Subject Line: Support UK Creatives – The Smart Fund Initiative

Dear [INSERT MP NAME]
I am writing to you as a constituent of [INSERT CONSTITUENCY NAME], about the challenges facing the cultural and creative sectors, and an innovative proposal to support UK creatives, and provide much needed investment in culture across the UK.

Visual artists, writers, performers and screen directors are a crucial part of the UK’s successful creative industries, which generate £126 billion a year for the UK economy. However, the vast majority of creatives receive low pay, precarious income and a lack of funding support.

Low pay across the sector reduces access to the industry for many, including emerging talent and those from lower income backgrounds. It also results in a loss of talent from the creative industries in the long term.

Despite the overwhelming success of the UK’s Creative Industries both nationally and internationally and their importance to the UK’s soft power, UK creatives are being short changed by current policies and are at a disadvantage to their counterparts in 45 other countries, including almost every country in the EU. This is because these countries have in place private copying schemes, which provide a vital revenue stream for creatives.

Private copying schemes require manufacturers of tech devices to contribute a small percentage (typically 1-3%) of their revenues from sales of such devices into a scheme to support those who create and perform in the books, music, films, series or visual art that we love, and that we copy and store on our personal devices. Many existing schemes also include a deduction for public cultural funds. In France this amounted to 75million EUR reinvested into the arts in 2022.

Royalties are an essential income stream for artists and all creatives, and the Smart Fund, by providing reciprocity with similar schemes which exist overseas, would enable UK creatives to continue to benefit from those schemes (something which is under threat in some cases, post-Brexit), and help them to sustain their work. Critically, in other countries where private copying schemes have been introduced, there has been no increase in the price of devices to consumers.

In the UK, the campaign to establish such a scheme is known as the Smart Fund, and is proposed by a group collecting of societies representing authors, directors, performers and visual artists. The implementation of the Smart Fund has been backed by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in its report on Creator Remuneration.

The Smart Fund will:
Ensure creators and performers receive payments to compensate them for their work being copied, downloaded
and stored on digital devices.

Establish an independent committee which will sit outside of government and agree the scope and value of the remuneration.

Generate an estimated £300million a year in royalties, with a proportion used to support arts education, community projects or other grassroots arts projects, at no cost to the treasury or the public.

Level the playing field for UK creatives with other countries that have these mechanisms.

A full breakdown of the proposal and its benefits can be found at https://thesmartfund.co.uk/. I hope that you will support the Smart Fund, for the benefit of the creatives who live and work in [INSERT CONSTITUENCY] and the UK’s creative  economy as a whole. Please contact info@thesmartfund.co.uk for more information.

Yours sincerely,
[INSERT YOUR NAME]
[INSERT JOB E.G DIRECTOR, ARTIST, WRITER, PERFOMER]