The Creative Industries Idea

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Renovating Research and Policy on Creative Industries and Innovation

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Studying creative industries?

The ‘creative industries’ idea does not belong to anyone, and its orphan status in the disciplinary family has been one of its continuing problems. No existing science developed a theory that could then be tested, using formal hypotheses, experiments, fieldwork, data-analysis and the like.

Creative industry and world city construction : Beijing as a creative world city

The study of the creative industries is not much more than a decade old. What makes it fascinating is that it is dealing with a rapidly evolving process, where a good deal of Schumpeterian ‘creative destruction’ – of old industries, business models, and some familiar cultural and creative pursuits – can already be observed. What happens next – and who will be the winner – is hard to predict. Furthermore, the creative industries encompass both large-scale ‘industry’ (media, publishing, digital applications) and individual creative talent; both economic and cultural values, and both global reach and local context. Thus, the challenge is to integrate ‘top-down’ policy and planning with ‘bottom-up’ experimentation and innovation. There is always the promise that this new creative ecology will provide some novel answers to problems of wealth-creation for emergent economies, new solutions to problems of intellectual emancipation for individuals, and sustainable development for that most intense incubator of creative ideas, the city.

Creativity as emergence : policy issues for creative cities

The creative industries concept was born in the UK, nurtured in Australia (among other countries), but is now being implemented most vigorously in China. The UK and Australia seem to be pulling back from the concept: • Critical response to CI policy in the UK; and post-GFC cutbacks limit scope for government action. • Australia relies on the resources boom; even though recent WIPO report puts Australian ‘copyright industries’ at over 10 percent of GDP (second only to the USA at 11%). Not surprisingly the USA remains happy with the term ‘copyright industries.’ This faltering policy environment in advanced countries may work to their own longer-term economic detriment. The creative industries’ transformative impact on the global economy may come instead from China.

Creative cities : clash and emergence

the creative city is one that builds ‘clusters of clusters’ to enable the self-management of complexity, the emergence of new ideas, and the growth of knowledge. Clash and difference is what allows for change and innovation.

Connected Communities and Creative Economy; Clash, cluster, complexity, creativity

After a brief personal orientation, this presentation offers an opening section on „clash, cluster, complexity, cities‟ – making the case that innovation (both creative and economic) proceeds not only from incremental improvements within an expert-pipeline process, but also from the clash of different systems, generations, and cultures. The argument is that cultural complexity arises from such clashes, and that clustering is the solution to problems of complexity. The classic, 10,000-year-old, institutional form taken by such clusters is … cities. Hence, a creative city is one where clashing and competitive complexity is clustered… and, latterly, networked.

Global Creative Industries

The creative industries are the subject of growing attention among policy-makers, academics, activists, artists and development specialists worldwide. This engaging book provides a global overview of developments in the creative industries, and analyses how these developments relate to wider debates about globalization, cities, culture and the global creative economy. Flew considers creative industries from six angles: industries; production; consumption; markets; places; and policies. Designed for the non-specialist, the text includes insightful and wide-ranging case studies on topics such as: fashion; design thinking; global culture; creative occupations; monopoly and competition; Shanghai and Seoul as creative cities; popular music and urban cultural policy; and the rise of “Nollywood”. Global Creative Industries will be of great interest to students and scholars of media and communications, cultural studies, economics, geography, sociology, design, public policy, and the arts. It will also be of value to those working in the creative industries, and involved in their development.

Globalization, suburbanization, and the creative workforce : Findings from Australian suburban communities

This paper considers the changing relationship between economic prosperity and Australian suburbs, noting that what has been termed “the first suburban nation” in experiencing an intensification of suburban growth in the 2000s, in the context of economic globalization. The paper reports on a three-year Australian Research Council funded project into “Creative Suburbia”, identifying the significant percentage of the creative industries workforce who live in suburban areas. Drawing on case studies from suburbs in the Australian cities of Brisbane and Melbourne, it notes the contrasts between the experience of these workers, who are generally positive towards suburban life, and the underlying assumptions of “creative cities” policy discourse that such workers prefer to be concentrated in high density inner urban creative clusters.

Resilient creative economies? Creative industries on the urban fringe

The relationship between culture and the economy is of growing interest to researchers, writers and policy makers. Advanced economies have become increasingly ‘culturalised’, pushing culture from the periphery to the centre of policy concerns and action. The economic downturn commencing in late 2008 generated predictions that ranged from the apocalyptic to the sanguine, across all sectors. This article offers an insight into the relationship between the economy, the creative industries and their geographic localities. It investigates creative industries situated away from the urban core, and located in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and Brisbane. We suggest that for creative industries situated in outer suburbs, there are characteristics that may contribute to their economic resilience.

The QUT creative industries experience

This publication assembles essays by people who are leading voices and practitioners in the creative industries, writing from the perspectives of education, research and business development. The idea for the publication arose from a request in 2007 from key Chinese policy academics for information on what they called ‘The Queensland model’. Apart from a co-authored article published in Chinese in that year by three of the contributors to this publication, there was little assembled evidence of the model. The interest from China culminated in requests to visit and see the Queensland model first hand. Since 2007, there have been many visitors to the Creative Industries Precinct and the Kelvin Grove Urban Village. The tours have generally taken people to different organisational units within the larger complex. This publication follows this approach but also shows how the various organisational units are integrated.

Copyrights and creative commons licensing : pedagogical innovation in a higher education media literacy classroom

This article examines the role of copyrights in contemporary media literacies. It argues that, provided they are ethical, young people’s engagement with text should occur in environments that are as free from restriction as possible. Discussion of open culture ecologies and the emergent education commons is followed by a theorisation of both literacy and copyrights education as forms of epistemology: that is, as effects of knowledge producing discourses and practices. Because Creative Commons licenses respect and are based on existing copyright laws, a brief overview of traditional copyrights for educators is first provided. We then describe the voluntary Creative Commons copyright licensing framework (“some rights reserved”) as an alternative to conventional “all rights reserved” models. This is followed by an account of a series of workshop activities on copyrights and Creative Commons conducted by the authors in the media literacy classes of a preservice teacher education program in Queensland, Australia. It provides one example of a practical program on critical copyrights approaches, which may be adapted and used by other school and higher education institutions.