A grey literature review of the UK Department for Culture,Media and Sport's Creative Industries Economic Estimates and Creative Economy research programme

This is a review of the DCMS's annual estimates of the size, scope and activities of the UK's creative industries, with a particular focus on the latest publication in January 2009. Running parallel to these estimates is a research programme, latterly codified as the Creative Economy Programme (CEP), which constantly assesses and periodically modifies the methodologies used for collating statistics. This programme is also reviewed, primarily through two 2007 documents: a report commissioned from Frontier Economics and a DCMS overview of all the CEP's work in 2006–2007. The review also draws on primary sources in the form of national and international reports on methodologies for classifying and measuring the creative industries, as well as appropriate academic literature.