The report, entitled The Smart Fund: Tech Enabling Creativity, shows how the Smart Fund can offer sustainable funding for creators by ensuring they receive fair remuneration when their work is used digitally. Furthermore it sets out how the Fund could also establish a creative community fund that will drive digital innovation and creativity for the next generation and support local cultural programmes.

The Smart Fund aims to introduce a one-off levy on digital devices which store content, in order to fund small payments to creators to help them sustain a living. These small payments, which would be the equivalent of 1–3% of the sale value of the device, would be paid into a central fund which would then be used to:

• fairly reward creators and performers so they can make a living from their content
• fund support aimed at bringing together communities and putting regions that have been left behind on an equal footing with the rest of the UK
• project the renewed, thriving art and culture sector of Britain

Introduction of the Smart Fund would bring the UK in line with much of the rest of the world. Schemes like the Smart Fund exist and operate successfully in 45 countries worldwide, paying out the equivalent of over £930 million to creators and performers globally in 2018 alone.

You can read the full report here and find out more about the Smart Fund at thesmartfund.co.uk