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Leila D’Aronville and Lizzie Crump appointed as the Government’s Freelance Champions
Leila D’Aronville and Lizzie Crump appointed as the Government’s Freelance Champions
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One Dance UK today welcomed the Governments announcement of the appointment of Leila D’Aronville and Lizzie Crump to the newly created Freelance Champion roles. They will advocate for the creative industry’s 703,000 self-employed, working to make sure their voices shape future policy.
The self-employed workforce is the backbone of the UK’s world-leading creative industries. In 2025, 28.5% of the UK’s 2.6 million-strong creative industries workforce were self-employed, almost double the rate for the wider economy (14.8%).
The appointees will support industry’s work to address the findings of the Good Work Review, a major review into working conditions across the sectors, which highlighted issues with unpaid work, limited opportunities for professional development, and difficult working environments, as well as high levels of job satisfaction, flexibility and autonomy. Job quality for freelancers was marked as a particular concern.
They will work closely with industry, including the freelance community, to build an understanding of this often-overlooked section of the workforce and ensure its needs inform government thinking.
Leila and Lizzie are both freelancers themselves, bringing a combined 40 years of experience working in and representing the creative industries. Leila is the founder of the North East Cultural Freelancers, a network supporting freelancers and small organisations across the region. Lizzie is one of the Co-Directors of What Next?, the UK’s largest free-to-access network for arts and culture, and has worked in cultural policy for many years.
They will be supported by Dave O’Brien, Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Manchester, who joins the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on an academic secondment to provide research support. Their terms of reference are published on gov.uk.
As set out in the Creative Industries Sector Plan, they will also sit on the Creative Industries Council, a joint industry and government forum that represents and gives a voice to the UK’s creative industries.