BBC Arts and Arts Council England Unveil First New Creatives Commissions

Today we’re launching New Creatives - our new talent development scheme to support emerging artists and makers in England.

Along with the Now And Next scheme in Scotland, Two Minute Masterpieces in Northern Ireland and soon to launch Ffolio in Wales, New Creatives will find and nurture emerging talent and, we hope, the stars of the future - under the BBC Introducing Arts banner on air. And we are particularly focused on finding those new artistic voices that can often be under represented in the arts and media sectors.

What is New Creatives?

Over two years we hope to give around 600 emerging creatives the chance to develop their creative and technical skills. They will also benefit from hands-on expert mentoring and most will have their work broadcast across BBC platforms. Today, the first tranche of those commissions from England - in video and audio - are making their way to audiences across our platforms.

Made in partnership with Arts Council England and our New Creatives Regional Hubs - Tyneside Cinema, Rural Media, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Screen South and Calling The Shots - the New Creatives pieces you will see and hear from today and over the coming months give an insight into subjects that matter most to our younger audiences and include drama, film, comedy, music, animation, soundscapes and spoken word poetry.

Topics encompass many areas: from mental health and grief, to love, health, technology and our new digital world, and beyond - all explored in a unique way by a new generation of diverse younger voices wanting to be heard.

BBC Arts is the biggest creator of arts content in the UK, working with the sector to be a hot house for creative artistic talent. We constantly strive to not only innovate but also to invest in quality, giving unique access to arts and culture programming with the licence fee. Our aim is to showcase more arts and culture than any other broadcaster and work with partners to be a bold force in the creative sector; as a creator and a commissioner but also, importantly, as a platform for new talent.

With New Creatives and BBC Introducing Arts, we want to give emerging artists the confidence to innovate, explore and really push boundaries whilst also nurturing and supporting them as they take that all-important next step in their careers.

The importance of the arts

The arts matter for so many reasons: for sharing ideas and perspectives, asking important questions, for helping us to understand our world; and they have been proven to be essential for our well-being. With BBC Introducing Arts we want to make sure that the voices we hear from and those that benefit are as diverse and as inspiring as the country itself.

BBC Introducing Arts is an integral part of the BBC’s Culture UK Partnership framework. Launched in April, 2017 by Tony Hall, Culture UK pledged the Artists First commissioning budget to help co-fund and co-curate new works, so that more artists and arts organisations could be media producers and develop new business models to produce unique arts content for new audiences.

You can watch some of the first BBC Introducing Arts commissions now on BBC iPlayer in a special programme entitled BBC Introducing Arts: Short Films, New Talent and listen to New Creatives audio dramas on BBC Sounds. On 29 September on BBC Four, watch Rhyme And Reason, a compilation of BBC Introducing Arts films all inspired by poetry and the spoken word.

That’s not all.

Over the coming months BBC Introducing Arts commissions will be on BBC Radio Three as part of The Verb, Radio 4 as part of Front Row, BBC Local Radio, and shared across our digital and social media platforms. And other BBC platforms will follow.

Want to watch and listen to the New Creatives short films and audio dramas? They're all available here.