[Commlist] RGS-IBG CFP: The cultural and creative industries: pathways beyond economic growth

*CFP RGS-IBG Annual Conference, 2020*

*The cultural and creative industries: pathways beyond economic growth*

The cultural and creative industries (CCIs) have been subject to 
increasing policy and academic attention in the past twenty years 
(Gross, 2020a). The sector has been seen variously as a flagbearer for 
the future of the digital economy, a stimulus for urban regeneration, a 
fix for local and regional development disparities (Chapain & Comunian, 
2010), a way to address income inequality and a catalyst to address 
exclusion and marginalisation. These discourses have been prompted by, 
and reflected in a series of shifts in material, financial and 
discursive support for the CCIs around the world. For example, in Latin 
and South America the creative industries have evolved into the Orange 
Economy, and are seen as a key way to simultaneously develop the 
economy, society and infrastructure (Restrepo & Márquez, 2013). The 
Inter-American Development Bank has urged Latin and South American 
governments to ‘squeeze the orange’ and assimilate cultural production 
into the economy through new accounting techniques, policy interventions 
and IP regulations. Similarly, policymakers internationally have used 
CCIs in new rhetoric for economic development like Lai Mohammed, 
Nigeria’s current Minister of Information and Culture, declaring them 
“Nigeria’s new oil” (Lai Mohammed, 2017). In the UK, funding bodies have 
reoriented their priorities to shift from research /about/ the creative 
industries to work /with/ or /for/ creative industries enterprises, 
individually or in specific places. As funding schemes policy foci are 
shifted, scholars have reflected on the tensions between advancement of 
knowledge, critique of the creative industries and reproduction of 
problematic discourses and potentially damaging policy 
interventions (Banks & O’Connor, 2017; Moreton, 2018).

At the same time as policy discourse surrounding the CCIs has grown more 
hyperbolic, academics have levelled criticism for a number of important 
reasons. For instance, for being too economistic and erasing the 
cultural value of the activities creative companies undertake (Comunian, 
2009; Kong, 2005; Walmsley, 2013); for silencing, or at least 
overlooking, some of the negative aspects of the CCIs (Dent, 2019); for 
focusing too much on Anglo-American case studies and the Global 
North (Fahmi, McCann, & Koster, 2015; Kong, Gibson, Khoo, & Semple, 
2006); for an urban-centric bias to a lot of policy for the CCIs 
(particularly towards very large cities) which draws on ideas of 
city-led agglomeration economies (Lysgård, 2016; Mayes, 2010; Rantisi, 
Leslie, & Christopherson, 2006; Swords & Wray, 2010). The methodology, 
too, has been critiqued for lacking dynamism (Bakhshi, Freeman, & Higgs, 
2013) and data on which it is based is not as robust or revealing as it 
might be. Further, this way of thinking continues to instantiate an 
understanding of creative practice which far from collectivising or 
galvanising collaborative endeavours is ultimately individuated, and 
whose success is measured by the accumulation of wealth, prestige or 
market shares (Mould, 2015). This neoliberalising tendency needs to be 
unpacked and addressed, not least because it does not necessarily 
represent the intentions, values and aspirations of many at work in the 
sector.

The proposed session aims to push the borders of the CCIs to advance 
emerging (and long-held) debates and criticism in order to provide an 
account of alternative perspectives of the CCIs from a research and 
practice perspective. We would therefore welcome contributions from 
different countries and disciplinary areas. In particular, we aim to 
make more visible alternative narratives from and for the sector and 
question the (unquestioned) connection with economic growth (Gross, 
2020b). In doing so we welcome reflections on issues of sustainability, 
inclusivity as well as activism, care and access.

These are some of themes we would like to engage with, but this list 
should not been seen as exhaustive:

    -New theoretical approaches to the CCIs

    -Theorising the CCIs from beyond the ‘usual’ geographic locations

    -New methodological approaches to the CCIs

    -New / alternative narratives for and from the CCIs

    -Environmental crisis and the CCIs

    -Social sustainability and accessibility of CCI careers

    -Social economies and the CCIs

    -Care, activism and alternative work futures for the CCIs

    -Critical approaches to CCI policy formation, delivery and evaluation

Please send abstracts to (beyondCCIs /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(beyondccis /at/ gmail.com)> by 31^st  January, 2020


Organisers (in alphabetical order):

-Roberta Comunian, Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, 
King’s College London

    -Tamsyn Dent, Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries,
    King’s College London

    -Jonathan Gross, Department of Culture, Media and Creative
    Industries, King’s College London

    -Simon Moreton, Digital Cultures Research Centre, UWE Bristol.

    -Rebecca Prescott, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria 
University, UK

    -Jon Swords, Dept of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive
    Media, University of York, UK

A copy of this CFP is also available in PDF form here 
<https://www.dropbox.com/s/6u4qgnnxwb2x9ny/CCI%20CFP.pdf?dl=0>.

Conference details can be found here 
<https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/>.

*
*

The special session builds on a range of projects involving the organisers:

Dr Comunian, Dr Dent and Dr Gross are currently involved in a three-year 
H2020 funded project looking at Development Inclusive and Sustainable 
Creative Economies (www.disce.eu <http://www.disce.eu/>).

Dr Swords is part of XR Stories <https://xrstories.co.uk/>, one of the 
AHRC funded creative industries R&D clusters looking at the development 
of the futures of interactive and immersive storytelling.

Simon Moreton is Senior Research Fellow at the Digital Cultures Research 
Centre, UWE Bristol. He is Co-Investigator on the AHRC CICP funded 
Bristol+Bath Creative R+D Programme and works on a range of projects 
examining alternative ways of working in the creative sector.

Dr Prescott is currently involved in the ESRC-funded More than Meanwhile 
<https://thenewbridgeproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/MTMS.-Final-Digital-Publication.pdf> project 
which aims to develop viable, innovative models for artist-run 
initiatives in the long-term that challenge the use of ‘meanwhile’ or 
short-term spaces for creative practitioners.

*
*

*References*

Bakhshi, H., Freeman, A., & Higgs, P. (2013). A dynamic mapping of the 
UK’s creative industries. London: NESTA.

Banks, M., & O’Connor, J. (2017). Inside the whale (and how to get out 
of there): Moving on from two decades of creative industries research. 
European Journal of Cultural Studies, 20(6), 637-654. 
doi:10.1177/1367549417733002

Chapain, C., & Comunian, R. (2010). Enabling and inhibiting the creative 
economy: The role of the local and regional dimensions in England. 
Regional studies, 44(6), 717-734.

Comunian, R. (2009). Questioning creative work as driver of economic 
development: the case of Newcastle-Gateshead. Creative Industries 
Journal, 2(1), 57-71.

Dent, T. (2019). Devalued women, valued men: motherhood, class and 
neoliberal feminism in the creative media industries. Media, Culture & 
Society, 0163443719876537.

Fahmi, F. Z., McCann, P., & Koster, S. (2015). Creative economy policy 
in developing countries: The case of Indonesia. Urban Studies, 54(6), 
1367-1384. doi:10.1177/0042098015620529

Gross, J. (2020a). The Birth of the Creative Industries Revisited: An 
Oral History of the 1998 DCMS Mapping Document. London: King's College 
London.

Gross, J. (2020b). 'Growth of What? New Normative Commitments for the 
Creative Economy'. In R. Comunian (Ed.), A Modern Guide to the Creative 
Economy. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Kong, L. (2005). The sociality of cultural industries. International 
Journal of Cultural Policy, 11(1), 61-76. doi:10.1080/10286630500067812

Kong, L., Gibson, C., Khoo, L. M., & Semple, A. L. (2006). Knowledges of 
the creative economy: Towards a relational geography of diffusion and 
adaptation in Asia. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 47(2), 173-194. 
doi:10.1111/j.1467-8373.2006.00313.x

Lai Mohammed, A. (2017). Press Conference by Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on 
creative industry financing conference.: Federal Ministry of Information 
and Culture, Nigeria Retrieved from 
https://fmic.gov.ng/press-conference-alhaji-lai-mohammed-creative-industry-financing-conference/

Lysgård, H. K. (2016). The ‘actually existing’ cultural policy and 
culture-led strategies of rural places and small towns. Journal of Rural 
Studies, 44, 1-11. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2015.12.014

Mayes, R. (2010). Postcards from Somewhere: ‘marginal’ cultural 
production, creativity and community. Australian Geographer, 41(1), 
11-23. doi:10.1080/00049180903535535

Moreton, S. (2018). Contributing to the creative economy imaginary: 
universities and the creative sector. Cultural Trends, 27(5), 327-338. 
doi:10.1080/09548963.2018.1534575

Mould, O. (2015). Urban Subversion and the Creative City. London: Routledge.

Rantisi, N., Leslie, D., & Christopherson, S. (2006). Placing the 
Creative Economy: Scale, Politics, and the Material. Environment and 
Planning A: Economy and Space, 38(10), 1789-1797. doi:10.1068/a39210

Restrepo, F. B., & Márquez, I. D. (2013). The Orange Economy - An 
Infinite Opportunity. Online: Inter-American Development Bank.

Swords, J., & Wray, F. (2010). The Connectivity of the Creative 
Industries in North East England – The Problems of Physical and 
Relational Distance. Local Economy, 25(4), 305-318. 
doi:10.1080/02690942.2010.498954

Walmsley, B. A. (2013). Whose value is it anyway? A neo-institutionalist 
approach to articulating and evaluating artistic value. Journal of Arts 
and Communities, 4(3), 199-215.

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