ScreenSkills and the BBC have co-published a new report highlighting the opportunities and challenges currently facing the UK’s rapidly evolving Digital Content Creator (DCC) sector.
The study, Creator Skills: Progression, Provision and Priorities, conducted by global Creative Industries consultancy Olsberg•SPI, engaged with DCCs and UK screen industry representatives across the UK Nations and Regions to understand how creator skills compare to film and television sector skills. The research centres around creator engagement, with the report's findings grounded in the experiences and realities of DCCs.
The report shows growing convergence between the film and television sector and the creator community, with a need to support cross-sector transition for DCCs into film and television work and film and television professionals into digital-first production.
The study also explores how the film and television industry, alongside creator-sector bodies and government, can convene to support the UK creator sector to enable them to progress, scale and build sustainable creative content businesses for the future.
The new report highlights the following key findings:
Many creators develop their skills through informal, practice-based learning and peer mentoring rather than formal training.
Digital platforms provide a lower geographical barrier to creator career entry across the UK Nations and Regions in comparison to television and film, but access to film and television entry networks can still be skewed towards London and bigger cities.
Creators require a range of creative, business, technical and transversal skills to succeed. While technical production skills, such as video recording and editing, are fundamental, platform literacy, storytelling, two-way communication with audiences and resilience are critical skills setting successful creators apart.
The DCC and film and television sectors share many core creative and technical skills, although many of these are applied differently in practice.
Legal, IP, financial and employment-management skills become more important as creators scale, particularly when they enter commercial partnerships, hire teams and seek to protect their original formats.
Online safety, harassment, isolation and wellbeing pressures are major challenges in sustaining creator careers, especially when audience growth occurs rapidly without appropriate support structures.
Lisa Opie, ScreenSkills Executive Chair, comments: “The Digital Content Creator sector plays a significant part in the UK screen and creative economy, contributing more than £2.2 billion to UK GDP and supporting thousands of jobs. This report shows that it’s crucial for the film and TV industry to convene and continue to champion DCCs in the same way we support talent development and training within the wider screen industry, to enable DCCs to build lifelong transversal skills and secure future growth in the sector.
"While the screen industry has really embraced the DCC community over recent years, this study identifies the need for skills training in safeguarding and business best practices can be put in place for the future.”
Case studies contributing to the report also demonstrate that creators very much differ in terms of their pathway to the industry, ways of working, skills development, and their ability or ambition to scale. Creator career progression is varied, with success for some meaning maintaining autonomy in a digital-first business, while others may seek opportunities in film and television as part of a broader career pathway.
Case Studies
Ali-A is a gaming creator based in the south of England, best known for family-friendly Call of Duty and Fortnite content. Active as a creator since 2009, he now has a large, global, multi-platform audience including 19.7 million subscribers on YouTube, 2.1 million followers on both Instagram and TikTok, and 291,000 followers on Twitch.
Ali-A operated as a solo creator for much of his career but has now grown his business to work with a network of 20 people internationally.
Kyle Thomas is a Belfast-based creator with 34 million followers on TikTok, 1.3 million followers on Instagram and 151,000 subscribers on YouTube, focusing his content on animal rescue, wildlife, conservation, comedy and food.
Kyle has also moved into television with programmes, including the BBC Three documentary, We Built a Zoo (2025), and In Too Deep: Exposing the UK’s Puppy Farms with Kyle Thomas (2025) for Channel 4. Kyle’s business model spans sponsorships, platform monetisation, publishing and factual projects. Kyle was listed in Forbes 30 Under 30 European 2024 and is one of the UK's biggest individual TikTok creators.
Dawn Beresford, BBC Director of Talent and Skills, Commissioning says: “Content creators are redefining how stories are told and how audiences discover and engage with content, offering new opportunities for talent from every nation and region of the UK. This research provides valuable insight into the skills, ambitions and challenges facing content creators today. It reinforces the importance of supporting creators to grow sustainable careers, protect their wellbeing and access new opportunities. By working together across the sector, we can help ensure creators have the tools, opportunities, and support to thrive and bring their unique perspectives to audiences across the UK.”
Earlier this year, the BBC, YouTube and the National Film and Television School partnered to launch the landmark Create x Connect initiative, delivering an industry-leading creator training programme for television producers, digital creators and journalists. The skills programme consists of three fully funded training programmes aimed at upskilling the next generation of UK creatives across the regions. ScreenSkills will support this partnership by delivering e-learning packages created from the programme’s training content.
This study reflects ScreenSkills’ commitment, set out in its Five-Year Strategy to provide consistent, high-quality insight to support effective skills planning, as well as a commitment to work in partnership to maximise reach and value for funders.
In 2025, ScreenSkills published the pilot report, Sizing Up: Workforce Composition and Capacity in the Screen Industries (an Ampere Analysis study for ScreenSkills and 4Skills),followed by Powering Production in April 2026. Sizing Up the Future: Forecasting the Screen Workforce report (an Ampere Analysis study for ScreenSkills and 4Skills) provided the most accurate and detailed picture to date of the UK screen industries’ behind-the-scenes workforce when published in July 2026.
