Creative Industries and the Creative City

Dr. Justin O’Connor

Manchester Institute of Popular Culture, Manchester Metropolitan

University

What is culture?

‘A whole way of life’ A certain level of knowledge and

understanding Particular products with aesthetic or

symbolic meaning

Definition

‘Cultural industries’: products turned into commodities generating value.

Economic value derives from their cultural value

Question: is how one can be turned into the other?

Culture as Commodity Production

Mass reproduction and distribution – combination of technology, business, and culture.

Books, performing arts, visual arts Newspapers, journals, prints, photography, printed music Recorded Music, Film, Radio; TV (Video, photocopies, printing) Digitalisation and new communication technologies (A

new convergence?)

New technologies and new business models constantly transform the existing field.

From Kulturkritic to political economy

Adorno – Culture Industry: culture as mass production for mass society.

Political economists: Cultural Industries Different conditions of production and consumption:

commodity and flow; public and private. Need for innovation and authenticity; Artists and intermediaries; Risky business – dealing with unpredictability

‘rationalising the irrational’.

Cultural industries as new economy

Fordism to Post - fordism – mass production to flexible specialisation;

National space to global/ local spaces New economy – innovation, creativity,

flexibility, reflexivity, responsiveness CI’s not longer a remnant of the old but a

template for the new

Why are they growing?

Education; leisure; disposable income New technologies of creation, distribution and

consumption Increased consumption of cultural goods as part of

lifestyle Increased cultural component of material goods Increased cultural component of service products Information and communication now meshed with

symbolic

On ‘production’ side

‘Expressive revolution’ (Bernice Martin) pointed to fundamental value shifts – from collective to individuality; from restraint to self-expression; from duty to self-realisation.

Creativity - part of process of the reflexive construction of identity.

Innovation, continual transformation, personal choice, creativity –these cultural values which in the 1970s and 80s ran close to the transformation of cultural consumption and, increasingly, cultural production.

Policy Driven

1980s and 1990s: this driven at the level of national and regional policy (UNESCO), usually as a cultural policy.

Increasingly linked to urban economic development: role of the Greater London Council (GLC).

GLC Retrieve negative definition – give it more democratic aspect;

(cf. Italy) Vast majority of cultural goods produced outside the market Beyond commerce vs. art – cultural studies questions and

powerful impact of ‘popular culture’ e.g. music This widespread set of activities could not be left to the market

– needed to be part of cultural policy. Stressed value-chain – not amenable to understanding using

the model of individualised art production. Sector made up of small and large businesses – power lay with

large businesses at distribution end. Intervention on behalf of the creative producers. Alternative economic strategy for culture

Also: Local economic dimension – created jobs and wider catalytic effects.

Post GLC Policy Since GLC agenda driven at a policy level – first in metropolitan councils

then by New Labour.

Persistence of place in CIs – LA, London, New York, Paris, Milan (Capital/ global cities) – the cultural competence of cities

Opened out possibilities for de-industrialising cities – where innovation, entrepreneurialism, and local vision seemed key.

CIs seemed to offer:

Employment Contribution to Image Contribution to sense of vibrancy and cultural richness Contribution to creativity Complement to subsidised art and culture Contribution to social inclusion

How they link to cities

Cities as nodes in global network Creativity, innovation, competitiveness - CIs CIs - articulation of large and small

companies; Clusters, networks, projects – ideas,

information, support, trust

‘commodified cultural production’ (Scott)

characterised by high levels of human input: clusters of small companies operating on a

project basis; dense transactional flows of information, goods

and services; benefits from economies of scale in skills

sourcing and know-how; complex divisions of labour (driven especially by

new ICT developments) tying people to places

Scott

‘Clusters like these are replete…with agglomeration economies (i.e. increasing return effects), and agglomeration economies in turn give rise to…potent competitive advantages.’

Creative Urban Ecology

‘those meanings that adhere to the urban landscape’ and which are used as factors in the production of cultural commodities;

meanings re-assimilated into the ‘urban landscape of the producing centre’, acting as ‘a source of inputs to new rounds of cultural production and commercialisation’, and ‘a further enrichment of the urban landscape’

Scott

Cultural production and consumption transform the landscape of the city through its ‘shopping malls, restaurants and cafés, clubs, theatres, galleries, boutiques’. This ‘revitalisation of the symbolic content’ of cities draws in city governments, who link these transformations with ‘ambitious public efforts of urban rehabilitation in the attempt to enhance local prestige, increase property values and attract new investments and jobs’.

Key Idea: Embeddedness

Tacit knowledge Traditions Institutions ‘Atmosphere’ Local identity Urbanity

The Independents

They thrive on easy access to local, tacit know-how – a style, a look, a sound – which is not accessible globally. Thus the cultural industries based on local know-how and skills show how cities can negotiate a new accommodation with the global market, in which cultural producers sell into much larger markets but rely on a distinctive and defensible local base. (Leadbeater and Oakley, 1999:14)

Creative City, Narratives of regeneration

Scott links specific support for CIs with a wider management of the urban ecology - the symbolic infrastructure of the city. This general conclusion of policy makers.

Takes us to mobilisation of local urban identity - ‘creative cities’ – a narrative, usually by the city development agencies of local identity as a cultural resource.

Culture and Regeneration Regeneration mostly viewed as physical

regeneration Big regeneration projects are about culture and

consumption Cultural consumption generates business, enhances

property markets, and has strong image effects. Limits to this – sustainability; local impact; and wider

benefits to the city. Content frequently ‘art’, of ‘international quality’ Used instrumentally with little feeling for the actual

content.

Cultural Industries and Regeneration

CIs are about sustainable production; involve engagement with ‘culture’ across a much broader spectrum.

Need to complement ‘consumption-led- regeneration.

Issues for the support of CIs – business support infrastructure; training and education; marketing and information; finance etc.

Increasing urgency of question of Urban Space

Issue 1: CIs and Space

Space for creative production – diversity of provision not just high end users

Not just about rent but about ‘atmosphere’ and identity – creative clusters

Private spaces with a public function – spaces of innovation and experiment (Compost Cities!).

Issue 1

CIs need space and place Should be as much an issue of ‘public goods’

as space for subsidised art. Urban ecology increasingly threatened by

property-led regeneration Creative cities being short changed by short

term profit

Issue 2

‘Benign narrative’ of culture and economics Creative Milieus mobilised as Economic

policy. Creativity and culture about conflict,

‘unpopular culture’, the ‘dark side’: does not always sit well with policy makers.

Hall: Cities and Civilisation

These creative cities were ‘societies troubled about themselves’; they were in a state of tension, of ‘transition forward to new and unexplored modes of organisation… societies in the throes of a transformation in social relationships, in values and in views about the world’; creative cities and creative milieux ‘are places of great social and intellectual turbulence: not comfortable places at all’.

Issue 3

Urbanity and modernity:

‘creativity’ linked to the (urban) public sphere and to transformations of lifestyle and social structure.

‘Creative Milieus’ involve (cultural) political questions.

Issue 4

Florida’s ‘Creative Class’

Is it a class in any meaningful sense? Is it simply about new forms of consumption

and gentrification? Does it benefit a new elite at the expense of

the urban population as a whole?

Issue 5

Instrumentalisation of Culture Homogenisation and Globalisation Erosion of local production Collapse of culture into economic policy Cities are divisions of labour and an

imaginative work