Calvin Taylor

Beyond advocacy: Developing an evidence base for regional creative industry strategies

This paper examines several aspects of the developing evidence base for regional creative industry policy making in England and argues that the focus of the current research base is disproportionately determined by the demand for evidence for advocacy purposes. It offers an evaluation that challenges the basis on which some of the central sector advocacy claims have been made and argues that unless the evidence base is allowed to develop beyond advocacy, then the claims for evidence-based policy will be seriously compromised.

The Role of Universities in the Regional Creative Economies of the UK: Hidden Protagonists and the Challenge of Knowledge Transfer

Abstract The Triple-Helix model of knowledge−industry−government relationships is one of the most comprehensive attempts to explain the changing institutional frameworks for innovation and growth, especially in the regional and urban contexts. Since the 1970s policies have been developed across Europe to evolve this institutional landscape. Since the late 1990s, regional and urban development strategies have also sought to harness the growth potential of the cultural and creative industries to regional and urban economic development. However, whilst the regional and urban planning literature has examined the growth-promoting potential of universities very closely, their possible role in relation to regional and urban creative economic development has received less attention. This paper aims to begin addressing this gap by interrogating the relationship between universities and the regional creative economy using, as a starting point, a model of analysis suggested by the Triple-Helix theoretical framework. The paper finds that whilst universities possess often long and hidden associations with regional and urban creative activities—as hidden protagonists—there are important institutional and professional challenges in the possibility of their developing an explicit and sustainable role as new actors in the regional and urban creative economies. The paper identifies the nature of these challenges with a view to developing a clearer understanding of the system, policy and institutional realities that underpin the often complex dynamics of knowledge creation−practice relationships found in arts and humanities disciplines.

Big ideas for a small town: the Huddersfield Creative Town Initiative

Whilst much of the attention of those concerned with culture and regeneration has rightly been focused upon the core cities and regional capitals, it would be a mistake to assume that smaller towns and cities do not also have a role to play. Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, is one of a number of towns clustered around the Pennines that grew, and for a hundred years prospered, from the textile trade but which, by the 1980s, were in serious economic decline. This article examines how culture has contributed to the regeneration of the town and the wider local authority district. It reviews the developing role of the creative industries within the district and, in particular, the role of the local Council as a key catalyst for many of the institutional and policy shifts that have contributed to this development. The paper is very much intended as reflection on a particular case study. It is certainly not offered as a blueprint but as an opportunity to contribute to the developing knowledge base concerned with the role of the cultural and creative industries in urban development.

Between Culture, Policy and Industry: Modalities of Intermediation in the Creative Economy

Taylor C. Between culture, policy and industry: modalities of intermediation in the creative economy, Regional Studies. The creative economy has become one of the most internationally pervasive prescriptions for the future of regional spatial economies. Accounts of its characteristics and typical ways of working have pointed to the importance of intermediary agents. Intermediation in the creative economy has, however, been comparatively under-theorized. This paper aims to address this gap by focusing on the topic of intermediary efficacy, that is, by what powers does intermediation bring about effects both for and in the creative economy? It argues that a fuller account of intermediation needs to encompass its three principal modalities: the transactional, the regulatory and the strategic.

The Creative Industries, Governance and Economic Development: A UK Perspective

The title of ‘creative economy’ is much sought after by cities around the world. This new soubriquet in the vocabulary of urban esteem captures at a glance the zeitgeistian coupling of culture with economic value. With a renewed emphasis on place and the qualities of locality as the locus of development, there is a strong interest from policy-makers in the role of culture in economic development, particularly in the guise of the so-called ‘untraded inter-dependencies’ (Storper 1995) of shared values, trust and social capital. Similarly, once seriously neglected in studies of economic development, culture as both the context for and possible source of economic growth also now appears at the heart of new ways of thinking and practising economic development (Radcliffe 2006; Clammer 2005). Whilst different conceptualisations of the creative economy abound, the most common approaches reference the idea of the creative industries as a potential driver of industrial and economic development. Since 1997, there has been in the United Kingdom an upsurge of government, private and third sector interest in the contribution of the creative industries to the UK economy and society (DCMS 1998, 2001, 2007; The Work Foundation 2007), a contribution which a number of commentators have posited as a key source of future competitive advantage (NESTA 2006; Cox 2005). With annual growth rates at twice the average for the economy as a whole (DCMS 2007), the attraction of the creative industries for policy-makers is clear. With a combination of above-average growth statistics and something of the zeitgeist, the creative industries feature in virtually every regional and local economic strategy in the UK. However, it is this widespread adoption that needs to be scrutinised. Chapter 10 The Creative Industries, Governance and Economic Development: A UK Perspective*

Performing for affect? Immaterial labour and performer training

Despite its well-documented precarious nature, graduates regard the social factory of the cultural and creative industries as a desirable career destination. University-based performer training has found itself at the forefront of this, championing the critical role of self-awareness, social reflexivity and cultural knowledge in the formation of the new working subjectivities on which such industries are based. That such valued educational and training objectives should have become vindicated by the demands of contemporary networked and affective working ought to be a cause for celebration. However, as a number of writers have argued, such developments present students and academics with a series of tensions and contradictions that are intrinsic to the new social and economic forms of ‘cognitive’ or ‘informational’ capitalism. One particularly influential group derives its inspiration (and some of its membership) from the Autonomy movement of 1970s Italy, which now counts academic and political activists as members across the world. This paper examines this body of theory, first summarising its key arguments before assessing its potential to contribute to a critical interrogation of the objectives and methods of contemporary performer training regimes with specific reference to the long tradition of psychophysical and post-psychophysical performer training.

Invisible Agents and hidden Protagonists: Rethinking Creative Cities Policy

Abstract This article acts as an introduction to the special issue on creative cities policy. We begin the article with a discussion of recent critical accounts of cultural/creative industries and creative cities policy, arguing that the failure of policies to fully understand the often hidden complexities of cultural production has fostered simplistic and often self-defeating policy design and intervention. We then move on to present a series of papers that are concerned in various ways with both developing an understanding of the complex dimensions of cultural production and with tackling the often weak and implicit links between research, policy and urban planning.

Book Review: Reassessing Florida; Creative Entrepreneurship and Political Culture; Growth of Creative Entrepreneurship in the UK

In accordance with the theme of this special issue, three books have been selected for review. Since The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida was first published in 2002, and initially reviewed by the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in February 2003, the creative industry has become a key growth sector worldwide. The sector is now recognized in countries as diverse as the UK, Australia, Singapore, South Africa, India and China. The review in this issue therefore reassesses the contribution of Florida’s now famous book to the debate on the growth of the creative sector and its role in economic growth and cultural prosperity. New Money, Nice Town: How Capital Works in the New Urban Economy by Leonard Nevarez is a ‘left-of-centre application’ of Florida’s Creative Class thesis and examines the development of new urban business elites in the creative sector, providing a comprehensive analysis of how cultural corporations shape communities and influence urban politics. The Independents: Britain’s New Cultural Entrepreneurs by Charles Leadbeater and Kate Oakley addresses a core theme in the debate on the creative sector – the growing economic and political importance of young cultural workers and entrepreneurs. A key message of the book is that policy makers need to pay attention to this growing segment of the workforce.

The Contradictions of Positivist Marxism

The ideal abstraction which transformed the Marxist dialectic into ‘the economic interpretation of history’ was generated within the renaissance of positivist philosophy. With the publication of the third volume of Capital, the floodgate of criticism, which had only been held in check by Engels fighting something of a rearguard action, opened and the now familiar criticisms of inconsistency and contradiction poured forth. Unprepared for such an onslaught, and appearing to defend a naive theory of economic forces, many Marxist theoreticians were forced to concede ground on the most fundamental elements of Marx’s theoretical apparatus; his dialectical method and the theory of value. The repeated re-examinations of the issues which rose to prominence during the years prior to the First World War are simply a reprise of positions established during the original debate. It was inevitable that, given their shared positivist philosophical underpinnings, the positions adopted by the various protagonists would eventually begin to coalesce. It was simply a matter of time, therefore, before the last vestiges of the dialectical method were expunged from Marxism altogether, to be replaced by the method of positivism.