Eric Poettschacher

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DEMYSTIFYING THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

After more than 20 years it is time to ask what is really new about this new economic sector.

The British sociologist and urbanist Prof. Justin O´Connor has been shaping the defintion of the Creative Industries from its very beginning. In the meantime a term which was born in a meeting room late at night in the UK has made its way onto the agenda of policy makers around the planet. Eric Poettschacher interviewed Justin O´ Connor about the roots of the global creative euphoria, old perceptions of the word “industry” and new cultural vacuums.

Poettschacher: You are in Shanghai right at the moment. What brings you there?

O´Connor: I've been visiting shanghai since 2004. My wife is Chinese, from here; and I suppose my daughter is half from here. Recently I got a grant from the Australia Research Council which links research to industry and other partners - to look at creative clusters in Shanghai, Beijing and Qingdao. Its quite unique because it demands that we get money contributions from the Chinese partners, which was hard work, but it means they have ownership of the research. So it will be a real collaborative effort.

Poettschacher: You´re a sociologist and enthusiatic urbanist. What are the key learnings that you took away from Shanghai so far?

O´Connor: That's hard to say, its like chaos theory mathematics - when the input is over a certain level,the lines of causation tend to go beyond the normal rules. Or maybe its like the 19th century sublime - too awe inspiring to be comprehended rationally. That's what I felt when I first came here in 2004, and wrote a blog about it, still there on cityofsound.com I realise that I was in a tradition of European observers going back to Marco Polo, the Jesuits and the famous mission of Lord McCartney in the 1790s - the first encounter with the sheer size of China.

Shanghai is big and fast moving and chaotic to the eye, though in fact its extremely planned. The Chinese administration has a tradition going back 2 millennia, and so the chaos we see is more a function of our own limited vision than the sort of unplanned proliferation you might find in the shanty towns of the developing world. The lessons I take are to forget the image of the European city and try to see a new kind of order.

Poettschacher: Let´s talk about cultural/creative industries. You were right in the midst of the debate when this term came up in the UK. What as the situation like when it all started?

O´Connor: At the time the conservative government had just been voted out on a wave of popular euphoria. We had been developing the idea of cultural industries at local level - the conservatives did not recognise the idea and saw 'culture' as a bit of a lefty word. They had the Department of National Heritage. When labour got in they immediately called it the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and upgraded it to full ministerial status. They then embraced the cultural industries, calling them 'creative'. When I got to China in 2005 I found that they were picking up on the term and attributed it to John Howkins, calling him the 'father of creative industries'. In fact it was coined by John Newbiggin, a policy advisor, in a smoke filled room very late at night. They needed a report on the minister’s desk by 9am and they thought - let's call them creative industries. In that sense it was quite contingent - but these things often have a deeper logic. The reason creative was chosen was because it avoided the connotations of culture...

Poettschacher: In your recent article titled "Creative Industries - a New Direction?" you deal with a potentially new definition of the Creative Industries. Why is a re-definition an issue?

O´Connor: The term creative industries came in for a lot of criticism, not so much from those opposed to commercialisation of art (though they were indeed opposed) but from those who had supported cultural industries. In part because they felt it signalled a shift to the more economic end of the spectrum, dropping the culture word. But also because 'creative' did not make sense. What was not creative? Science research, business models in manufacturing, social innovation, anything. So the term avoided what was specific and distinct about this sector. Creative industries used lots of ideas from the arts and culture tradition, but seemed to then extend it way beyond any useful boundaries. But my thinking was that though much of this critique was true, there were new developments which 'creative' - good or bad as a term - seemed to want to articulate. Especially the proliferation of aesthetic/ symbolic value in the design and marketing of physical products, and the explosive spread of digital and internet-based production and consumption. It’s out of these that re-definitions have sprung.

Poettschacher: What is your own definition of the CI at the moment. Has it changed?

O´Connor: I would hold on to this core definition. (“those products and services whose economic value is derived from their cultural value“).  I suppose the issue really is that the boundaries and dynamics of culture have changed. Already in punk there was an attempt to challenge the restriction of new cultural production to the large culture industrial companies. The adoption, twisting, turning of new technologies towards more democratic production, and the sense that these could also form part of new kinds of microbusiness activity were very important for me in the 1990s. With the internet and the further spread of new technologies the reach of the symbolic, or the cultural has now gone into many aspects of everyday life. Such that 'cultural consumption' is now a very wide term, involving the active consumptiopn of physical and digital products, and the active involvement in the production or co-creation or intense feed-back loops for cultural products. That is, the boundaries of 'cultural' production and consumption have bled into the most mundane areas of everyday activity. The knowledge that used to remain in firms is now systematically opened up to consumers in order to include their knowledge and experience in the production process. In this sense than the boundaries and dynamics of culture are changed.

Poettschacher: Lots of creatives in the Creative Industries here in Europe struggle with the word "industry" once its associated with the realm of ideas, innovation and cultural production. Does that gap also exist in China?

O´Connor: That is a complex question because it relates to the term 'industry'. In the UK industry (probably because we no longer have any) is not used in terms of factories and production lines. It just means a particular sector (e.g. the sex industry, the gambling industry, the security industry). But I have heard many elsewhere object to the factory connotations. So it is often translated as cultural or creative business. In China the term is contested in other ways, which are more complicated. In China the dispute is between cultural and creative - but this is linked to questions around traditional culture and craft vs. new kinds of new media, design and advertising industries. Culture is also ‘political’, creative less so – and they tend to be controlled by different branches of government.

Poettschacher: Coming back to the expansion of cultural consumption to everyday life. Have you witnessed a real paradigm shifts in the creative industries since so many parts of the world and lots of economists fell in love with this idea?

O´Connor: Well, it comes from the weight of statistics in some ways - they are significant economic sectors - in specific places. These have been exaggerated, and often held up as possibilities for economic growth in areas which aren't appropriate. The real boost I think came with the notion of the knowledge economy - which seemed obvious cousins of the creative industries - and the spread of the idea of innovation driven economies, which linked nicely to the notion of creativity and could position cultural creatives as at the cutting edge of knowledge. But in fact most of these initiatives tend to become linked to city image promotion and a thriving real estate economy.

Poettschacher: You also point out in your article that the classic cultural industries (TV, radio, film, publishing, etc.) are considered as essential factors for "nation-building"? What is the practical implication for all the animation artists, graphic designers and authors out there?

O´Connor: Well, from the 1950s to 1970s more or less, these classic industries seemed to be essential for nation building - the promoting of a national (often democratic) identity through privileged cultural forms and content, held to 'express' some essential national identity and history. But this has been exaggerated and literature and pop music never worked in this way. Nor did film in the most part. So national-cultural identity was always  a contested field. But in the developed countries at least, the idea of a unitary national identity has weakened considerably - through the impact of muticulturalism and migration but also due to the effects of post-1960s consumption. So now there are niche markets and a proliferation of lifestyle options in which nation building is seen as rather archaic. But elsewhere it is seen differently. Certainly the production of culture is no longer linked automatically to national consumption markets - though this differs. Literature is mostly national, so too (despite Michael Jackson) is pop music. But design cultures are really global now - and so too fine art.

Poettschacher: You seem to be concerned that all public support for creatives will be reduced to the primacy of economic objectives. I have met professional creatives all over the place who simply refuse to accept commercialisation as the prime target of their work. How does that fit into the bigger picture?

O´Connor: The policy idea was sold to the policy makers on its economic strengths. However, they then confused the economic ends with the means of policy support and the content of the policy object. They use the language and tools of economy when, as you say, those involved in production do not use this language, or not uniquely. Hence a big gaping chasm between government and sector on this.

Poettschacher: Is it time to demystify the whole concept of the creative industries? Is it just all about worshiping novelty and a more aesthetic version of consumerism?

O´Connor: I do think that the annexation of the cultural and creative industries by the imperitives of consumerism is a real problem. The whole issue of bourgeois bohemians and the always - already compromised nature of the counter-culture I think is both true and untrue. Yes, the consumer economy was saved by the counter-culture and the post-68 generations embrace of new lifestyle, new identities that broke with age old traditional formats. This introduced new levels of niche consumption with a repid turnover. Good for business. But the consequences of this have been the erasure of the political,social and cultural energies out of which these counter cultures came. We now enter a recession not only with the tatters of a neo-liberalism but a real spiritual or cultural vacuum. This is the condition faced by creatives today - and part of their responsibility.

Poettschacher: Any final advice would you like to give to the mayors of New York City, Seoul and Vienna in order to take the whole Creative Industries debate to the next level?

O´Connor: Three very different cities with three very different histories and cultures.

Vienna might not have been the capital of the 19th century (Benjamin reserves that for Paris) but its culture at the beginning and the end of the century are two of the foundational pillars of recent European history and culture. Vienna is an old European city - what can its contemporary role be? New York has been the undoubted capital of the 20th century - but will it gradually give way to Shanghai and Beijing. Its pre-eminence is no longer guaranteed. Seoul, an ancient city now becomes one of the most modern and has also positioned itself at the head of an Asian new wave. It has re-invented the regional soap, the horror film, online games and much more - it is the broadband capital of the world. Maybe it will be Vienna to Bejing's Paris. But all three cities, in their own ways, are facing real changes in their position. So really look at where you will be in 20 years time - because the world is changing.

Prof. Justin O’Connor has been involved in research and policy development around cultural/creative industries and urban cultures since 1989, when he co-authored Manchester’s first cultural industries survey. This research led to the establishment of the Creative Industries Development Service (CIDS) the UK’s first dedicated support agency for the sector; he was Chair of CIDS until 2006.

In 1995 he became director of the Manchester Institute for Popular Culture, which pioneered research into the music business, football fandom, fashion entrepreneurs and other producers of local urban cultures. In 2000 he co-founded the Forum on Creative Industries (FOCI) which became the UK’s leading network of creative industry academics, policy makers and consultants, feeding directly into the policy making process of the UK government’s Creative Industries Task Force, especially around the local-urban dimension. In October 2008 Justin moved from the UK to the Creative Industries Faculty of Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane where provides the basis for a new set of projects in a new setting partnering with three Chinese universities in Shanghai and Beijing and Sydney.

Eric Poettschacher is the co-founder and managing director of shapeshifters. A knowledge management agency which operates a global network of correspondents in the creative sector. His professional background is in organizational systems theory. Over the last 15 years he has been researching the specific needs of entrepreneurs in the creative economy which eventually led to the development of a tailored consulting methodology and a documentary about Business Outlaws. In 2006 he incorporated Shapeshifters Information Management GmbH with a Boston based angel investor. Shapeshifters is a global knowledge broker supporting creatives with tailor-made business opportunities worldwide.

Eric talks Mapping Money and Meaning in the Open Zone

Ziggy talks about his experiences in Mapping Money and Meaning with Eric.

...you can imagine the thrill when Eric invites me for an interview to determine my 'Cultural DNA' and search for someone with a matching passion to invest in Singing Bridges for a return on meaning through his unique cultural matchmaking consultancy Shapeshifters.