‘Creativity…..is now the decisive source of competitive advantage.’ [Florida]
Creative Industries seeks to describe the conceptual and practical convergence of the creative arts (individual talent) with Cultural Industries (mass scale), in the context of new media technologies (ITC’s) within a new knowledge economy for the use of newly interactive citizen-consumers. {Hartley 2005]
The formal origins of the concept of the Creative Industries can be found in the Blair Labour Government’s establishment of a Creative Industries Task Force after its election in Britain in 1997, where the newly-created Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) set about mapping current activity in the creative industries, and identify policy measures that could promote their further development. The Creative Industries Mapping Document, prepared by the UK DCMS in 1998, defined creative industries as ‘those activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have the potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property’.
One attempt to define the creative industries more analytically has been undertaken by economist Richard Caves, who has defined creative industries in these terms: “Creative” industries supply goods and services that we broadly associate with cultural, artistic, or simply entertainment value. They include book and magazine publishing, the visual arts (painting and sculpture), the performing arts (theatre, opera, concerts, dance), sound recordings, cinema and TV films, even fashion and toys and games (Caves, 2000: 1).
The Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) formed in the UK was the forerunner of theories, terms and definitions of Creative Industries. DCMS helped the creative industries thrive by raising their profile and supporting their development. It was their vision that the UK becomes the world’s creative hub.
The current DCMS definition recognises eleven creative sectors
The DCMS list has been influential, and many other nations have formally adopted it. It has also been criticised. It has been argued that the division into sectors obscures a divide between lifestyle business, non-profits, and larger businesses, and between those who receive state subsidies (e.g., film) and those who do not (e.g., computer games). The inclusion of the antiques trade is often questioned, since it does not generally involve production except of reproductions and fakes. The inclusion of all computer services has also been questioned.
Others have suggested a distinction between those industries that are open to mass production and distribution (film and video; videogames; broadcasting; publishing), and those that are primarily craft-based and are meant to be consumed in a particular place and moment (visual arts; performing arts; cultural heritage).
An earlier DCMS definition provides for:
The 2001 definition recognised fourteen creative sectors
More recent publications, for example the DCMS Creative Industries Statistical Estimates Statistical Bulletin reduced this to eleven sectors:
UNESCO = By encouraging diversity and contemporary creation, UNESCO endeavours to ensure that all cultures – with due respect for their equal dignity benefit from the development opportunities opened up by creative industries through strengthening local markets and providing better access to international markets, particularly by means of North-South and South-South cooperation.
The primary purpose of this is to quantify - for example it can be used to count the number of firms, and the number of workers, creatively employed in any given location, and hence to identify places with particularly high concentrations of creative activities.
It leads to some complications which are not immediately obvious. For example, a security guard working for a music company would be classified as a creative employee, although not as creatively occupied.
The total number of creative employees is then calculated as the sum of:
According to Caves (2000), creative industries are characterized by seven economic properties:
ARS LONGA;is a Latin phrase, part of an aphorism originally by the Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, and is one of the sources of the popular English aphorism "Life is short."
The properties of Caves have been criticized for being too rigid (Towse, 2000). Not all creative workers are purely driven by 'art for art's sake'. The 'ars longa' property also holds for certain noncreative products (i.e., licensed products). The 'time flies' property also holds for large construction projects. Creative industries are therefore not unique, but they score generally higher on these properties relative to non-creative industries.
Some nations, such as Hong Kong, have preferred to shape their policy around a tighter focus on copyright ownership in the value chain. They adopt the WIPO's classifications, which divide the Creative Industries up according to who owns the copyrights at various stages during the production & distribution of creative content.
Copyright is becoming an increasingly important issue for anyone working in the Creative Industries. So many of the writers, performers and composers, don’t have even the most rudimentary understanding of how intellectual property works, and how it is crucial to their professional lives. Not brushing up even a little leaves you at risk like a shopkeeper who doesn’t know how to add up till receipts. For professional journalists not to know even the most fundamental difference between a copyright and a registered trademark is particularly embarrassing
‘Creative industries’ and ‘cultural industries’ are terms that tend to be used interchangeably. However their meanings and uses are in fact very different. Creativity and Culture are two quite different concepts. Adorno and Horkheimer originally coined the term cultural industry to make the distinction between the traditional artisan-based creative arts and industrially produced cultural forms. The arts were specifically not part of the cultural industries. The term ‘cultural industries’ referring to the ‘classic’ cultural industries of film, recorded music, broadcasting and publishing – was deployed to incorporate these forms of commercial entertainment, mass-produced by industrial methods, as an object of government cultural policy. By adopting the phrase ‘creative industries,’ to replace ‘cultural industries,’ the British were bringing the creative arts into an economic policy agenda.
At that point, the term begins to elide with knowledge economy and questions of intellectual property ownership in general.
Knowledge Economy: The essential difference is that in a knowledge economy, knowledge is a product, in knowledge-based economy, knowledge is a tool. This difference is not yet well distinguished in the subject matter literature. They both are strongly interdisciplinary, involving economists, computer scientists, software engineers, mathematicians, chemists, physicists, as well as psychologists and sociologists.
Various observers describe today's global economy as one in transition to a "knowledge economy", as an extension of an "information society". The transition requires that the rules and practices that determined success in the industrial economy need rewriting in an interconnected, globalized economy where knowledge resources such as know-how and expertise are as critical as other economic resources.
Creative Class: The creative class is a class of workers whose job is to create meaningful new forms. The creative class is composed of scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and architects, to name a few. Their designs are widely transferable and useful on a broad scale, as with products that are sold and used on a wide scale. Another sector of the creative class includes those positions which are knowledge intensive. These careers usually require a high degree of formal education.
Taking the UK as an example, in the context of other sectors, the creative industries make a far more significant contribution to output than hospitality or utilities and deliver four times the output due to agriculture, fisheries and forestry. In terms of employment and depending on the definition of activities included, the sector is a major employer of between 4-6% of the UK's working population, though this is still significantly less than employment due to traditional areas of work such as retail and manufacturing.
Within the creative industries sector and again taking the UK as an example, the three largest sub-sectors are design, publishing, and television and radio. Together these account for around 75% of revenues and 50% of employment.
The complex supply chains in the creative industries sometimes make it challenging to calculate accurate figures for the gross value added by each sub-sector. This is particularly the case for the service-focused sub-sectors such as advertising, whereas it is more straightforward in product-focused sub-sectors such as crafts. Not surprisingly, perhaps, competition in product-focused areas tends to be more intense with a tendency to drive the production end of the supply chain to become a commodity business.
There may be a tendency for publicly-funded creative industries development services to inaccurately estimate the number of creative businesses during the mapping process. There is also imprecision in nearly all tax code systems that determine a person's profession, since many creative people operate simultaneously in multiple roles and jobs. Both these factors mean that official statistics relating to the Creative Industries should be treated with caution.
Department of Culture, Media and Sport, UK: http://www.culture.gov.uk
British Council, UK. Information about its creative economy programme, currently operating in over 40 emerging economies and including its highly regarded Young Creative Entrepreneur award programme and Nurturing the creative economy seminars. Website described as "interaction, experience and networks for the global creative economy": http://www.creativeconomy.org.uk/
‘Creativity…..is now the decisive source of competitive advantage.’ [Florida]
Creative Industries seeks to describe the conceptual and practical convergence of the creative arts (individual talent) with Cultural Industries (mass scale), in the context of new media technologies (ITC’s) within a new knowledge economy for the use of newly interactive citizen-consumers. {Hartley 2005]
The formal origins of the concept of the Creative Industries can be found in the Blair Labour Government’s establishment of a Creative Industries Task Force after its election in Britain in 1997, where the newly-created Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) set about mapping current activity in the creative industries, and identify policy measures that could promote their further development. The Creative Industries Mapping Document, prepared by the UK DCMS in 1998, defined creative industries as ‘those activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have the potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property’.
One attempt to define the creative industries more analytically has been undertaken by economist Richard Caves, who has defined creative industries in these terms: “Creative” industries supply goods and services that we broadly associate with cultural, artistic, or simply entertainment value. They include book and magazine publishing, the visual arts (painting and sculpture), the performing arts (theatre, opera, concerts, dance), sound recordings, cinema and TV films, even fashion and toys and games (Caves, 2000: 1).
The Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) formed in the UK was the forerunner of theories, terms and definitions of Creative Industries. DCMS helped the creative industries thrive by raising their profile and supporting their development. It was their vision that the UK becomes the world’s creative hub.
The current DCMS definition recognises eleven creative sectors
The DCMS list has been influential, and many other nations have formally adopted it. It has also been criticised. It has been argued that the division into sectors obscures a divide between lifestyle business, non-profits, and larger businesses, and between those who receive state subsidies (e.g., film) and those who do not (e.g., computer games). The inclusion of the antiques trade is often questioned, since it does not generally involve production except of reproductions and fakes. The inclusion of all computer services has also been questioned.
Others have suggested a distinction between those industries that are open to mass production and distribution (film and video; videogames; broadcasting; publishing), and those that are primarily craft-based and are meant to be consumed in a particular place and moment (visual arts; performing arts; cultural heritage).
An earlier DCMS definition provides for:
The 2001 definition recognised fourteen creative sectors
More recent publications, for example the DCMS Creative Industries Statistical Estimates Statistical Bulletin reduced this to eleven sectors:
UNESCO = By encouraging diversity and contemporary creation, UNESCO endeavours to ensure that all cultures – with due respect for their equal dignity benefit from the development opportunities opened up by creative industries through strengthening local markets and providing better access to international markets, particularly by means of North-South and South-South cooperation.
The primary purpose of this is to quantify - for example it can be used to count the number of firms, and the number of workers, creatively employed in any given location, and hence to identify places with particularly high concentrations of creative activities.
It leads to some complications which are not immediately obvious. For example, a security guard working for a music company would be classified as a creative employee, although not as creatively occupied.
The total number of creative employees is then calculated as the sum of:
According to Caves (2000), creative industries are characterized by seven economic properties:
ARS LONGA;is a Latin phrase, part of an aphorism originally by the Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, and is one of the sources of the popular English aphorism "Life is short."
The properties of Caves have been criticized for being too rigid (Towse, 2000). Not all creative workers are purely driven by 'art for art's sake'. The 'ars longa' property also holds for certain noncreative products (i.e., licensed products). The 'time flies' property also holds for large construction projects. Creative industries are therefore not unique, but they score generally higher on these properties relative to non-creative industries.
Some nations, such as Hong Kong, have preferred to shape their policy around a tighter focus on copyright ownership in the value chain. They adopt the WIPO's classifications, which divide the Creative Industries up according to who owns the copyrights at various stages during the production & distribution of creative content.
Copyright is becoming an increasingly important issue for anyone working in the Creative Industries. So many of the writers, performers and composers, don’t have even the most rudimentary understanding of how intellectual property works, and how it is crucial to their professional lives. Not brushing up even a little leaves you at risk like a shopkeeper who doesn’t know how to add up till receipts. For professional journalists not to know even the most fundamental difference between a copyright and a registered trademark is particularly embarrassing
‘Creative industries’ and ‘cultural industries’ are terms that tend to be used interchangeably. However their meanings and uses are in fact very different. Creativity and Culture are two quite different concepts. Adorno and Horkheimer originally coined the term cultural industry to make the distinction between the traditional artisan-based creative arts and industrially produced cultural forms. The arts were specifically not part of the cultural industries. The term ‘cultural industries’ referring to the ‘classic’ cultural industries of film, recorded music, broadcasting and publishing – was deployed to incorporate these forms of commercial entertainment, mass-produced by industrial methods, as an object of government cultural policy. By adopting the phrase ‘creative industries,’ to replace ‘cultural industries,’ the British were bringing the creative arts into an economic policy agenda.
At that point, the term begins to elide with knowledge economy and questions of intellectual property ownership in general.
Knowledge Economy: The essential difference is that in a knowledge economy, knowledge is a product, in knowledge-based economy, knowledge is a tool. This difference is not yet well distinguished in the subject matter literature. They both are strongly interdisciplinary, involving economists, computer scientists, software engineers, mathematicians, chemists, physicists, as well as psychologists and sociologists.
Various observers describe today's global economy as one in transition to a "knowledge economy", as an extension of an "information society". The transition requires that the rules and practices that determined success in the industrial economy need rewriting in an interconnected, globalized economy where knowledge resources such as know-how and expertise are as critical as other economic resources.
Creative Class: The creative class is a class of workers whose job is to create meaningful new forms. The creative class is composed of scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and architects, to name a few. Their designs are widely transferable and useful on a broad scale, as with products that are sold and used on a wide scale. Another sector of the creative class includes those positions which are knowledge intensive. These careers usually require a high degree of formal education.
Taking the UK as an example, in the context of other sectors, the creative industries make a far more significant contribution to output than hospitality or utilities and deliver four times the output due to agriculture, fisheries and forestry. In terms of employment and depending on the definition of activities included, the sector is a major employer of between 4-6% of the UK's working population, though this is still significantly less than employment due to traditional areas of work such as retail and manufacturing.
Within the creative industries sector and again taking the UK as an example, the three largest sub-sectors are design, publishing, and television and radio. Together these account for around 75% of revenues and 50% of employment.
The complex supply chains in the creative industries sometimes make it challenging to calculate accurate figures for the gross value added by each sub-sector. This is particularly the case for the service-focused sub-sectors such as advertising, whereas it is more straightforward in product-focused sub-sectors such as crafts. Not surprisingly, perhaps, competition in product-focused areas tends to be more intense with a tendency to drive the production end of the supply chain to become a commodity business.
There may be a tendency for publicly-funded creative industries development services to inaccurately estimate the number of creative businesses during the mapping process. There is also imprecision in nearly all tax code systems that determine a person's profession, since many creative people operate simultaneously in multiple roles and jobs. Both these factors mean that official statistics relating to the Creative Industries should be treated with caution.
Department of Culture, Media and Sport, UK: http://www.culture.gov.uk
British Council, UK. Information about its creative economy programme, currently operating in over 40 emerging economies and including its highly regarded Young Creative Entrepreneur award programme and Nurturing the creative economy seminars. Website described as "interaction, experience and networks for the global creative economy": http://www.creativeconomy.org.uk/
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|