[ecrea] Call for contributions: Creative Hubs in Question

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: CREATIVE HUBS IN QUESTION

Dr Tarek Virani and I are putting together a book proposal for an edited
volume about ‘creative hubs’, developing out of  our research as part of
AHRC’s Creativeworks London
_http://www.creativeworkslondon.org.uk/research/place-work-knowledge/_

The term ‘hub’ seems to be everywhere.  Starting in and around 2003, the
growth and proliferation of these types of  largely urban industrial
agglomeration has been exponential. From San Francisco to London to
Moscow to Durban to Hanoi to Shanghai, creative hubs are on the
increase. But the academic work on creative hubs is surprisingly scarce.
Although the term is currently in wide use in policy circles its actual
meaning is not always clear. The term has no commonly accepted
definition and has been criticised for lacking clarity as well as being
‘all encompassing’. Hubs have been understood as co-working spaces,
studios, incubators, accelerators, districts, quarters, zones and/or a
mix of all of the above.  The lack of clarity – let alone consensus -
is  especially troubling given that policymakers, research councils,
consultants, and governments have been so quick to promote and endorse
the effectiveness of creative hubs in catalysing growth and innovation
in local creative economies, as well as producing urban regeneration.

We are looking for expressions of interest and abstracts for a book that
will look critically at the idea of ‘creative hubs’ from
interdisciplinary perspectives including Sociology, Geography, Media and
Communications, Culture and Creative Industries,  Critical Policy
studies, Gender studies, Race and Ethnicity, and Urban Studies.
  Contributions may be empirical studies of actual hubs, or may be
theoretical reflections on the concept of creative hubs. We are
interested in what ‘creative hubs’ as a notion does
performatively/ideologically in particular (global/local) policy
contexts; we are interested in where ‘hubs’ are situated in relation to
existing ideas such as ‘clusters’ or ‘co-working spaces’; we are
interested in critically examining how hubs may intervene in geographies
of inequality, austerity and injustice; we are interested to explore how
the concept of creative hubs travels and materialises in different
contexts, and in exploring how ‘creative hubs’ may relate to ‘knowledge
hubs’ or ‘innovation spaces’ – either as an idea or in concrete
locations. Above all we hope the volume will start a critical
conversation that interrogates the taken-for-grantedness of ‘creative hubs’.

We have approached Palgrave who have expressed interest in considering
such a volume.  If you are interested in contributing, please send an
abstract to (Rosalind.Gill.2 /at/ city.ac.uk)  by November 13^th 2015.  If
accepted, final drafts of chapters will be needed by November 2016.

Rosalind Gill
Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis
Room D610
School of Arts and Social Sciences
City University London
Northampton Square
London EC1V 0HB
(rosalind.gill.2 /at/ city.ac.uk)

Read our department blog at http://blogs.city.ac.uk/cci/
_Our dept homepage is at
_http://www.city.ac.uk/arts-social-sciences/culture-and-creative-industries/_nocache
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