British creators and industry figures have founded the collective UK Creator Voices. They want recognition and representation for creators in the British creative industries. The collective was formed with the support of YouTube UK and was introduced at YouTube Festival in London on Tuesday 22 September.
According to YouTube, its members include Jordan Schwarzenberger, co-founder of the agency Arcade Media and manager of The Sidemen, as well as Jade Beason, Damien Jordan, Brandon Baum, Santiago Vazquez, Grace Andrews and the news channel TLDR News. YouTube UK's managing director Alison Lomax, according to Deadline, stressed that this is an independent initiative. “While YouTube is proud to support the convening of this independent collective, the voice and vision belong entirely to them,” she said.
The collective is a response to the Creator Consultation survey, which YouTube published in 2025. According to it, 43% of digital creators feel that the wider creative sector does not yet recognise their contribution. In an announcement on LinkedIn, Grace Andrews described how she introduces herself as a creator at industry events. People, she says, tilt their heads sympathetically and respond along the lines of “Oh so you like, post videos?”
A year of quiet work before the formal launch
According to Andrews, the collective had been operating quietly for about a year. “Being transparent, today is the launch but we've already been running quietly behind the scenes for the last year,” she wrote. In that time, with YouTube's support, members held roundtables with production studios and panel discussions on legislation. They also created educational campaigns that appear on creators' YouTube channels. According to her, the official launch confirms the work done so far and presents a plan the collective wants to keep working on in public.
The collective's aim is for creators to be recognised as creative professionals, just like people from traditional creative fields, and to have a real seat at the table. In the institutions and debates that shape the industry, creators are meant to speak for themselves, together and from their own experience. The collective's programme also includes structured dialogue and cooperation with cultural, creative and educational institutions.
YouTube itself supplies the economic argument
At the festival, YouTube presented a report prepared by Oxford Economics. According to it, YouTube's creative ecosystem contributed more than £2.8 billion to British GDP in 2025. On its blog, YouTube attributes this amount to creators and says it is a year-on-year increase of 25%. According to the report, more than 60,000 full-time equivalent jobs were tied to this ecosystem. The report also says that 75% of creators with a career in media and entertainment started out on YouTube.
Andrews compares creators' contribution with the rest of the industry. According to her, other creative fields are making mass redundancies. The creator economy, meanwhile, gives work not only to people in front of the camera but also to editors, producers, strategists and managers. According to Andrews, traditional broadcasters are flocking to YouTube to build their own audiences, and the rest of the industry is following.
In its article on the collective's formation, Deadline writes that creators are becoming an increasingly important part of the traditional entertainment industry. As an example, it cites creator Amelia Dimoldenberg, known for the interview series Chicken Shop Date. On Saturday 26 September she will host an episode of the British version of Saturday Night Live.
Others are trying to form associations too
In the US there is the American Influencer Council. Brooke Erin Duffy of Cornell University, an adviser to its board, calls it the first American industry association to push for labour protections and small-business rights for professional creators. The association's report this year, “Built Not Posted”, cites a Creative Class Group survey according to which there are 39 million creators in the US with at least a thousand followers on at least one platform. A 2025 IAB study counted 1.5 million full-time-equivalent creator jobs in the American digital economy. From this the association calculated that only 3.9% of American creators make a living from creating full time. It also admits that the two figures are not directly comparable.
In the Czech Republic, the Association of Creators and Online Media (ATOM) has operated since June 2025. It is led by journalist and YouTuber Jiří Burýšek. Its vice-presidents are creator Karel Kovář and agency heads Peter Sládeček (Tubrr) and Tomáš Zvelebil (Subscribe). The association wants to defend the interests of independent creators and negotiate with Czech authorities and with European Union institutions.
At European level, the Influencer Marketing Council was set up in July 2026 within the communications agencies association EACA. It is chaired by Thomas Angerer, co-founder of the agency BeInfluence Europe. The council brings together senior staff from the agencies Publicis, Dentsu, McCann and Innocean, as well as specialised independent agencies. It focuses on certification and compliance with advertising rules. According to the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA), influencer marketing accounts for 22% of all complaints about online advertising in Europe. The available sources make no mention of representation of the creators themselves on the council.
The British collective was formed with the direct support of the platform whose data it also cites. It is aimed mainly at institutions and the traditional creative industries.
Andrews summed up the collective's ambition in one line: “Creators aren't the future of media; we're the present.”
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