Creative Economies, Creative Communities

Rethinking Place, Policy and Practice

Saskia Warren, Phil Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317158288
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Investigating how people and places are connected into the creative economy, this volume takes a holistic view of the intersections between community, policy and practice and how they are co-constituted. The role of the creative economy and broader cultural policy within community development is problematised and, in a significant addition to work in this area, the concept of 'place' forms a key cross cutting theme. It brings together case studies from the European Union across urban, rural and coastal areas, along with examples from the developing world, to explore tensions in universal and regionally-specific issues. Empirically-based and theoretically-informed, this collection is of particular interest to academics, postgraduates, policy makers and practitioners within geography, urban and regional studies, cultural policy and the cultural/creative industries.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Saskia Warren and Phil Jones

Within western policy discourses the creative economy is often positioned as a magic bullet that will save cities from the ill effects of post-industrial decline (Landry and Bianchini, 1995; Florida, 2002). A barrage of statistics can be marshalled to demonstrate the added value of the creative sector to national economies (Bakhshi et al., 2013). While some sub-sectors such as music and fashion are presented as having low barriers to entry (Hracs et al., 2013), important recognition must be given to barriers of skill and social capital (Hracs, 2013), inequalities of entry according to gender, race, class and age (Donald et al., 2013), along with high educational barriers in certain sub-sectors, including museums, galleries and archival work, which serve to restrict entry and condition success. For instance, the Department for Culture Media and Sport found that over 40 per cent of UK creative workers have degrees in comparison to 16 per cent in other sectors (DCMS, 2006). For those trapped in low skill jobs in the service sector, there are still tremendous challenges in seeing the creative economy as offering an obvious route out of structural inequality and into career pathways.

Neoliberal policy assemblages work to reduce the power of the state, in particular its role in redistributing the spoils of economic growth. ‘Communities’ – ambiguous and contested – are increasingly positioned as the guardians of social justice, juxtaposed against a supposedly remote and arbitrary public sector (Imrie and Raco, 2003). This puts an increasing amount of responsibility on communities to mitigate the more deleterious effects of neoliberal capitalism as well as to oversee what were traditionally state-run public services. Communities have, for example, been asked to take an increasingly direct role in schools, hospitals, libraries, and even spatial planning (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2012).

When it comes to the creative sector, the idea of community is often positioned in terms of a deficit model – individuals lack the skills and social capital to reap the rewards of the creative economy and therefore communities become a vehicle and a target for activity to address these deficits. This can be crudely characterised as a desire to ‘fix’ communities so that individuals can meaningfully engage with the creative economy and gain from its benefits. It also suggests that the creative sector should act as an agent for tackling structural inequality, regardless of whether that is where the expertise of individuals within that sector lies (Oakley, 2009).

Discussions about creative labour have considered its relationship with the organisation of power and space. Rob Pope (2005: xvi) defines creativity as ‘the capacity to make, do or become something fresh and valuable with respect to others as well as ourselves’. This capacity, however, is subject to socio-spatial contexts that shape access to the sector, division of labour and pay conditions. Angela McRobbie (2002: 526) distinguishes between perceptions of creative labour as inclusive with the reality of how the sector functions:

There is an irony in that alongside the assumed openness of the [creative] network, the apparent embrace of non-hierarchical working practises, the various flows and fluidities … there are quite rigid closures and exclusions.

Issues of access are a key concern. While it remains important to be aware of the agendas driving social inclusion of disadvantaged communities into the creative economy, this edited collection starts from the position that if public funding is being directed towards growth in the creative and cultural sector then it is necessary to investigate who is benefiting. Barriers to gaining regularly paid employment are indicative that claims for the democratising tendencies and pathways for the socially excluded in the creative sector have been exaggerated. The work of cultural intermediaries – those who act as mediators, brokers and gatekeepers – cannot necessarily be considered innovative, ground-breaking or, indeed, democratising (see Negus, 2002). Furthermore, there is a significant tension between economic enterprise and growth objectives, aesthetic excellence and non-monetary exchange values of social inclusion for disadvantaged communities.

This collection explores the intersection of creative economy and notions of community, examining connections and disconnections within policy and practice. The focus is primarily within Europe including a post-socialist example, although it also draws upon a case study from the developing world to examine how these discourses are being deployed and realised in a wider context. At its heart, this book brings the idea of place to the fore, exploring how specific localities fundamentally shape the connections between creative economy and communities. In this introduction we review the conceptual frame underpinning the arguments within this book. First, we contextualise the policy debates that have helped to shape the contemporary creative economy. Secondly, we examine how communities and creative economy practice have been drawn together within this policy framing and by the academy. Finally we consider how the idea of place can be used to explore how policy, community and practice co-construct each other within specific local contexts. We then outline the key contributions of each chapter within this book and detail the overarching themes that span the collection.

Policymaking, the Contemporary Creative Economy and its Critical Discourse

The creative economy as a concept has become associated with the broader knowledge economy as a tool to understand urban regeneration and structural change in post-industrial urban areas across Europe (Banks, 2009; O’Connor, 1998). Prior to the 1990s, however, the ‘cultural industries’ was the preferred term, with cultural policy and sociologists informed by the politics of contemporary cultural studies (Flew, 2012; Williams, 1958; Hall and Whannel, 1964). ‘The Cultural Industry’ was originally associated with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, and particularly the work of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1977[1944]), who coined the phrase to pessimistically draw attention to the commodification of culture observed from the 1940s onwards in the United States. In turn, Bernard Miège (1989) and sociologists working in the area challenged the critique of mass culture centred upon new industrial technologies and the production of cultural symbols. Instead, in the context of post-1968 social movements, Miège argued for recognition of differences across the many sub-sectors of the cultural industries. Miège helped to popularise the plural term ‘cultural industries’ (as opposed to the singular ‘The Culture Industry’) to signal ‘complexity, contestation and ambivalence’ in the study of culture, maintaining that there were roles for culture beyond capital (Hesmondhalgh, 2012: 45).

The cultural industries were thus the precursor to the creative industries, however, the political agendas underpinning them initially diverged. Local socialism fed into early formations of the creative industries in the UK (Flew, 2013). In documents of Labour-led local councils from the 1980s, including Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow, the cultural industries were mobilised to fill the economic hole left by mass de-industrialisation and manufacturing (ibid.: 15). Bianchini and Landry (1995) were the first to articulate a coherent formulation of the ‘creative city’, explicitly aligning the cultural industries with urban regeneration. Creativity subsequently gained traction as a doctrine for left-leaning and right-leaning policy-makers world-wide, with US academic Richard Florida (2002) leading a fervent boosterist approach. Fusing the creative economy with potential for inward investment, the creative class hypothesis spatially nests cities and creative talent with concentrated and enhanced economic prosperity (ibid.). ‘Creative Class’ focus rests on attracting the top 30 per cent of earners. While creativity still features in public policy and urban development discourses, in recent years language has shifted to a celebration of innovation, albeit with similar kinds of issues applying (Hesmondalgh & Baker, 2011: 4).

But it was the UK New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown that first popularised the role of the creative industries within policy discourse. After 1997, developing policies to promote the arts, media, design and software sectors (Flew, 2012: 3), New Labour drove a new creative economy agenda with output mapping exercises in 1998 and 2001. These mapping exercises were criticised for failing to address regional and local variation, or failing to compare different nation states (Pratt, 2004; Flew, 2013: 21). Some of these inadequacies were addressed in the Second Creative Industries report, the release of which coincided with the establishment of the Scottish Assembly, Welsh Parliament and Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) in 1999, which created new forms of regional governance. In a crucial move, traditional cultural industries were wrapped together with rapidly expanding sub-sectors, meaning that the creative sector could be presented as an area of special growth. The creative industries were positioned so they connected the non-monetary value of culture – such as personal fulfilment and self-actualisation – with measurable business outcomes. That is, combining profits with purpose. After the UK championed the creative industries, there followed a subsequent uptake by international bodies, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), along with nation states both developed and developing (Flew, 2012: 2). A report by Digital Britain in 2009 (DCMS and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) positioned Britain as a global centre for creative industries in a digital age. Yet indeterminacy of how to define the breadth and depth of the industries and occupations in the creative economy remains an issue worldwide (Hesmondhalgh, 2012: 217; Prince, 2014; Pratt, 2005).

As Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2011: 3) argue, the adoption of the term ‘creative’ was aided by its largely benign associations given the prestige attached to art and knowledge in almost all societies and civilisations. Social scientists popularised the notion of creativity from the 1950s, however human relations management and economists, specifically theories of endogenous growth, were highly influential in stimulating government planning in the creative economy (ibid., also see, for example, Guilford, 1950; Koestler, 1964; Amabile, 1996; Peters, 1997; Aghion, et al., 1998). Ideas on creative policy orientated towards technological advancement, and therefore innovation, were directly influenced by business agendas: ‘In an era where government increasingly took many of its cues from business fashion, think tanks were soon portraying creativity as a key source of prosperity in the post-industrial city’ (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2011: 4; also see Landry and Bianchini, 1995).

In recent years mounting criticism has been levelled at creative economy policy agendas. The creative economy has been argued to be driven by a skills and employability agenda, which pays little attention to the negative aspects of creative labour markets (Banks and Hesmondalgh, 2009). Rather than anti-conformist or subversive, artistic work can in fact be characterised by conditions compliant with modern capitalism such as flexibility and tolerance of inequality (Menger, 2006: 6). For many, creative labour has become casualised, with individuals often working in isolation on a project-by-project basis, assuming the economic and social risks and costs of creative output (see Bain, 2005). The creative city script is widely viewed as neglecting the power relations, such as self-disciplining and risk-taking, that confront members of the so-called creative class, and also the underlying power relations that impact upon inequalities in creative labour market access and divisions of labour (Oakley, 2006: 265). The result is that the values of enterprise culture and individualism are seen to triumph over ‘social justice and collective solidarity’ (Flew, 2012: 106).

In particular, a growing body of research has emerged which is highly critical of the brand of creative cities discourse championed by Florida and Landry. For instance, Terry Flew critiques the account of urban city centres as unique incubators, arguing instead that the sector draws upon ‘the whole range of resources in a city’ including those from the suburbs and wider city-region (2012: 7). Meanwhile, recognising a broader spatial unevenness in creative cities ideas, Tim Edensor et al. (2010: 5) warn against the instrumental uses of arts and culture that ‘venerate the metropolis’ as the site of consumption and production to the exclusion of other spaces, including the rural. Issues of social justice have rightly been highlighted, in particular the production of a co-dependent service class, and gender and income inequalities (Peck, 2005; Leslie and Catungal, 2012). Challenging the ‘creative class’ approach, Ann Markusen (2006) has argued that artists, a ‘core’ sub-sector of the so-called creative class, are actually likely to be relatively less affluent. Moreover, rather than the creative class developing weaker community links, artists – so-called ‘core creatives’ – may play more active roles in their neighbourhoods (ibid., 1923, 1937). This reminds us to think carefully about the specificity of the sub-sector and context, intended purpose and unexpected outcomes of any creative work. In the next section to what extent community is a significant and useful concept in creative economy discourse to understand local, inter-local and place-based impacts is the subject of further exploration.

Community and the Creative Economy

As Raymond Williams (1976: 66) identified, no other term of social organisation carries such positive connotations of collective solidarity as ‘community’. The concept of community has been the source of extensive academic and political attention. It can refer to a group of people with shared values, a shared sense of place, identity or politics, shared interests, and communities of practice. But with renewed academic, policy and practice-based interest in the potential of community, has come critique of how the concept is wielded. Community has favourably been associated with building social capital, examining social networks, civic participation, trust and cohesion. From Durkheim’s ‘anomie’ to Putnam’s notion of ‘bowling alone’, scholars have argued that the loss of community can result in a breakdown of social networks and identity, with resultant social impacts such as increased levels of anxiety and depression (Putnam, 2000; Durkheim, 1893). Participatory, action and activist-orientated research emerged from the 1970s –1990s, experimenting with new ways of representing the ‘other’ (Goodson and Phillimore, 2012; Rose, 2001). These research approaches shared an aim to make sense of increasing levels of difference experienced in many communities around ethnic and cultural diversity and wealth inequalities. Significantly, community has often been positioned in a state of tension with capital. Whereas in certain disciplines and schools of thinking this has been viewed in a positive light, in others the concept has been viewed with suspicion. In economics, for instance, community has adversely been identified with growth-limiting activities, such as blocking of change (Olson, 1965; Amin and Roberts, 2008). The discursive positioning of community is highlighted by Miranda Joseph (2002: 2) who dismisses the term as necessarily autonomous and antipathetic to capital, arguing ‘community functions in complicity with “society” enabling capitalism and the liberal state’. Interconnected issues of empowerment, participation, decision-making and impact are part of this contested field of research and practice (Pain and Kindon, 2007; Cooke and Kothari, 2001). This edited collection through the various case studies investigates how academics, practitioners and policy-makers have approached the value of community and community research in relation to the creative economy.

i) Tacking Social Exclusion

In the UK, New Labour replaced the word poverty with the concept of ‘social exclusion’. A significant intellectual shift was ushered in, by which the ability for people and areas to contribute economically became the key measure of their value (see Hall, 2013). DCMS concluded that arts, sport and cultural and recreational activity could be used to support regeneration at the neighbourhood scale. The belief was that creative and sports activities have positive impacts because they can:

• appeal directly to individuals’ interests and develop their potential and self-confidence;

• relate to community identity and encourage collective effort;

• help build positive links with the wider community;

• be associated with rapidly growing industries (DCMS, 1999: 8).

Cultural and sporting activities were framed as improving health, crime, employment and education indicators in deprived communities, which, in turn, enabled citizens to be more economically productive (Jermyn, 2001) and therefore of greater value to society. This characterises New Labour’s ‘third way’ assumption that economic growth will create social inclusion through ‘trickle down’ processes linking creative economy policies with local communities. Underpinned by an economic growth agenda, the DCMS (1999) report was a manifestation of New Labour’s wider approach on cultural policy, which failed to measure the crucial non-monetary elements of cultural and creative activity, for instance volunteering practices (Gibson-Graham, 2006: 60).

Evans and Foord (2000) have shown that the origins of community arts practices during the 1970s in the UK and in Western Europe coincided with the first wave of major youth and structural unemployment and the subsequent rise of urban regeneration policy. Process-based methods in participatory creative and c...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Creative Practice, Creating Communities
• Part II Policy Connections, Creative Practice
• Index