So, What Do You Do?
A new question for policy in the creative age
Over the last ten years public policy has paid considerable attention to supporting creativity. But amongentrants, employers and peopleworking in the creative industries many of these interventions are resulting in confusion, indifference and, in some cases, irritation. Why?
The aggregate result of jobs that are hard to understand is a sector that is hard to understand, and therefore hard to support. This pamphlet explores the crucial role of public policy in supporting the creative economy but argues that work shaped around creative projects is moving people – whether deliberately or by necessity – beyond the social and organisational categories through which work and learning have been organised in the past.
The creative industries are a new way of doing business, but the policy interventions to support them proceed to work in old, industrial ways. The task for policy is no longer simply to try and pre-empt the information and knowledge that the creative industries need, but to distribute the tools that enable people to work it out for themselves: the means for self-production. In a sector where 85 per cent of organisations employ fewer than five people and seem likely to stay small, public policy has a unique role and responsibility to tell a new, compelling, collective story about work shaped by creativity. This report is intended as a start . . .
The cover illustration for this pamphlet was done by Walter Newton.
Check his work out here .
The creative industries are a new way of doing business, but the policy interventions to support them proceed to work in old, industrial ways. The task for policy is no longer simply to try and pre-empt the information and knowledge that the creative industries need, but to distribute the tools that enable people to work it out for themselves: the means for self-production. In a sector where 85 per cent of organisations employ fewer than five people and seem likely to stay small, public policy has a unique role and responsibility to tell a new, compelling, collective story about work shaped by creativity. This report is intended as a start . . .
The cover illustration for this pamphlet was done by Walter Newton.
Check his work out here .
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Comments
“So, What Do You Do?” A few stray thoughts
(from Canon Kenyon Wright - yes, if you were wondering that is Shelagh's dad - ed)
There are some lovely sound bites on which to hang major parts of the argument……
“Creativity is motivated by the desire to create meaning”
“Creative activity does not organise like a conventional industry – it organises like a flea circus”
“Policy is easily skewed to the visible, large and powerful”
“Government policy for creativity ends up playing bat-the-rat – struggling to hit a moving target that it can’t see”
The central thesis is well made. The current tactics of support for the creative sector are based on the assumptions and mindsets of the past, and of the conventional industrial approach, while the characteristics and nature of this sector demand a different approach and tactics of support, enabling rather than serving. This is hard, because the creative industries are often small and disparate, and deal in meaning and understanding rather than measurable results in products and processes.
(How can the concepts of Productivity and Growth, so central to our economic models, be reinterpreted by the Creative sector? I have already argued inScotland
This debate is important for all of us, not just for those in creative industries. It goes far beyond the question of support for them. Meeting the human crisis of the 21st century depends on cultural changes in imagination, vision and meaning, as well as radical changes in our models of governance and economic growth.
The characteristics of the creative sector are exactly the qualities urgently needed in the face of our global and inter-connected crisis. Creativity is increasingy recognised as an essential factor for us all, certainly for industry and politics. Therefore the ultimate motive and reason for new policies of support is not some vague altruism, paternalistic patronage or even cultural maturity. It is enlightened self-interest. It is simply that this sector is leading the way towards developments in culture and self understanding, as essential ingredients now in a sustainable democratic society
Further, the creative sector gives us what is ultimately a more realistic, human and sustainable understanding of the true meaning of 4 concepts at the heart of current models, namely Growth; the Market; Democracy; and Governance.
The case made in this book therefore goes much farther than its immediate purpose. The implication is clearly that the creative sector points to changes needed in popular culture, economic and industrial policies, and governance.