ABSTRACT
London is the epicentre of Europe’s creative industry activity, and accounts for 32% of
jobs in the creative industries in the UK (Skillset, 2011). The intense interactivity and net-
working that goes on there creates opportunities to study the complexity of freelancers’
project networks. The methodology for this paper was part of wider project and was in
the form of a survey that was sent out to a representative sample of London’s creative
industry landscape during a time period spanning six months (February 2008 to July
2008). Given the problematic definition of the creative industries as a single entity in aca-
demic and political debate (see Christophers, 2007), a decision was made to utilize a broad
concept of a “creative industry” company as possible, to capture a wider range of
businesses. A broad range of sub-sectors was included, from film and television, architec-
ture advertising, publishing and musicians. Two thousand companies were contacted and
673 returns were collected (a response rate of 33.6%). Of those collected, 47 responses
indicated that the company employs one full-time person, indicating that they are an oper-
ational freelance company. When asked about their legal status, 59 responded as freelance,
sole trader or self-employed. With a crossover of 24 (i.e. they indicated there was one full-
time employee and identified themselves as a sole-trader, self-employed or freelancer), we
identified 82 respondents that have a high degree of freelance qualities, traditionally
defined-12% of the total, which is lower than the estimates in previous public policy lit-
eratures. Of the 673, 301 (44.7%) responded saying that they did not employ any freelan-
cers in the previous 12 months.
