a living artist

The UK’s top 20 creative towns were identified by establishing a set of key criteria to index each town and city against, these include core elements such as a town’s creative output (number of patents, residents employed in creative industry, creative award short lists), the creative funding it receives (Arts Council and National Lottery grants) and creative consumption of the people who live there (number of festivals and fairs, percentage of residents who attended a local gallery/ museum).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, London was highlighted as the most creative town in the UK, followed closely by Manchester and Liverpool respectively. Our research found however that its not ‘grim up north’ its innovative! The Sharpie® Creativity Index showed that creativity in Britain is being driven by Northern and Scottish cities - such as Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle and Nottingham - with only two other Southern cities, Bristol and Brighton making it into the final top ten.

Top 20 Creative Towns in the UK:

• London
• Manchester
• Liverpool
• Glasgow
• Brighton
• Edinburgh
• Birmingham
• Leeds
• Sheffield
• Bristol
• Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
• Nottingham
• Huddersfield
• Cardiff
• St Ives
• Oxford
• Cambridge

Jemma Montuschi, Sharpie® Brand Manager comments; ‘The research shows that creativity in Britain is at an all time high and that Britons should pride themselves on their status as a creative super power. Our aim is to get the message across to Britons to ‘Express Yourself’ and for the UK to return to its creative roots. In recent years public belief is that levels of creativity and self-expression have dropped, but our research proves this is not the case and gives the whole nation something to celebrate, with both the north and south contributing to the creative make up of Britain.’

Nick Park, Creator of Wallace and Gromit says: ‘I have always felt that Britain was a world leader in the Arts, Music, Literature, Graphics and Design, both traditionally and currently. I am proud to be part of that tradition. Britain is full of creative people and there are wonderful creative pockets.’