Creative Economy Policy Research Articles

Cultural Policy Formation and State-Society Relations: Culture-led Urban Redevelopment of Enninglu in Guangzhou

Using the Enninglu redevelopment project as a case, this article examines how local governments in China pacify urban protests, consolidate the political legitimacy of urban agendas, and re-regulate state-society relations through cultural policy-making. The Enninglu urban renewal project has experienced three waves of social resistance since 2006. Accordingly, the government has made three rounds of urban policy changes, successively incorporating heritage preservation policies, creative economy policies, and public participation policies in response to different social demands. The case of Enninglu illustrates that cultural city-making in China is not merely “state-led,” but is assembled in a process of conflict between the state and society at the local level. This article argues for bringing the perspective of “state-society relations” to the study of Asian cultural/creative cities and further proposes a “legitimacy framework” to conceptualize the mechanisms of urban cultural policy-making in the context of social resistance.

From our own voices: The meaning making of subculture among extreme metal musicians in Indonesia

In the mid-1990s, extreme metal music in Indonesia was defined as a threat to the authoritarian regime’s unquestioned values of harmony and social stability. Consequently, the music had to rely on the local communities in Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Bandung. After the downfall of the military-based authoritarian regime in 1998, the alliance between extreme metal subculture and the state changed moderately. Extreme metal is no longer considered as a ‘folk devil’, nonetheless as a marketable commodity relevant to the new agenda of creative economy policy. This article draws from stories of Indonesian extreme metal musicians to illustrate the relevance of subculture concept in extreme metal music in the contemporary neo-liberal era. Using the life biographies approach, we highlight how extreme metal musicians make and remake the actual and symbolic meanings of their involvement in music subcultures based upon the temporal and spatial situatedness of their lifeworld. We focus on the narratives of two informants who have been continuously devoted to their ways of life as metalheads, not only in relation to ‘musicking’ but also in respect to maintaining ‘subcultural values’ throughout their life biographies. Regarding this, we conducted interviews with Indonesian extreme metal musicians from two major ‘metal’ cities in Indonesia: Jakarta and Bandung. In this article, we argue that as rookies, the meaning of extreme metal subculture is as a space to embody the authenticity, autonomy and community as a manifestation of subcultural values. As aficionado, they reinterpreted the meaning of extreme metal subculture as a space to maintain the values of authenticity, autonomy and community. In short, extreme metal musicians incrementally made and remade the meaning of subculture centred on the particular temporal and spatial contexts in their life biographies.

Preparing for the Future Crisis: Lessons from Creative Economic Policies on Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in Pandemic

Looking at how the government implements creative economy policies for the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector during a pandemic, this article aims to see how they are implemented and draw lessons that can be used to prepare for future crises. This study aims to identify the challenges that the creative economy in MSME will face in the future, so that a number of suggestions can be provided as capital for defense and strengthening of the national economic sector. This study's research chosen method is a literature review, with primary sources consisting of scholarly journal articles from various sources. This study demonstrates how government economic policies can increase MSMEs' product sales. According to the findings of the analysis, there are two tailed of issues that will be confronted in the future, systemic and dynamic challenges. As a result, the MSME sector should be ready to improve the system and adapt it to the market environment.

Resist or perish!

This article examines the practice of resistance among young DIY musicians in Yogyakarta, Indonesia in the context of the post-reform era. DIY young musicians negotiate how to provide for their everyday economic needs while also upholding their music genre’s spirit of resistance against market commodification. Lately, commodification not only comes from the music industry but also from the state through neoliberal-oriented creative economy policies. Music falls into the category of a creative sector and is seen as a product to boost economic growth. Based on our empirical data, young musicians resist this through DIY practices in their music scene. We show the struggle of young musicians to sustain their musical values of authenticity (otentisitas) and autonomy (kemandirian). Instead of viewing resistance as homogenous, we observed three modes of resistance: the rookie, the in-between, and the afficionado, based on their level of commitment to being a DIY careerist. Our research offers a real-world example of theories around popular music and youth studies based on the experiences of young Indonesian musicians.

Understanding creative economy policies in the Canadian context: a case study of “Creative Canada”

ABSTRACT This paper examines how the discourse of creative industries is interpreted in the Canadian context with a case study of the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Creative Canada policy framework. Based on textual analysis of policy documents from both federal and provincial governments, it analyzes the underlying dynamics of Creative Canada with pre-existing dialogues of Canadian cultural policies. The findings of this research indicate that this policy masterplan reinterprets traditional mandates of Canadian cultural policies, such as safeguarding the nation's cultural sovereignty and developing a distinctive Canadian value with market mechanisms. While Creative Canada is a major turning point in policymaking towards the commodification of culture and creativity, its schemes of valuing culture and the arts remain subject to the complexity of the nation’s cultural politics that also shapes the market.

The Cross-Sector Collaboration for Development Policy of Rural Creative Economy: The Case of Bengkoang Creative Hub

This paper examines a cross-sector collaborative model for development policy in a creative economy in a rural area setting. The creative economy based on the village’s creative potential is considered capable of contributing to the national economy, but it should be supported by public policies that are adaptive to the potential and needs of creative economy actors. The paper used a qualitative approach with case studies in Banyumas Regency, Central Java, Indonesia. This village represents one of the leading creative economy subsectors in Indonesia, which is culinary. The study found that collaboration among Penta Helix forces played multiple roles in driving rural creative actors and building rural creative ecosystems. The stages of collaboration were identified in strengthening organizational structure, program implementation, and organizational consolidation. Organizational capability and innovation have been growing in rural creative economy actors during cross-sector collaboration implementation. This study provides insights into how Penta Helix collaborates with rural creative actors to promote the rural creative economy. From a public policy perspective, this study fills a significant gap in the literature regarding rural development models that are not covered much in the creative economy policy.

Knowledge exchange in the arts and humanities as creative economy policy assemblage

The creative economy is a complex assemblage of policy, practice and industrial activity, underpinned by apparently novel configurations of cultural and creative work. In recent years, it has become the focus of a number of schemes which have seen major shifts in how UK research councils fund universities. This paper reflects on the work of Research and Enterprise in Arts and Creative Technology (REACT), a major knowledge exchange programme aimed at stimulating growth in the creative sector through collaborations with universities in South West England and South Wales. In the first section, I unpack some of the underpinning logics of the ‘creative turn’ by which creativity has become a key currency in modern economies. I then consider how this shift has affected universities. I next ask how the various rationalities of an economy driven by creativity have moved into the knowledge exchange sphere. I approach this by formulating creative economy policy as a form of governmentality performed through assemblages that facilitate policy transfer. The paper turns to the empirical example of REACT, considering it as an assemblage through which reconfigurations of discourses, spatialities, temporalities, subjects and calculative practices have unfolded. The analysis shows how the multivalent, ad hoc and sometimes contradictory experience of producing an assemblage such as REACT means that policy transfer is never entirely complete nor stable, and that in this sense it is still possible for knowledge exchange programmes to imagine and generate alternative approaches to creativity that are not wholly reducible to a neoliberal or capitalist logic, although they remain implicated therein.

The justification of a music city: Handbooks, intermediaries and value disputes in a global policy assemblage

Abstract The intermediary work of persuasion and justification is an important but often hidden aspect of urban cultural policy. Rather than the frictionless flow and ‘transfer’ of knowledge, the global assemblage of creative economy policy – especially novel, oppositional or more ‘just’ visions of creative cities – is an accomplishment. One such vision is the call to develop a hybrid cultural-industrial policy that would attend to the internal processes and dynamics of culture as a production system. Drawing from the pragmatic sociology of justification and critique, the paper focuses on the ‘Music City’ construct as a live example of this vision, and the best-practice ‘handbook’ as key justification device. Handbooks are used by intermediaries to spread ideas, signal expertise, convince and ‘educate’ those that might fund them, coordinate heterogeneous stakeholders, and to enthuse and achieve legitimacy among a broader public. In so doing, they present a repertoire of arguments, rooted in competing value formations, that respond to doubts and disputes with potentials for compromise and appeals to a ‘common good’. Analysing the justificatory ‘grammar’ of a new Music City discourse suggests avenues for further research exploring how justification work takes place in situated contexts of urban cultural practice.

Rencana Aksi Pengembangan Industri Kreatif Kuliner Berbasis Media Online Di Kota Malang

Creative economy is a new sector in the Indonesian economy. Based on Presidential Instruction (Inpres) Number 6 Year 2009 on Creative Economy Development, the government has supported creative economy policy through creative industry. One of the creative industries sub-sector in Malang is culinary culinary that reach 160.000 users in 2013. However, the existence of online culinary has not been recorded by the government and there has been no study of local product development in RPJMD. Therefore, this research is needed related to the identification of online culinary characteristics and the preparation of action plans of its development. Based on stakeholders analsis, Industrial and Trading Department become the executant of strategic planning. Based on the results of research on 96 units of online culinary, there are 3 factors of value shift which is changes in production, distribution, and marketing processes that can be used as the basis for action plans based on value proposition that is operational excellence. This research comes out into 1 vision, 3 missions with 10 different strategies and 22 action plans for the development of online culinary creative industry in Malang City. Keywords: Creative Industry, Online Culinary, Strategic Palnning, Operational Excellence

When the dead rise: encountering resistant legacies of creative economy within an artist’s residency at a municipal cemetery

ABSTRACTRecent criticism of creative economies demonstrates tensions between programmes that support innovative cultural expression and community belonging, and those more oriented to instrumentally economic outcomes. While municipal planners recognize the link between cultural activity and enhanced quality of life, related budget support typically calls for quantifiable outcomes. Creative economy policies and projects are thus vulnerable to favouring more narrowly construed forms of economic growth. We explore the municipally embedded artist-in-residence (AiR) programme as a source of friction, complexity and inefficiency intentionally introduced into organizations constitutionally regulated to suppress exactly these kinds of excesses. In Deleuzian terms, the social machinery of neoliberal urban and economic development hesitates when it encounters the short-circuiting unpredictabilities of creative desire introduced by the embedded residency. The municipally embedded AiR is a residual apparatus of creative economy policy that can offer resistance to and even inoculation against easy alliances with neoliberal economic agendas. In the case of an embedded AiR in city cemeteries in Edmonton, Canada, the artist, working on the grounds, meeting visitors and holding workshops, uses now-obsolete photographic craft production to manipulate conventional memorial images and texts in unexpected conjunctions with experimental aesthetic expression and living stories. The physical presence of the residency also disrupts received categories to produce the cemetery as living public space rather than a setting with “holes to put the past in”. In this sense, the cemetery becomes accessible as newly encoded, sustainable cultural and recreational space with minimal civic investment. Calling up ghosts of challenged creative economy ideals, this AiR opens new forms of engagement between citizens, local history and urban nature as a complex adaptive system that incorporates both cultural values and commodity logic without primary emphasis on quantifiable outcomes.

Creative economies of tomorrow? Limits to growth and the uncertain future

ABSTRACTThis article contributes to emerging critiques of UK creative economy policy by challenging the unremitting celebration of “growth” as the primary indicator of economic success. The ecological fallacies of “exclusive” growth and the social and environmental injustices that “creative growth” has occasioned are initially discussed – and a range of possible other understandings of growth introduced. The article concludes that under conditions of real economic stagnation and incipient environmental crisis, growth needs to be made limited, but also more fully socialised in a dual sense; made more evenly and equitably redistributed in terms of benefits and rewards, as well as re-conceived in terms that afford greater priority to non-economic values and human prosperity indicators.

Community resources for small city creativity? Rethinking creative economy narratives at the Blue Mountains Music Festival

ABSTRACTLimitations in scale, infrastructure and business opportunities in combination with a greater sense of community in small centres require a more diverse understanding of the small city creative economy. Entrepreneurship and business development builds on non-capitalist resources, creative community initiatives, volunteers and community networks. Fostering the creative economy in small cities requires a rethinking of creative narratives that iterate the key role of non-capitalist community resources. I illustrate this argument via a case study of the Blue Mountains Music Festival, in New South Wales, Australia. It examines the gap between creative economy aspirations of a small city government and the reality of creativity ‘on the ground’. The City of the Blue Mountains is a small urban centre on the fringes of metropolitan Sydney and regional New South Wales. Its council has recently adopted a creative industries approach to enhance local employment in line with national and metropolitan creative agendas. The Blue Mountains Music Festival was launched in response to creative economy policy more than 20 years ago, but has now lost this connection as it fails to fit current policy aspirations. The festival is, however, an effective example of how creativity in a small city unfolds, demonstrating that beyond jobs and growth are key matters of non-capitalist community networks and resources.

Artists as workers in the rural; precarious livelihoods, sustaining rural futures

This paper explores rural-based artists' experiences of achieving sustainable livelihoods in rural localities as part of emerging discussions about the significance of culture and the cultural economy for rural development and sustainability. It applies Throsby's (1992) categorization of artists based on their employment conditions: a) ‘initial creative artists, i.e. writers, visual artists, craftspeople, composers, and b) performing artists (actors, dancers, musicians)’ (p.201–202). Based on semi-structured interviews with artists in Ireland, Wales and north-east England, and drawing on relational understandings of rurality, it examines how livelihood precariousness in the rural is shaped by a) dominant creative economy policy and institutional narratives that promote the rural creative economy as a development opportunity for the rural; b) challenges to artists' professional identities and their efforts to resisting exploitation and devaluation of their creative labour; c) the ways in which local rural communities themselves recognize and support artists' skills and labour as a social, cultural and economic resource that contributes to rural sustainability.

Creative Economy of the Developmental State: A Case Study of South Korea's Creative Economy Initiatives

ABSTRACTThis study aims to explore the policy discourse of the creative economy and its implementations in the developmental state's creative economy policies, with a case study of the Korean government. By analyzing these policies and comparing them with the British government's policy initiatives of the creative economy, this article finds that the Korean government interprets creative economy as a way of strengthening its leverages on economic sectors and rehabilitating the nation's long-lasting political-economic coalition between the government and several conglomerates, while the notion of “creativity” and creative workers become a sub-discourse of this interpretation.

Cultura Viva, a Challenge to the Creative Economy Policy Discourse in Brazil

During the last decade, Brazil has experimented with two different cultural policy discourses. The creative economy policy was inspired by international experiences and places emphasis on the commercialisation of culture, while, by contrast, the ‘Cultura Viva’ initiative is an autochthonous policy discourse that stimulates access to the cultural consumption and production of lower‐income sectors of the population. Both cultural policy discourses speak of the contributions of culture to ‘development’. However, this shibboleth delineates different projects. This article shows the different connections these two policy discourses make with ‘development’ and describes a number of disparities between them.

Managing the strategic fit of national R&D programme portfolios: the case of creative economy policy in Korea

National R&D programmes are an important means to raise investments for expediting national innovation policies. Since not all programmes are aligned with a government’s ultimate vision, the strategic fit of the R&D portfolio at the national-level should be monitored, evaluated, and managed. This study aims to evaluate the strategic fit of national R&D programmes with R&D policies and to offer advice regarding portfolio management from a national point of view for effective resource allocation. To this end, we use an approach that integrates the balanced scorecard (BSC) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The BSC model for R&D is used to translate national R&D strategy objectives into a set of coherent strategic fit factors. The AHP provides an evaluation of the strategic fit scores of national R&D programmes. Finally, the portfolio maps of strategic fit scores were developed for diagnosing national R&D programme portfolios. The proposed approach is applied to study a case of evaluating the national R&D programme portfolios for the creative economy policy in Korea. The BSC-AHP based portfolio map can be emphasized as a bridge between systematic programme evaluation and efficient strategic management.

Establishment of a Platform for Supporting the Start-Ups of Outstanding Ideas under the Creative Economy: 6-Month Challenge Platform Program for the Creative Economy

This paper reviews the 6-Month Challenge Platform Program, a short-term intensive start-up supporting program in Korea, which will be launched late 2015 to promote economic growth by taking new ideas and transforming them into new products and start-ups in connection with the Creative Economy Town and the Creative Economy Innovation Centers under the Creative Economy Policy.

Creative economy policy in developing countries: The case of Indonesia

This paper investigates how the creative economy discourse is interpreted and implemented in the context of Indonesia as a developing country. Our main conclusion is that the discourse is interpreted differently across localities. Bandung appears to be the only locality whose interpretation aligns with the general understanding of a creative economy that emphasises knowledge creation and innovation. This was made possible by the strong support from academia and communities who wanted to experiment with this policy idea. Our study also provides an insight into a creative economy developing not only as a discourse, but also as a workable framework for development policies, in this city. Conversely, other cities seem to pragmatically use the policy idea without considering the local context in a rebranding exercise in order to drive economic development, whereby traditional cultural industries are relabelled as creative despite performing hardly any innovation activities. Despite this, Bandung illustrates that there are possibilities for a developing country such as Indonesia to adopt the vision of a creative economy by reshaping local institutions to support successful experimentation with this new idea.

Study of US/EU National Innovation Policies Based on Nanotechnology Development, and Implications for Korea

ABSTRACT Recently US/EU governments are utilizing nanotechnology as a key catalyst to support national innovation poli-cies with economic recovery goals. US/EU nano policies have been serving as a global model to various countries, including Korea. So the authors initially seek to understand US/EU national innovation policy interconnections, and then find the role of nanotechnology development within. To strengthen national policy coherence, nano-technology development strategies are under evolution as an innovation catalyst for promoting commercializa-tion. To strategically support nano commercialization, EHS (Environmental, Health, Safety) and informatics are invested as priority fields to strengthen social acceptance and sustainability of nano enabled products. The current study explores US/EU national innovation policies including nano commercialization, EHS, and Informatics. Then obtained results are utilized to analyze weaknesses of Korean innovation systems of connecting creative economy and nanotechnology development policies. Then ongoing improvements are summarized focusing on EHS and informatics, which are currently prominent issues in international nanotechnology development.

정보통신분야 중소벤처기업의 글로벌화 정책방안 우선순위 도출

최근 ICT산업의 글로벌화 패러다임의 변화에 따라, 정보통신분야 중소벤처기업의 글로벌화 지원정책에 대한 심층적인 인지지도 분석을 하고, AHP모형을 활용하여 세부 정책방안에 대한 내용과 그 중요도에 대한 우선순위를 제시하였다. 인지지도 실증분석 결과, 전반적으로 정책목표변수가 정책수단변수에 비해 많이 제시되고 있어 향후 정책수단 발굴이 시급함을 보여주고 있다. 미래부의 IT중소벤처기업 지원정책의 인지지도에서는 피드백 루프가 없다는 특징을 찾을 수 있었다. 이는 정책구도가 순환적이라기보다는 정책수단에서 정책목표에 이르는 일방적인 구도에 가깝다는 것을 의미한다. 그리고 창조경제 정책변수는 정책수단 변수로는 전혀 인지하지 않고 있으며 정책목표변수로만 사용하고 있어, 이는 ICT중소벤처기업의 글로벌화 지원을 통해 궁극적으로 창조경제 구현이라는 결과를 기대하고 있음을 보여주고 있다. 마지막으로, 세부 정책방안에 대한 우선순위는 글로벌 창업센터 구축, 글로벌 전문가 채용 및 활용, ICT R&D 국제공동 연구 활성화, 글로벌 투자네트워크 확대, 대-중소기업 해외동반 진출 등이 각각 중요한 것으로 나타났다. This study analyzed the globalization policy of ICT SMEs and ventures using cognitive map analysis and derived the priority to importance about action plans using AHP model, while the globalization paradigm has been rapidly changing in the ICT industry. Empirical results showed that policy tool variables should be needed to develop because policy goal variables are generally presented more than policy tool variables. In addition, this cognitive map could be characterized by a scarcity of feedback loops which means policy landscape for ICT SMEs and ventures' globalization is unilateral rather than cyclical to reach policy goal from policy tools. Another finding is that creative economy policy variable was not observed as policy tool variable but as policy goal variable. This means creative economy can be implemented through support for ICT SMEs and ventures' globalization. Finally, for detailed policy measures, installation of global start-up center, recruiting and utilization of global specialists, revitalization of ICT R&D international collaboration study, enlargement of global investment network, accompanied overseas advance of large enterprises and SMEs are presented in order in terms of the importance of policy priority.