The UK’s creative industries are world-leading, but content owners lack a secure, trusted way to connect with buyers at scale. The Creative Content Exchange Challenge is testing the possibilities and potential opportunities of creating a trusted marketplace for selling, buying, licensing and enabling permitted access to digitised cultural and creative assets including:
- fair payment for creative work
- responsible use of content
- sustainable value across the creative economy
The Creative Content Exchange was first proposed in the government’s Creative Industries Sector Plan.
Objectives
By 2030, the marketplace will be self-sustaining and commercially independent. It will create lasting value for UK content owners and establish the UK as a world leader in responsible content licensing in the AI age.
How we will do it
The Creative Content Exchange (CCE) is designed to give content owners confidence to engage with buyers, including AI companies, on clear, standardised licensing terms. The technical platform is being developed by the CCE pilot team currently hosted at the Natural History Museum. They are working with a growing cohort of creative and cultural organisations to help shape how it works in practice, learning through doing.
A cross-government challenge group ensures the marketplace aligns with broader government creative industries and AI policy, including the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan. The industry advisory group ensures input from industry with alignment between the two groups.
Ask a question about the Creative Content Exchange Challenge
For more details or any questions about the challenge email: hello@thecce.co.uk
Last updated: 23 July 2026