This week I am in Oslo at the kick off meeting of Creative Metropoles, and I will also be attending Kreative Oslo. I’m working on the Creative Metropoles project as a local researcher, tasked with identifying and writing up case studies of best practice in policy and funding for creative industries. Yesterday I spent an afternoon with reserachers from 12 countries, where we quickly realised that across Europe nobody knows what creative and cultural industries actually are.
As a group we struggled for a definition. The closest thing to an agreement that we came to looked very much like the DCMS definition of the industry but this was for from a complete picture. In some partner states “creative” industry is described as “experience” industry. In some partner states, the definition includes the sub-sector “meals”. As the meeting developed, the word “cultural” even became ejected from our definition of the Creative and Cultural Industries as it will pertain to this project. I did find all this rather odd. Reassuringly, as a group we hope that the process of this research (which will take place over the next three years) might lead to more consensus on the terms, and perhaps even an EU definition of “creative industry”.
With the definition up for grabs, I asked my Twitter network what they thought was meant by “creative industries”. Their answers didn’t surprise me, but do provide useful starting points for the discussion:
@ I’m think that if you can’t create something then you don’t have an industry. So all viable industry is creative.
@ um “people who work at making stuff the value of which is subjectively judged”
@ an industry which uses art (in all its forms) to communicate with society
@ You made me dig out my notes. One of them say: ‘Intellectual property to commodity’ which I guess is quite broad…
@ i bet someone’s tried it from the other way? define what isn’t and work inwards? eg printing isn’t, print design is…?
A further side conversation developed, regarding whether or not practitioners in Social Media see themselves as part of a “creative industry” sector:
@ I don’t especially. Sectors exist so the government can organise taxing and spending, not so we can have somewhere to be.
@ no, nor IT, nor industries in general – soc med is quite naturally opposed to “industries”, it’s ‘people’ where-ever they may be
@ re creative industries. I feel part of them but only when I work with people in that area. CiB, Metapod, Custard Fact, etc.
What do you think? What’s your definition of creative (and cultural) industries? How important is the word “cultural” to this understanding? How can we seperate cultural from creative industry? Should we? Are you a member of the creative industry: and if so, how do you know that you are?
There are obvious benefits to agreeing a definition (eg conflict avoidance, improved efficiency), but I wonder if it’s actually a mistake to hope for a consensus?
Anything affecting people will always mean different things to different folk; indeed, that is one of the great things about life: we’re all different. In fact, trying to shoe-horn things into an agreed definition can lead to sterility, or worse.
Arguably everything to do with human life can be described as ‘cultural’; and equally arguably it’s possible to find a ‘creative’ angle to any profession or human endeavour
But that doesn’t mean I think the discussion is futile; far from it. I think there is enormous value in the debate, where people are challenged to consider the issue and their approach to it.
Paradoxically, of course, a debate requires a goal: in this case, finding a consensus. Just don’t worry too much if you never reach it.
Hi Jon
I think the twitter bit has provoked some interesting and useful starting points to the discussion.
The majority of definitions are established on the basis of distributing funds/developing public policy as @podnosh suggests. Within academic literature work related to creative industries has been struggling with the ‘definitions issue’ for as long as those two words have been put together, and used to describe a collection of, arguably, diverse industries.
Some of this work focuses on the importance of creativity across all sectors.
i,e If the point of developing public policy around the creative industries or ultimately creativity is to make a city, region or country more economically competitive then isn’t it imperative that all sectors create/innovate? Perhaps the rationale of a definition is recognising that a wider creative economy has, at its heart, some core industries which are only concerned with creating/imagining/designing new stuff or ideas. Or perhaps that is just wishful thinking?
In the context of this work (I’m also in Oslo) it is to make sure we’re all ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’. But I think @michael grimes is right looking for a consensus might be a mistake and I think that’s what we’ve agreed – arguably a consensus on something which is made-up to help people outside of those sectors make sense of them is probably tricky. As someone who has moved from the insider (sector) to the outsider (policy/academia) perspective it was quite odd when over night folks started talking about the creative industries as something new. For example I went from being part of a small interdiciplinary web design/consultancy team in 1996 to being part of the creative industries by 1997/8 (current admin comes to power and Chris Smith coined the term) but was still doing same business, in same office in the CF.
Here I think our agreed approach and loose definition means at least we’re all in the same ball park.
Anyway these are early hours ramblings from me. I have reviewed, as part of my never ending PhD, the literature related to this very topic and have a short version in the form of a conference paper that I’ll forward if you like when we get back to home?
Charlotte
Hi,
As someone who worked at the Creative Industries Observatory, which looked to ‘evolve’ not ‘revolve’ the creative industries defintion, it became very clear very quickly that the government mechanisms for definition are wholey inadequate (such as the SIC coding system which is just woeful). The points raised in your post are entire valid, and it boils down to the fact that the creative industries are simply a government invention to stimulate further investment and government agendas. This doesn’t mean however that they are not pertinent to the economy, in fact quite the opposite. I’ve always maintained that the creative industries should be measures ‘horizontally’ – see my first ever blog post: http://olimould.com/2008/06/23/creative-industries-an-oxymoron/ – expect a new one soon!
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