The Importance of Creative Industry Agglomerations in Explaining the Wealth of European Regions

This paper examines the existence of regional agglomerations of manufacturing, service and creative industries, the relationship between these industries and the wealth of regions and their industrial structure. Through an analysis of 250 European regions, three important conclusions can be inferred from the results obtained in this paper. The first is that creative industries play an important role in the wealth of a region. The second is that the most creative regions are characterized by having more high-tech manufacturing industries than the rest of the regions although the number of low-tech manufacturing firms is similar. Lastly, the industrial structure of each region has a greater influence on regional wealth than the existence of industrial agglomerations. The importance of this paper resides in the fact that up until now no analysis has demonstrated that creative industries are the most important industries in regional wealth.     

The Creative Industries,Creative Occupations and Innovation in London

London is a global hub of the creative industries. These industries are seen as both innovative in themselves and an input in innovation processes in other sectors. Yet few studies have tested these relationships. This article investigates these issues using large-scale survey data for London. Using four measures of product and process innovation, we find no evidence that London's creative industries are more innovative than other sectors. Yet, individuals doing creative occupations in other sectors are a robust driver of product innovation in London's firms. The results suggest that occupations performed in London may be an important driver of product innovation in the city, and firms in other sectors may use creative occupations to develop new products in the capital. This finding is supportive of policies attempting to stimulate the creative industries by integrating creative occupations into firms across the whole economy.     

Space of Creative Industries: A Case Study of Spatial Characteristics of Creative Clusters in Shanghai

The rapid rise of creative or cultural industries not only contributes to regional economic growth, but also to a revised spatial model of urban structure, helping in the redevelopment of old town spaces. However, the spatial characteristics of creative clusters, especially at the micro-city level, are not fully understood. This study attempts to characterize the spatiality of creative clusters on the basis of a literature review and empirical study of Shanghai. By using Geographical Information System (GIS) spatial analysis and interviews, this paper examines the spatial features of creative clusters in Shanghai and their connection with urban historical, social, cultural and political aspects. It finds that creative clusters are primarily distributed in particular locations of Shanghai, namely in the inner-city, old industrial districts, places close to universities, Central Business Districts (CBDs), and entertainment and tourist zones. The old colonial zones in Shanghai play an important role in fostering the agglomeration of creative industries because of the special image of these spaces, in particular due to the abundant workshop spaces remaining from the industrial heritage. Great intimacy between creative industries and urban spaces becomes apparent in the case of Shanghai, demonstrating that the creative economy has become an important instrument in regenerating cities. Moreover, a differentiation in space among various categories of creative clusters in Shanghai was also noticed in this study.     

北京美术产业对地方文化的嵌入性程度分析

北京十一五规划指出北京将大力发展文化产业,尤其是文化创意产业。美术是文化产业中最具有创意色彩的产业部门,北京是中国最重要的美术产业中心,近5年来出现了一批美术创意产业集中区。本文使用近十多年来国外经济地理学家频繁使用的嵌入概念分析北京的美术产业。本文所采用的嵌入概念更强调KarlPolanyi的观点,以北京三个主要美术产业区798艺术区、宋庄画家村、观音堂文化大道为研究地点,通过分析实地访谈资料、艺术家和画廊的网站资料,探讨企业和艺术家在作品风格、市场定位、企业分布、企业制度等方面是如何嵌入北京地方制度文化和意识形态文化的。本文认为在把握嵌入程度,避免过度地方化的程度上有待未来讨论。     

CREATIVE INDUSTRIES IN THE NETHERLANDS: STRUCTURE, DEVELOPMENT, INNOVATIVENESS AND EFFECTS ON URBAN GROWTH

Creativity is central in stimulating economic growth in cities, regions and advanced capitalist economies in general. There is, of course, no one-to-one relation of the number of firms in creative industries to economic growth. Innovation is a key mechanism explaining the relationship of creative industries with economic performance. Based on an empirical study in the Netherlands we explore the effect of creative industries on innovation, and ultimately on employment growth in cities. In the Netherlands the three specific domains of creative industries - arts, media and publishing, and creative business services - make up 9 per cent of the business population. Drawing on survey data we find that firms in creative industries are indeed relatively innovative. Yet substantial differences are found across the three domains: firms in the arts domain are clearly less innovative, most likely due to a different (less market-oriented) dominant ideology. In addition, firms in creative industries located in urban areas are more innovative than their rural counterparts. We go on to analyse how the concentration of creative industries across cities is connected with employment growth. With the exception of the metropolitan city of Amsterdam, we find no measurable spill-over effect from creative industries. The presence of the creative class (in all kinds of industries other than creative ones) appears to be a much stronger driver of employment growth than creative industries.     

The dynamics of global visual effects and games development industries: lessons for Australia’s creative industries development policy

The paper critiques the focus of creative industries policy on capability development of small and medium sized firms and the provision of regional incentives. It analyses factors affecting the competitiveness and sustainability of the games development industry and visual effects suppliers to feature films. Interviews with participants in these industries highlight the need for policy instruments to take into consideration the structure and organization of global markets and the power of lead multinational corporations. We show that although forms of economic governance in these industries may allow sustainable value capture, they are interrupted by bottlenecks in which ferocious competition among suppliers is confronted by comparatively little competition among the lead firms. We argue that current approaches to creative industries policy aimed at building self-sustaining creative industries are unlikely to be sufficient because of the globalized nature of the industries. Rather, we argue that a more profitable approach is likely to require supporting diversification of the industries as ‘feeders’ into other areas of the economy.     

Creative industries in a European Capital of Culture

This article examines the articulation of the benefits associated with staging the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) in Liverpool, England in 2008. It is argued that relevant policy documents, and policy discourses more generally, propose a strong influential role for the operations of the ECoC upon the creative industries. Such a strong relationship, however, is difficult to evidence either at a discursive level or from the attitudes expressed by those working within the creative industries locally. The idea that the ECoC can promote broadly ‘creative’ activity is thus posited as being merely one aspect of the ECoC’s major goal of attempted city rebranding, rather than anything more substantive; nevertheless the articulation of ‘success’ of the ECoC in this regard seems entrenched.     

‘Shit is hard,yo’: young people making a living in the creative industries

ABSTRACT

Contemporary social science research on the creative industries demonstrates inequities in accessing good work in this field. Nonetheless, youth still increasingly are seeking to create careers in these fields. However, economic indicators that register growing employment in the creative industries may not fully register the participation of youth. The Young People Making a Living in the Creative Industries research project sought to document the multiple income streams that youth draw on while attempting to make a living in creative fields, mapping the areas of challenge and success in the entry years to creative work. Respondents in the research project articulated an informed knowingness and resistance to the norms of unpaid work in the creative industries and forwarded gender and race as structural categories that impact the experience of entry-level creative work. Respondents also articulated forming communities of care to respond to these challenges, including collectives, support groups, and other forms of networks, while highlighting the challenge of balancing community-based and economic motivations for creative industries work. The study highlights the role of community youth arts programmes on creative industries career incubation for youth, and the need to hear from youth themselves to better map youth participation in the creative industries.     

CREATIVE CITIES: THE CULTURAL INDUSTRIES AND THE CREATIVE CLASS

The aim of this article is to critically examine the notion that the creative class may or may not play as a causal mechanism of urban regeneration. I begin with a review of Florida's argument focusing on the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings. The second section develops a critique of the relationship between the creative class and growth. This is followed by an attempt to clarify the relationship between the concepts of creativity, culture and the creative industries. Finally, I suggest that policy-makers may achieve more successful regeneration outcomes if they attend to the cultural industries as an object that links production and consumption, manufacturing and service. Such a notion is more useful in interpreting and understanding the significant role of cultural production in contemporary cities, and what relation it has to growth.     

Having an impact? Academics,the music industries and the problem of knowledge

This article reflects upon recent interest in knowledge transfer from higher education to the creative industries, using the UK music industries as a case study. It suggests that traditional academic values of impartiality and concern with research methodology can come in to conflict with instrumentalist agendas that see research as valuable only insofar as it fits with pre‐existing worldviews and policy ends. In this setting, knowledge resistance is often more significant than knowledge transfer and may be expected to frustrate any attempts to have an ‘impact’.     

The Rise of the Creative City: Culture and Creativity in Copenhagen

Culture and creativity as drivers of development are established features of the urban policy agenda. This article examines the interplay of culture, creativity and city planning using the example of Copenhagen, Denmark. Denmark presents an interesting example because whilst it has a tradition for linking culture with urban economic boosterism, recent research has suggested a social emphasis in its more contemporary urban cultural policies. The paper argues that the arrival of creativity upon the urban agenda has abruptly altered this policy context. Both culture and creativity have become central to attempts to stimulate the cultural and creative industries and to promote the city at an international level, attracting investment and the “Creative Class”. In tracing this development, the article discusses potential changes to the planning system designed to facilitate Copenhagen's transformation to a creative city and points to the potential impacts of these.     

The Creative Economy: Vision or Illusion in the Structural Change?

This contribution discusses the hopes associated with the rise of the creative industries and gives explanations for the debates in politics, science and the media. In doing so, our underlying thesis is that the culture and creative economy is a virtual sector and that a uniform promotion—also by means of staged events that attract a lot of media attention—needs to be challenged. In a further step, the scientific implications will also be outlined on the basis of the term's “career” in the public debate. A brief analysis of the empiricism of the creative economy will provide further insight into its real significance and demonstrate possible definitional weaknesses of the term. The creative industries are an essential element of modern economic infrastructure. They will play an important role in the future, especially for cluster strategies. However, the scientific research so far is not able to reach more accurate conclusions regarding the effects of governance on the culture and creative industry. Therefore, this contribution shows future research fields. We will conclude by venturing an outlook on the further development of the sector and demonstrate its social and economic effects using the example of the Ruhr Area in North Rhine-Westphalia.     

Creative Clusters and District Economies: Towards a Taxonomy to Interpret the Phenomenon

This paper deals with the occurrence of district economies in creative clusters, through the systematization of the extensive literature on the spatial concentration of creative activities. The research contributes to a larger understanding of creative clusters according to a revised taxonomy, formerly applied to traditional industrial districts, based on the four main advantages that district economies seem to trigger: reduction of production and transaction costs, increased efficiency of factors of production and enhancement of dynamic efficiency. Addressing the extent to which the same factors can be found in creative clusters, the paper, firstly, seeks to review some of the most important contributions that deal with such externalities, in the context of creative industries. Secondly, it provides some related reflections on strengths and weaknesses and possible future research developments. The net result is an effective analytical framework that can be used to interpret this peculiar geographic agglomeration, combining the notion of district economies and the exceptional features of creative industries.     

INTRODUCTION TO GEOGRAPHICAL ECONOMIES OF CREATIVITY, ENTERPRISE AND THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

This special issue brings together creativity and enterprise through the geographies of the creative industries. In recent years the focus of academic debate has privileged business and corporate economies, and so this issue seeks to contribute both empirically and theoretically to the burgeoning literature of creative industries. Economic geography offers a rich domain through which to engage with these debates, exploring the nuances of creativity and enterprise. Our aim, as well as bringing together a set of interesting papers, is to contribute critically to understanding the organization and spatial structure of creative industries and the broader creative economy.     

Creativity gaps and gender gaps: women,men and place in the United States

This article situates Florida's (2002) work on creative regions in the United States in the context of a critical discussion of place and gender and investigates the gender–class structure of his most and least creative regions. It analyzes the distribution of creative class, working class and service class occupations by gender within those 21 regions as well as earnings, household income, poverty and educational attainment using data from the US Census 2000. Women and men are compared within and across the two categories of most and least creative regions. The major finding is that the gender gap in earnings within categories of regions is larger than the creativity gap, i.e. the earnings gap within genders across regions. As new technology industries have been layered over old industries, altering spatial divisions of labor, gendered labor remains integrated in largely traditional ways.     

Cool,funky and creative? The creative class and preferences for leisure and culture

It is a core element in Richard Florida’s popular theory on growth to be able to attract the creative class to a geographical area. But Florida is not very specific on which kind of amenities are important for attracting and keeping the creative class. The purpose of this paper is to analyse which kind of cultural activities the creative class is actually using. Which kind of cultural activities does the creative class use more intensively than other groups in society? This paper presents new empirical results on preferences for leisure and culture. Richard Florida’s theory can be, and has been, criticised – especially on the issue of causality. The analyses presented in this paper show that being part of the creative class has an independent and significant role in explaining preferences for leisure and culture.     

Creative shifts and directions

The availability and “readiness” of culture as a mode of governmental control makes cultural policy a matter of great importance in any contemporary society. This is true not only in liberal democracies with established arts councils or cultural policies, it is also proactively pursued by a technologically advanced yet illiberal regime like Singapore, eager to position itself as the global “Renaissance City” of the twenty‐first century. What this “renaissance” model entails remains highly cryptic, not least because cultural terms and political markers are often elusive, but also because the very concept of “cultural policy” shifts along with the political and economic tides in Singapore. Drawing on a rarely cited essay by Raymond Williams, this article offers an historical look at cultural policy in Singapore – from its first articulation in 1978 to its present standing under the rubric of “creative industries” (2002). It considers some of the problems encountered and the societal changes made to accommodate Singapore’s new creative direction, all for the sake of ensuring Singapore’s continued economic dynamism. This article contends that cultural policy in Singapore now involves extracting creative energies – and economies – out of each loosely termed “creative worker” by heralding the economic potential of the arts, media, culture and the creative sectors, but concomitantly marking boundaries of political exchange. In this regard, culture in Singapore has become more than ever a site for governmentality and control.     

New High-Tech Industries and Windows of Locational Opportunity: The Role OfLabour Markets and Knowledge Institutions During the Industrial Era

This paper presents a theoretical concept (the so-called“Open Windows of Locational Opportunity” concept, or OWLO concept) which provides an explanation for why it is rather uncertain and unpredictable where new high-technology industries will emerge in space. This is due to three tightly linked features of new high-tech industries. Firstly, new high-tech industries reflect a high rate of discontinuity because they place new demandson their local production environment. Secondly, due to this mismatch, new high-tech industries depend on their creative ability to generate or attract their own favourable production environment. This creative capacity compensates for the lack of specific local stimuli, as associated with their discontinuous nature. Thirdly, the OWLO concept claims that chance events may have a considerable impact on the place where new industries emerge. This is because it remains unpredictable at which place potentially favourable resources of a generic nature set in motion a creative process which brings increasing returns (that is, “localization economies”) into the local production environment. As a consequence, many regions are considered to be in a more or less equal position to develop new high-tech industries during their initialstage of growth, despite their different techno-industrial histories. We have further illustrated this OWLO concept by linking it to the problem of whether regional labour markets and knowledge institutions may facilitate the ability of regions to generate new high-tech industries, despite the fact that these require new knowledge and skills. We made an attempt to specify in broad terms the extent to which local supplies of labour and institutionalized knowledge may have influenced the place where so-called new clusters of innovative industries emerged in Great Britain and Belgium during the industrial epoch. We presented some evi-dence that the three key notions of the OWLO concept described above have indeed been features of the spatial emergence of many new clusters in both countries during their initial stage of development.     

Politics of the ‘creative industries’ discourse and its variants

The existing academic debate on creative industries can be summarised as ‘Trojan horse or Rorschach blot’: creative industries working as a neoliberal discourse or producing different effects depending on local context. Arguing that these are two sides of the same coin, this article looks closely at the discourse’s depoliticising and encompassing forces and their interplay on the discourse’s intersection to the broader new economy narrative. The article’s focus is South Korean variants of creative industries discourse. First, the country’s ‘content industries’ discourse served as a Trojan horse for the depoliticising narrative of knowledge economy while boosting the cultural sector discursively and financially. Second, ‘creative economy’ has very recently emerged as the current conservative government’s master economic narrative. This discourse allows the government’s neoliberal economic policies to be further justified while making cultural policy unable to persuasively claim that creativity belongs in the culture’s domain.     

What are the concerns? Looking back on 15 years of research in cultural and creative industries

This paper surveys the research literature on cultural and creative industries (CCI). Academic discussions on CCI have grown extensively after the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) identified 13 sectors as constituting creative industries in the UK in 1998. The public has also become gradually convinced of the significance of CCI as being important for economic growth. We adopt a systematic and quantitative method to review the academic CCI literature. After collecting data, we first investigate the research fields under which the journals that publish CCI papers are categorized, finding that Business, Economics and Geography are the top three research fields. A second examination on the authors’ nationality indicates that their cultural background induces a different emphasis on their research field. We lastly apply the multiple main paths analysis to uncover the development trajectories of CCI research, with the result showing that the research agenda has changed along with a better understanding of the essential elements of CCI. Based on the literature on the main path, we observe the top five discussed themes: information technology, global cooperation, micro and fragmentary creative activities, remote places, and country/regional characteristics. Monitoring the discussions on these themes may help CCI researchers, creative workers, and policy makers to assess future directions for economic development.