Future visions for creative technology

Authors: Dr Vicki Williams, Noemi Ponzoni and Cimeon Ellerton-Kay

This blog introduces participatory policy‑foresight methodology developed by the CoSTAR Foresight Lab to co‑create and test long‑term policy interventions.

The methodology was used to inform a series of workshops delivered for the DCMS and AHRC in collaboration with the Creative PEC. This blog has been published as a complementary paper to the ‘Future avenues for createch’ recommendations report. An open version of the policy-foresight workshop methodology used in this study is available below.

Read and download the full report here.

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The provocation: 2035

The year 2035 features 37 times across the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, with the accompanying Sector Plans setting out long-term visions of the Government’s priority sectors (IS8).

“By 2035, the UK’s position as a global creative superpower will be enhanced with the UK becoming the number one destination worldwide for investment in creativity and innovation” - Creative Industries Sector Plan

“By 2035, our vision is for the UK to be one of the top three places in the world to create, invest in and scale-up a fast-growing technology business. We will aim to secure the UK’s first trillion-dollar technology business.” - Digital and Technology Sector Plan

The Data City argues that an industrial strategy should support future strengths, not only today’s, emphasising the need to nurture sectors where the UK aims to lead in 10–20 years.¹

The UK is positioning itself as a leader in emergent creative technologies, a sector projected to generate £18bn in GVA and 160,000 jobs over the next decade.²

As such, getting ahead of the opportunities and challenges to achieve this growth is vital.

Beyond the Creative Industries Sector Plan’s ambition to “harness the power of creators, entrepreneurs and investors, and establish the UK as a global leader in the emerging ‘createch’ sector”,³ other Government strategies reinforce ambitions relevant to creative technology growth:

2030 priority skills: the Creative and Digital and Technologies Industries are estimated to have the highest additional employment demand up to 2030 out of all frontier industries.⁴
2030-2035 AI adoption and education: ambition to train 7.5m UK workers with essential AI skills by 2030 – with a £187m investment to bring digital skills and AI learning into classrooms and communities.⁵Tech adoption set to increase real GDB by 8% in 2035.
2035 scaling businesses: by 2035, the UK’s Digital and Technology Sector will be the leading European Hub to create, invest in and scale a fast-growing business.⁶
2035 innovation and content creation: by 2035, the UK will be a global leader in data-driven innovation and content creation, with a robust, secure and interoperable data-sharing infrastructure.⁷

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Foresight methodologies in action

As part of the CoSTAR Network, the CoSTAR Foresight Lab identifies key opportunities, challenges and barriers likely to shape the future of the Creative Industries, with a particular focus on how technology will transform the sector.

The Lab undertakes robust horizon scanning and tracks signals of change through primary and secondary research and extensive stakeholder engagement. Its aim is to inform stakeholders across industry, policy, investment and academia about the developments most likely to shape the sector’s future trajectory. Using interdisciplinary foresight methods, the Lab co-develops scenarios and articulates diverse future visions to support more intentional, future‑oriented planning over the next 5–10 years.

Identifying ‘areas of complexity’

The research process combines qualitative and quantitative methods across two lenses:

Moments examines systemic shifts and signals of change;
Humans explores emerging behaviours and design possibilities for the sector’s workforce, end users, creators and audiences.

From more than 20 emerging themes related to converged media, creative practice and technological disruption, three key areas of complexity were refined and validated with the Lab’s Foresight Board. Themes were assessed against urgency, probability, reach and impact, and mapped using two intersecting axes to indicate potential future directions and inform scenario development.

While long‑term policy ambition is essential, desired futures will only be realised through targeted interventions. Programmes such as Creative Futures and future Creative Clusters must therefore anticipate emerging opportunities and challenges.

The three high impact areas underpinning workshop design were:

· Machine learning futures / who gets to own machine learning?

· Digital platforms and the facilitation of culture

· The evolution of creative work.

Early introduction: place-led and regional

In the second half of 2025, the CoSTAR Foresight Lab ran a series of ‘Creative Technology Futures’ workshops with devolved administrations, regional policy partners and Combined Authorities, using accessible foresight methods to surface key regional challenges and opportunities. These workshops highlighted emerging themes shaping local Growth Plans and policy development, explored through utopian and dystopian 2035 trajectories. Findings will be published in an upcoming report.

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‘Createch’ series workshop design

The Lab also supported the design of an engagement series addressing the long‑term growth of ‘createch’ in the UK, published in UKRI’s Future Avenues for Createch report as part of DCMS’s Innovation Moment. The workshops were delivered in partnership with the Creative Policy and Evidence Centre (Creative PEC).

The sessions aimed to inform future policy interventions to support creative technology businesses, with a particular focus on UKRI’s forthcoming Creative Industries R&D Strategy and the DCMS Creative Industries Sector Plan, while also shaping future research priorities for Creative PEC and CoSTAR.

Building on the Lab’s identified areas of complexity and questions set by DCMS, the methodology established six group themes, each linked to core challenge areas:

1. IP, innovation and creative content(Core challenges: innovation, investment and scale up)

2. Cross-sector collaboration and spillover(Core challenges: interdisciplinary research and knowledge sharing)

3. Participation, distribution and access(Core challenges: equity and place-based opportunity)

4. New modes and mediums(Core challenges: R&D, definition and measurement)

5. Creative technology skills and education(Core challenges: skills and education)

6. Technology adoption, workforce and workflows(Core challenges: adoption and diffusion, workforce development)

These themes provided a jumping off point for futures design, with the participatory workshops built around scenario building and backcasting exercises.

An open version of the policy-foresight workshop methodology used in this study is available, alongside a practical workshop template, to support adaptation and reuse across different policy and place-based contexts.