Managing the Creative Economy

Because of its powerful impact on the creation of lifestyle and social value, and because of its

very real economic impact, the creative industry sector needs proper management. It needs the

kind of cultural policy that will stimulate creativity and competitive diversity, as well as wealth

creation. Governments increasingly recognise this, but effective management of the new

cultural landscape requires a new vision of culture, and new tools to articulate that vision. There

are three significant challenges for governments wishing to develop effective policy for the

creative economy: gaining information on the new economy in order to intervene effectively;

sharing power and using new partnerships in the management of culture; sustaining the locally

based creative pool, while creating access to international cultural exchange.

POLICY CHALLENGES TO SUSTAINING A CREATIVE ECOLOGY

First Challenge: Information.

Governments cannot intervene in a vacuum. They need useful information on the new sector.

There is little systematically developed information on the CI sector. The new cultural landscape

is linked to new information technologies and this means it is in constant evolution. In order to

develop good policy and invest realistically in the new cultural economy, governments need a

source of relevant information that can be continually updated from within the cultural sector.

Second Challenge: New management partnerships

First, the cultural industries sector is both cultural and economic; its products: film, music, video,

design, architecture, crafts etc. contain both a cultural vision and an economic value. The

cultural industries do not sit squarely either in the field of cultural policy or economic policy, they

straddle the two policy fields. But, unlike traditional cultural policy, which is associated with a

close and direct involvement with the sector, policy for the creative industries requires a more

arms length approach, facilitating and enabling but not directly supporting. A new type of cultural

interface based on cultural intermediaries can assist in this.

Third Challenge: Sustaining local creativity while ensuring access to transnational

cultural exchange. Smaller cultural producers need help gaining access to the market. One of

the biggest hurdles to this is the fact that while cultural production is local, the market is regional

and global, and so cultural producers need the kind of assistance which is transnational. They

need actual and virtual mobility in cultural exchange but there are few regional mechanisms

which enable independent cultural producers to directly work in the regional or global market.

Local cultural producers do not need to be protected and directly funded, but they do need to be

given a level playing field and the capacity to use it. In this they need: relevant information on

the cultural sector locally, regionally and internationally; they need access to information on

financial and other resources; a free and open local and regional/European cultural exchange

network.

ACT’s RESPONSES TO THESE CHALLENGES

Activity: Development of cultural data and information through cultural mapping:

Objective: To provide governments and cultural authorities with the information necessary to

develop policy tools for the creative industries sector.

Activity: Training of cultural entrepreneurs or intermediaries with the capacity to develop

capacity and facilitate market access on the part of local level cultural producers:

Objective: To promote a European expertise in cultural entrepreneurship which respects and

adapts those local level cultural conditions which are the source of diversity and creativity.

Activity: Creation of an electronic network linking the localities engaged in the project,

through interactive cultural portals:

Objective: To create local level capacity through access

to an international exchange of a broad range of cultural information and services accessible to

all cultural actors.