Andy C. Pratt

CREATIVE CITIES: THE CULTURAL INDUSTRIES AND THE CREATIVE CLASS

Abstract. The aim of this article is to critically examine the notion that the creative class may or may not play as a causal mechanism of urban regeneration. I begin with a review of Floridas argument focusing on the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings. The second section develops a critique of the relationship between the creative class and growth. This is followed by an attempt to clarify the relationship between the concepts of creativity, culture and the creative industries. Finally, I suggest that policy‐makers may achieve more successful regeneration outcomes if they attend to the cultural industries as an object that links production and consumption, manufacturing and service. Such a notion is more useful in interpreting and understanding the significant role of cultural production in contemporary cities, and what relation it has to growth.

Cultural industries and cultural policy

This article analyses and contextualises a variety of relationships between the cultural industries and cultural policy. A principal aim is to examine policies explicitly formulated as cultural (or creative) industries policies. What lies behind such policies? How do they relate to other kinds of cultural policy, including those more oriented towards media, communications, arts and heritage? The first section asks how the cultural industries became such an important idea in cultural policy, when those industries had been largely invisible in traditional (arts‐ and heritage‐based) policy for many decades. What changed and what drove the major changes? In the second section, we look at a number of problems and conceptual tensions arising from the new importance of the cultural industries in contemporary public policy, including problems concerning definition and scope, and the accurate mapping of the sector, but also tensions surrounding the insertion of commercial and industrial culture into cultural policy regimes characterised by legacies of romanticism and idealism. We also look at problems surrounding the academic division of labour in this area of study. We conclude by summarising some of the main contemporary challenges facing cultural policy and cultural policy studies with regard to the cultural industries. The piece also serves to introduce the contributions to a special issue of International Journal of Cultural Policy on the cultural industries and cultural policy.

The Cultural Industries Production System: A Case Study of Employment Change in Britain, 1984–91

The cultural industries sector employed 4.5% of all employees in Britain in 1991; that is, it was equal in size to the construction industry, or to the combined employment in the agricultural, and the extractive industries. However, this sector has remained relatively underanalysed both in the geographical and in the planning literature. The author begins by defining the cultural industries production system (CIPS). In the second part he operationalises this definition with respect to secondary sources on employment in the CIPS in Britain. In the third part he considers the change in the employment structure of the CIPS between 1984 and 1991, and goes on to address the regional patterns of employment in the CIPS with particular emphasis upon London and the South East.

New media, the new economy and new spaces

This paper counters proponents of the ‘weightless economy’ who have suggested the ‘death of distance’ in relation to economic and social activities that use the worldwide web (WWW). An analysis of new media developers in New York’s ‘Silicon Alley’ demonstrates that place and distance are still important. The most important aspect of this co-location is the possibility of social interaction. This paper points to the value of analysis of the material practice of the social (and the economic and cultural). The notion of ‘untraded dependencies’ is developed through looking at its manifestation and constitution in the specificity of space, time and economic activity.

Rural studies: Modernism, postmodernism and the ‘post-rural’

Abstract In response to Philo [(1992b), Neglected rural geographies: a review. Journal of Rural Studies 8 , 193–207), who calls for rural studies to take the study of ‘others’ more seriously, we argue the need to take postmodernism more seriously. The paper focuses upon the production of knowledge about rural areas by academics. In the narrative that we provide here, the ‘rural’ had a strong presence until Pahls critique of the rural-urban continuum which both diminished the status of the rural and emphasised the role of class in shaping particular spaces. Newby and his colleagues applied class analysis to agriculture, likewise undermining the significance of the rural. Further applications of general social theory, such as the political economy and restructuring approaches, show how modernist rural studies seem to be fighting a losing battle to posit the indispensability of the significance of the urban-rural division as an explanation; articulating and rearticulating the divide within a whole range of processes: economic, social and cultural. Rural social scientists have woven this modernist narrative, but, as Philo shows, one effect has been the neglect of certain social groups, cultures and identities. However, in contrast to Philo, we argue that a rather fundamental reassessment of social scientific approaches to the rural is required if these ‘neglected others’ are to be satisfactorily considered. We believe a ‘sociology of postmodernism’ would offer a more reflexive perspective on the processes which give rise to ‘the rural’. We thus call for an end to the use of universal or global concepts such as ‘rural’ (or the ‘urban’) and for a concern with the way places are ‘made’. This will entail a focus on ‘power’ as certain actors impose ‘their’ rurality on others. We term this the study of the ‘post-rural’.

Cultural industries and public policy

This article re‐imagines the space of the cultural industries and their governance. It is divided into three parts. In the first, questions of definition are reviewed. In the second part, cultural policies (and by default cultural industries policies) are examined in order to disclose the key concepts of culture that they are based upon. The final section, on governance, develops an argument that seeks to open up a space where the hybrid nature of cultural production can be addressed by policy.

The cultural economy: a call for spatialized ‘production of culture' perspectives

This article argues that the analytical pendulum has swung too far in prioritizing consumption in analyses of the cultural economy. The article adopts a version of the ‘production of culture’ perspective and is illustrated through discussion of three interrelated fields of the cultural economy: the new economy, creativity and consumption. The article argues in favour of studies of the material culture of production (redefined to take in the whole ‘cycle’ of the making and shaping of cultural commodities) and recommends this as a basis of policy development.

Creative Clusters: Towards the Governance of the Creative Industries Production System?

The aim of this paper is to critically assess the notion of the creative cluster, and to consider whether it is an appropriate tool for the governance of the creative industries, or even a suitable point from which to begin an analysis of the creative industries. The paper argues that creative clusters are formally a subset of business clusters. A critique of the business clusters literature highlights its shortcomings: a focus on individual firm preferences and a lack of attention to non-economic, situated temporal and spatial variables; a lack of attention to the specificity of particular industries and their associated regulatory peculiarities; and finally, information issues associated with the operationalisation of the cluster model. The paper concludes with a discussion of an alternative approach, looking at a creative industries production system that would better meet the concerns of those seeking to govern the creative industries and creative clusters.

Discourses of Rurality: Loose Talk or Social Struggle?.

Abstract This paper is critical of the existing usage of ‘rural’ and ‘rurality’. It does not simply dismiss the terms as either irrelevant, wrong, or as a chaotic conception. The paper attempts to plot the implications, and account for the existence, of a multiplicity of meanings of the term ‘rurality’. Rather than adjudicating on the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ use of the term it is suggested that the disputation over the use and meaning of the term ‘rurality’ demonstrates the rupture of sign and signification that has been discussed in debates concerning ideology and hegemony, and more recently post-structuralism. The paper argues in favour of a productive dialogue between Gramscian notions of political struggle and post-structuralist concerns with language and meaning. It is suggested that a more adequate explanation of social change should be sensitive to the multiple discourses that constitute our ‘reality’ (‘urban’ or ‘rural’), and the resources that are mobilised in their favour.

Advertising and Creativity, a Governance Approach: A Case Study of Creative Agencies in London

The author explores the processes of restructuring in the UK advertising industry. His core concern is with changes in advertising practice in creative advertising agencies. He explores how creativity is manifest as ‘peer regard’, and shows how there has been a shift of power between creative and media-buying functions as a result of the demise of the commission system in the last twenty-five years. A changing governance of advertising practice, that involves both formal regulation and economic governance in and across firms, is highlighted. It is argued that creativity is better seen as an effect rather than as a cause of particular advertising practices. The author concludes that the ‘creative governance’ of the UK advertising industry has favoured a close-knit and colocated community of firms. A future change in this form of governance could change this pattern.