The impact of COVID-19 on the cultural and creative industries: determinants of vulnerability and estimated recovery times

In many countries, lockdown regulations and social distancing have had a negative impact on the cultural and creative industries. As vaccination rates rise, and restrictions begin to ease, understanding the recovery paths for different parts of the sector in many contexts will be important. Much sector-specific research has been conducted, but there are far fewer studies that estimate the economy-wide impact of the lockdowns using quantitative techniques. Published research is also dominated by information from the global north, with less information coming from developing country contexts with higher levels of informality. This article uses two surveys (2020 and 2021) of firms and freelancers, and key stakeholder interviews in the cultural and creative industries, in South Africa and a Social Accounting Matrix, to fill this gap. Data on changing business continuity is used to construct a vulnerability score for each sub-sector, and to determine domain-specific factors that affect predicted recovery rates.