Creativity

Harriet Hawkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317604921
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Creativity, whether lauded as the oil of the 21st century, touted as a driver of international policy, or mobilised by activities, has been very much part of the zeitgeist of the last few decades. Offering the first accessible, but conceptually sophisticated account of the critical geographies of creativity, this title provides an entry point to the diverse ways in which creativity is conceptualized as a practice, promise, force, concept and rhetoric. It proffers these critical geographies as the means to engage with the relations and tensions between a range of forms of arts and cultural production, the cultural economy and vernacular, mundane and everyday creative practices.

Exploring a series of sites, Creativity examines theoretical and conceptual questions around the social, economic, cultural, political and pedagogic imperatives of the geographies of creativity, using these geographies as a lens to cohere broader interdisciplinary debates. Central concepts, cutting-edge research and methodological debates are made accessible with the use of inset boxes that present key ideas, case studies and research.

The text draws together interdisciplinary perspectives on creativity, enabling scholars and students within and without Geography to understand and engage with the critical geographies of creativity, their breadth and potential. The volume will prove essential reading for undergraduate and post-graduate students of creativity, cultural geography, the creative economy, cultural industries and heritage.

1
Introduction: Towards Critical Geographies of Creativities

‘Live, Work, Create’, in the early years of the new millennium this graffiti slogan appeared on buildings, underpasses and bridges across New York City, its ubiquity mirroring that of creativity more generally. For whether lauded as the oil of the twenty-first century, touted as a driver of international policy, or used to shape national identity, creativity has been very much part of the zeitgeist of the last few decades. But yet, while the stencilled slogan might seem to reflect the ‘Be creative – or die’ mantra of urban policy makers and planners the world over, the assertiveness of the ‘Live’ challenges any account of creativity that focuses solely on its economic dimensions.

Creativity is a lively field of study, but one fractured in its diversity and riven with tensions. It is also full of promise, variously understood as the saviour of the economy, as a tool of neoliberal politics and part of the diplomatic arsenal of state-craft practices, as a psychological trait and philosophical concept. It is also an embodied, material and social practice that produces both highly specialist cultural goods and is a part of everyday life, and it offers myriad possibilities for making alternative worlds. Despite all these possibilities, such an expanded sense of creativity can feel crippling to some, diluting meaning to the degree that the idea of creativity becomes useless; an anything goes term that applies to everything and so nothing. One response to these fears has been to patrol boundaries, guard definitions and restrict understandings. Yet many are aware of the challenge to retain creativity’s critical and analytical precision together with its lively possibilities, to counter tendencies towards definitional promiscuity without becoming precious. This text finds a solution to such dilemmas in an exploration of the critical geographies of creativity. Across nine creative ‘sites’ this volume will put creativity in its place and in so doing will explore how it can make places, shape subjects, connect communities and sculpt environments. In such geographies an analytic frame is found that enables an embrace of expanded understandings of creativity, whilst retaining a sense of precision and focus that enables, in short, an understanding and even possibly the mobilization of creativity’s promises.

In what ways does it make sense to conceive of creativity as having a geography? Creativity happens in lots of different places, does it matter where? Does the location of creative endeavours make any difference to their content and conduct? Further, does the creative activity affect the sites and venues at which it happens? The answer to all of these questions is yes. Creativity, in short, has a whole set of geographies, and in turn creative practices produce geographies, they make places, shape the bodies, subjectivities and minds of those conducting them, and weave together communities and evolve environments. Across a series of nine sites, from the body to the city, the landscape and environment and the nation, this text is going to explore these critical geographies of creativity, using this as a purchase point onto the richly different and often contrasting understandings of creativity. The aim at each site will be to explore tensions between different forms of creativity found at that location, demonstrating how geography matters to understanding creativity, but equally how creativity matters to the production and understanding of geographies.

It makes sense to conceive of creativity as having a geography in all sorts of different ways. Creativity is concerned with ideas, with objects, with performances, with practices, and is the affair of individuals, institutions, companies and governments. All of these have spatial dimensions. Matters of geography are involved at all stages of the creative process, whether this be the micro-geographies of the body that is thinking and practicing, or the myriad spaces in which creativity happens, from studio spaces, to the home, the gallery, opera house or street. We could think too of the planning of creative spaces, their hot-housing by governments and policy makers keen to harness creativity’s economic and social possibilities, or the subversive creativities that function as critical spatial practices, challenging the status quo of planned and surveilled spaces. To query what is created, how and what it does in the world is to ask questions that are intimately bound up with the ‘where’ of creativity. In short, just as geographers and historians who study the production of science are aware of the importance of ‘placing’ practices of science, so too should we be aware of the geographies of creativity. For, as this text will argue through its nine sites, such geographies enable us to understand the intersections of the politics and economics of the creative economy with comprehensions of creativity as a social, cultural, material and embodied practice with subject and world making potentials. What is more, such geographies enable us to appreciate the potential and possibilities of creativity that sit alongside, and at times even critique, creativity’s central place in contemporary economic and political spaces and processes.

Historical geographers and historians know that place matters to the production of knowledge, especially science, and creativity is no different. Unlike science, creativity was never really assumed to be a universal practice that would be the same everywhere. Indeed, creativity perhaps even sits apposed to the universal replication, routinization and standardization that science once desired. Historians and geographers of science have long asserted the need to engage with the particularities of the local conduct and content of science and have explored how profoundly it is shaped by the venues in which it is made. Yet, while scholars of science have tackled the imaginaries of the placeless places of science, creative practices have, by contrast, long been understood to be a product of the people and places in which they are found (Livingstone, 2003; De Costa Kaufmann, 2004). Whether that be a function of the inspiration offered by local scenery, the use of local materials or the evolution of local styles, an environmentally determinist streak has long dominated the histories of the production of arts and literature. But this is not to say that it is not worth spending time putting creativity in its place, to echo Livingstone’s (2003) exploration of science. For too easily it seems that the places where and practices through which creativity is conducted are overlooked, but as this text will explore they matter profoundly, to the types of creativity that occur, to how it is we understand creativity and what it might do, and to what it might mean to understand and mobilise the promise of diverse creativities, rather than being disempowered by them.

Indeed, the geographies of creativity are no less significant with respect to consumption than they are concerning production. Ideas, images, objects and practices travel from person to person and place to place, from culture to culture (Livingstone, 2003). Such migrations are not, however, the same as replications. As creative practices and objects circulate, just like scientific practices and knowledge they undergo translation and transformation because people encounter them differently in different circumstances (Rogers, 2014). If creative practices need to be understood as shaped by the context of the periods and places from which they emerged, then their reception must also be temporally and spatially situated. So, if we are to understand how creativity has shaped the world we need to be attentive to how these practices have been appropriated, how they have been made and remade rather than just replicated. Furthermore, we need to work with less fixed conceptions of creativity. For, what passes for creativity is contingent on time and place, it is constantly negotiated; to ‘be creative’ means different things in different eras and in different places. Cultivating critical geographies of creativity will help us comprehend the diversity of understandings of creativity less as a challenge to its analytic precision. Rather, these geographies help us to explore the interesting and valuable tensions between different understandings of creativity. They also enable us to conceive of how creativity both bears the imprint of the locations of its production and consumption and is a force in the ‘making’ of these locations. The remainder of this introduction is going to take a closer look at the issues of diverse creativities, then explore in greater depth what the critical geographies of creativity might mean and be, and how they might help us understand the possibilities to be found in diverse creativities. It will close by introducing the nine creative sites which follow.

Live, Work, Create: The Challenge of Diverse Creativities

something relevant may be said about creativity, provided it is realized that whatever we say it is, there is also something more and something different.

(Bohm and Peet, 2000, p. 226)

‘Live, Work, Create’, appears for all intents and purposes to be a street artist’s tag, but it is actually the philosophy-cum-slogan for New York based hip clothes and urban living brand Brooklyn Industries.¹ In many ways, Brooklyn Industries distills any number of the success stories of the contemporary creative economy, and as its name implies the company has closely tied its brand identity to geographic location. The local area and its heritage as an area of heavy industry and, more recently, garment manufacturing drives the company’s marketing strategy, which includes naming products after city areas and a logo based on the Manhattan skyline. However, both the drive for a certain sort of life and the possibilities that creative products enable for lifestyle creation is distilled in the story of the brand.

The story of Brooklyn Industries intersects creative production and place with global narratives of changing geographies of making and manufacturing (Carr and Gibson, 2015; Scott, 2000). Started in the late 1990s by two artists disaffected with their day jobs, the company’s origins lie in the pair’s dumpster diving activities, during which they up-cycled used billboard fabrics to create bags. As the pervasive narration of their origin story details (found on the company blog, Instagram, Tumblr and YouTube), they built Brooklyn Industries ‘one bag at a time not knowing where it will lead us.’² This incremental, speculative strategy clearly paid off; they have grown from a single sewing factory, opening in 1996 in the then run-down industrial area of Williamsburg, to in 2014 a new HQ by the water in trendy DUMBO near their recently refurbished factory block. Having initially outsourced much of their manufacturing to family-run factories in China, the global recession saw the company return to its NYC roots. Promotional YouTube videos and blog entries tell a tale of an international company now firmly rooted in place. Whilst acknowledging the challenges of manufacturing in New York, the company trades on both the manufacturing heritage of the area and their ‘field to factory’ ethos. This ethos sees them making their leather goods and recycled bags in their DUMBO factory and the surrounding area, and producing many of their top-selling T-shirts within 150 miles of their Brooklyn HQ. The products are sold online and through sixteen carefully curated stores known for their ‘up-cycling’ parties, art installations and sustainable energy practices. Aside from the brand kudos gained from being local, the company cites reasons for remaining in the city as ethics, local inspiration, and the ease of having the whole product designed and made under one roof, enabling space and time for experimentation and a quick turnover in response to emerging street-style trends. Of importance too is the ecology of creative practices that Brooklyn Industries is a part of: fashion, graffiti, design, visual arts, music and the everyday practices of street-style, to name just a few. Key in Brookyln Industries’ story is a sense that it, like so many similar companies, are not just using the city for their location and inspiration, but are also collectively contributing to the creation of the urban atmosphere. Whether this is directly through their branding and the presence of their hip boutiques and their support of arts activities, or more indirectly by just adding to the aura of their area. Indeed, Brooklyn Industries is one of the many creative companies contributing to what maintains Brooklyn’s status as a ‘cool’ neighbourhood (Zukin, 2010).

This is, however, not just a story of geographical work-based efficiency and place-based branding. Across many social media platforms Brooklyn Industries narrates a creative dream that folds together those three terms – live, work, create – in a tale of the satisfaction with a creative working life ethically and sustainably lived. Dovetailing with the economic facets of the story are narratives of creative labour, especially the more personal narrative of the creative practitioner, the politics and subjectivities of creative practices, of creative entrepreneurialism, but also of the desire to seek a creatively fulfilling life (Gill and Pratt, 2008). Creativity, in short, is not just a way of making a living but also about making lives.

Exploring the backstory of Live, Work, Create keys us into some of the critical coordinates that frame the discussions of creativity within this text. Unfolding from the specificities of this trio of words is, of course, a story of ‘work’ and of the geographies of the creative economy. The creative sector has been lauded as the ‘oil of the twenty-first century’ and not without good reason. Creativity was one of the economic success stories of the first decade of the new millennium, one of the few economic sectors not only resilient to the global economic recession, but actually to demonstrate growth during this era. In 2008, despite a 12 % decline in global trade the creative goods sector continued to expand, doubling between 2002 and 2011 to reach a net worth of $624 billion.³ The same report also noted that annual growth in so-called developing countries was 12.1 % higher than the worldwide average of 8.8 %, and that creative products accounted for over half of these countries total global exports. In 2014, 1 in 10 jobs in the UK and 1 in 6 graduate jobs were in the creative economy, figures that are replicated around the world.⁴ But what are the creative and culture industries (CCI) exactly? What occupations and skills constitute them; what is being counted within these global and national figures? These are questions that continue to be posed by academics working in the sector. If creativity more generally can be understood in terms of a diverse set of different definitional debates, then these discussions find a microcosm in the ongoing machinations around how to define the creative/cultural industries/economy.

Within economic circles, creativity remains definitionally slippery, taking up a place within neoliberal vocabularies alongside terms such as flexibility and precarity. Marxist scholar Jamie Peck notes the presence and mobilization of creativity as a

distinctly positive, nebulous-yet-attractive, apple-pie-like phenomenon: like its stepcousin flexibility, creativity preemptively disarms critics and opponents, whose resistance implicitly mobilizes creativity’s antonymic others – rigidity, philistinism, narrow mindedness, intolerance, insensitivity, conservativism, not getting it.

(2005, p. 765)

Who, as Pratt and others have argued, ‘wants to be uncreative?’ Given the power accorded to creativity, not only in its ability to deliver economic regeneration, but also social benefits, it is perhaps no surprise that it has also become a key feature of the policy landscape. Creativity has long had a place, albeit a shifting one, within the broader policy landscape. For many commentators there is a key transition from a policy era in the 1960s and 1970s where culture and arts were given social and cultural rationales, to a more recent era in which the economic rationales rule (Kong, 2005, 2014).

The shifting understandings of creative policy reflect the ‘tortuous and contorted definitional history’ of the arts, cultural and creative industries (Roodhouse, 2001, p. 505). Whilst the historic roots of the creative economy in the craft industries is often acknowledged in its contemporary form, it is seen as part of the post-Fordist knowledge economy. This economic form was brought to the fore in the late 1990s by European and American scholars and analysts who wanted to describe the sorts of people, skills and ideas that were prospering in the evolving information, knowledge, digital and/or ‘weightless’ economy (Amin and Thrift, 1992). Whilst often associated with immaterial production, the experience economy and the consumerist lifestyle of the creative industries are often based in a sense of material production, whose key feature is the evolution of creative products as symbolic forms (Scott, 2000, p.12). We can think, for example, about ‘goods and services that have some emotional or intellectual (i.e. aesthetic or semiotic) content’ (ibid). As Scott continues,

commodified symbolic forms are products of capitalist enterprise that cater to demands for goods and services that serve as instruments of entertainment, communication, self-cultivation (however conceived), ornamentation, social positionality, and so on, and they exist in both pure distillations, as exemplified by film or music, or in combination with more utilitarian functions, as exemplified by furniture and clothing.

(2000, p. 12)

One of the key areas of debate around the creative economy concerns the tensions between the economic, social and cultural roles of creative activities. When the cultural sector is folded into the creative economy, its own values and ideas are often bypassed, overlooking culture’s public benefits. For, as is increasingly the case, the creative economy is often thought of as the means to: ‘overcome social and economic inequalities and effect future economic growth’ (Banks, 2007, p. 71). To privilege creative economies, however, is to exclude other dimensions of creativity and those individuals whose creativity is not primarily conducted through economic logics. More specifically, to focus on making money ‘structures how creativity is defined, developed and employed’ (Banks, 2007, p. 73). For other scholars working in this area, especially those who think about the mobility of creative policy, there is ongoing imprecision in how we characterise these industries, a lack of empirical evidence and confusion over their potential role (Kong and O’Connor, 2009). Global statistics are recognised to be very hard to create as different countries consider creative occupations in very different ways, with implications for scholarship, policy and practice.

However important the creative economy might be for economic growth and policy direction, that trio of words – Live, Work, Create – direct us firmly to understandings of creativity beyond that of the creative economy; to the relationship between creativity and living. If we must consider culture to be, as Marxist critic Raymond Williams (1958) famously wrote, ‘ordinary’ then we must also consider creativity to be ordinary too. To appreciate the expanded field of creativity is not just the preserve of the singular artistic genius, nor is it purely an economic process. Alongside being a practice that produces creative products, whether these are clothes and bags, art works, writing, films or advertisements, creativity is also an everyday practice; not so much working to live, as living creatively. These forms of creative living might be the vernacular creativities of hobbyists, or enthusiasts (Edensor et al., 2009a), the everyday creative practices of cooking, decorating or dressing, or the improvised creativities which are an often unacknowledged part of how we move through the world (Hallam and Ingold, 2008). Indeed, we must appreciate creativity as very much part of our everyday lives and our ways of being in the world; creativity, in other words, as a daily practice proliferating in the ordinary spaces in which we live our lives; our homes, our streets, our communities and our environments. That such everyday creativities become overlooked is a function of how urban and western-centric notions of creativity promoted in the creative economy have tended to sideline other people, other places and other forms of creativity (Edensor et al., 2009a).

Moving beyond solely economic understandings of creativity puts back into play questions concerning what it is that creativity does in the world. One answer lies in the first of that trio of graffitied words ‘live’. Vernacular creativities are often about the processes of everyday life, about getting through the day – about processes of cooking, of decorating houses, of dressing; they are also moments of unconscious improvisation – making do and getting by, folding up a napkin to level a wobbly table, jamming a wooden spoon in the window to prop it open. Vernacular creativities also encompass those clearly conscious ‘creative’ activities such as hobbies, including knitting and model railway building, as well as Christmas light design and decoration (Edensor and Millington, 2009, 2012; Price, 2015). To explore vernacular creativities is to be returned to some of those central questions; where does creativity happen, who is creative, and, crucially for this text, what is it that creativity does?

Considering creativity as part of everyday life is also to challenge its association with the inner city and with specialist spaces of production, such as workshops, studios and galleries. Instead, creativity becomes something that happens in homes and on streets, in rural and suburban areas as much as in urban cores. There has been, for example, a growth of late ...