East Bank Creative Academy

Using the Music is Black exhibition at the V&A as a catalyst, the East Bank Festival launched across four weekends in Summer 2026. The East Bank Creative Academy transformed this major cultural event into a live workplace for emerging creative talent, providing paid freelance commissions, professional development and industry exposure for young creatives living and working in East London.

Turning a Festival into a Creative Workplace

The Academy was created to give 18-30 year olds from Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest the chance to gain meaningful paid work within the creative industries. Participants worked directly on the delivery of the East Bank Festival across a range of disciplines, including:

• Event production

• Photography

• Videography

• Content creation and editing

• Audio and lighting technical support

• Creative communications and marketing

Over the summer, 15 freelancers were commissioned to work across the festival, receiving professional rates for their work while building skills, networks and industry experience. Whilst being housed at the Good Growth Hub and with A New Direction’s employability specialists, the freelancer cohort became part of the teams responsible for delivering the festival itself, working alongside partners including Continental Drifts, East Bank and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park marketing team.

Championing Local and Diverse Talent

In line with the Good Growth Hub’s remit to support hyper-local talent, every freelancer lived within one of the four Olympic boroughs, with participants living an average of just 3.5km from Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The cohort reflected the communities celebrated through the festival, with 67% identifying as Black or Black British.

For many, working on a festival dedicated to Black British music and culture created a powerful sense of belonging and representation. Freelancers highlighted the importance of seeing Black creatives represented not only on stage, but throughout the production, marketing and technical teams behind the event.

Delivering Outstanding Creative Work

The cohort produced videos, photography and social media assets that generated more than 268,000 views across six social media posts, with vox-pop videos among the strongest-performing content of the festival campaign.

Partners praised the quality of the work, describing it as highly professional and requiring very few revisions. All participating employers reported being very satisfied with the cohort’s outputs.

“From our perspective, the quality of the content that we got from the freelancers was… really high.” Harry Butterwick, QEOP marketing team

Building Confidence, Skills and Professional Networks

The Academy supported early-career creatives to develop through genuine professional experience.

By the end of the programme:

• 90% said the quality of their professional networks had improved.
• 90% said their peer networks had grown stronger.
• 80% reported increased confidence in freelancing.
• All surveyed freelancers were satisfied with their experience.
• All employer partners observed growth and development within the cohort.

Participants gained confidence in live-event environments, learned to work with clients and briefs, and developed practical skills through delivering a major cultural event.

Why this matters

The East Bank Creative Academy supports the Mayor of London’s priorities for a more inclusive creative economy. The draft new London Plan, published for consultation in July 2026, estimates that culture and the creative industries contribute around £50 billion annually to London’s economy and account for one in seven jobs. The London Growth Plan, launched in February 2025, identifies the creative industries as a key growth sector and commits to an Inclusive Talent Strategy.

GLA Economics found that London’s creative industries supported 795,500 jobs in 2021 (14.7% of all jobs in the capital), with 26.6% held by self-employed workers. Yet the sector remains less diverse than London as a whole: people from Black backgrounds held just 3.9% of creative industries jobs, compared with 9.1% across all sectors. People from ethnic minority and working-class backgrounds also have around half the chance of working in the sector as those from white, privileged backgrounds, while four in five jobholders have a degree.

Against this backdrop, the Academy has already supported career progression. Several freelancers have secured new opportunities through the programme, including repeat bookings, recommendations from festival partners, freelance contracts and collaborative work. One participant progressed into stage-management responsibilities during the final festival weekend, while another secured additional audio technician work.

The East Bank Creative Academy demonstrates the power of combining culture, place and opportunity. By embedding paid freelance roles within a major public festival, it gives local young creatives the chance to build careers while contributing meaningfully to a significant cultural event.

Connecting Talent to Future Opportunities

A New Direction's employment and skills team is focused on creating ongoing paid work for the cohort. To support this, freelancers have created a portfolio deck showcasing who they are, their specialisms and how to contact them.

Over the coming months, we are committed to launching a more public-facing talent directory to improve access to great local talent. In the meantime, download the portfolio deck and reach out to this year’s cohort.