Include Us Out- Economic Development and Social Policy n the Creative Industries

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Include Us Out—Economic Development and Social Policy in the Creative Industries Kate Oakley Published online: 19 Jan 2007.

To cite this article: Kate Oakley (2006) Include Us Out—Economic Development and Social Policy in the Creative Industries, Cultural Trends, 15:4, 255-273, DOI: 10.1080/09548960600922335 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09548960600922335

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Cultural Trends Vol. 15, No. 4, December 2006, pp. 255 – 273

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Include Us Out—Economic Development and Social Policy in the Creative Industries Kate Oakley

While Government claims about the UK as a ‘global creative hub’ continue to be made (Purnell, 2005), the contradictions and tensions in New Labour’s policy in the creative industries have become more apparent. These include the tensions between a set of policies for global media businesses versus the support for small firms in local economic development (Gilmore, 2004; Hesmondhalgh & Pratt, 2005), and the tension between citizens and consumers in media and cultural policy (Hesmondhalgh, 2005). Equally apparent are the tensions between economic development of these sectors and social inclusion. In the UK, arguably more than other countries, the rhetoric of Creative Industries has been tied into political ideas about the links between economic competitiveness and social inclusion. The stated aims for creative industry development have thus been twofold—to increase jobs and GDP, while simultaneously ameliorating social exclusion and countering long-standing patterns of uneven economic development. Research, however, suggests that supporting the creative industries is, at best, a problematic way of tackling the issues of economic and social exclusion. The effects of gentrification on creative industry working and living space (Evans & Shaw, 2004); the patterns of informal hiring and career progression in these sectors (Leadbeater & Oakley, 2001) and the concentration of much economic activity in London and the South East, all suggest that the development of these sectors might exacerbate rather than address patterns of economic inequality. Keywords: Creative Industries; Social Inclusion; Economic Development; Regeneration; Citizenship; Cultural Policy

Correspondence to: Kate Oakley, [email protected]

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Introduction A common criticism of the current Government’s cultural policies is that they are social policies by other means. John Holden in his pamphlet for Demos (Holden, 2004, p. 13) argued that the ‘problem’ was that,


Instead of talking about what they do—displaying pictures or putting on dance performances—organisations will need to demonstrate how they have contributed to wider policy agendas such as social inclusion, crime prevention and learning.

This, he goes on to argue, results in an under-nourished version of the ‘real value’ of culture which could lead to unmanageable pressures on arts organizations, poor investment decisions and the weakening of the cultural realm. This concern about the instrumentalism of cultural policies of course has a longer history, but it has recently been echoed widely, not only by arts advocates (Ellis, 2003; Tusa, 2000) but by economists (Throsby, 2000) and even the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Jowell, 2004). These concerns are focused primarily on the damaging impacts that such instrumentalism could have on cultural policy and hence on arts and cultural organizations themselves. While not necessarily wishing to take issue with any of these critiques, my concern in this article is less with what impacts such approaches have on cultural policy, and more about their inadequacy as social policy. In order to explore these issues, I want to look in particular at the economic development initiatives undertaken under the general rubric of ‘creative industries’. My argument is that many of the tensions and contradictions that critics detect in ‘instrumentalist’ cultural policy are reflected in what could be described as the more ‘marketfacing’ rhetoric of the creative industries. Far from being solely concerned with providing employment and generating economic growth, the discourse of creative industries in the UK from 1997 onwards has always reflected a concern with broader social policies—whether under the auspices of urban regeneration or cultural diversity. This is not necessarily inappropriate: publicly funded economic development deals with market failures and thus is often legitimately concerned with trying to ameliorate market-based outcomes. What is problematic is the inherent tension between social and economic goals in many cases and the desire to bury such tensions under the mantle of ‘creativity’.

Terminology and Structure It appears impossible to talk about these issues without long debates about terminology and definitions and, as is no doubt already apparent, this article will not be able to avoid this problem. When talking about the creative industries, as defined below by the UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the article uses the term ‘creative industries’. When talking about the wider cultural sectors, the term, ‘cultural and creative’ industries, or more simply ‘culture’, which should be taken to include the


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creative industries, is used. Culture is used in the broader sense in all cases, unless quoting others, not as simply a term that is synonymous with the arts. In addition, the term ‘creativity’, now tends to be accorded a special status in terms of the economy. This is problematic, as we do not have a clear enough notion of what ‘creativity’ constitutes in economic terms and it is not synonymous with innovation or novelty, as is sometimes suggested. I shall therefore try not to use it at all. Part 1 describes the primary contradictions and tensions in New Labour’s creative industries policy and how this links to broader changes in the Labour government’s attitude to economic competitiveness and to social policy. Part 2 goes on to describe how ‘creative industries’, a term that was deliberately created to leave behind some of the ‘ideological baggage’ associated with cultural policy, has become becalmed in many of the same issues. It will then attempt to examine some of the evidence in this area to see if creative-industries-led economic development does indeed achieve the more balanced economic outcomes that some of its advocates claim. The data in this area is far from complete, but we will consider issues such as employment policy, urban regeneration and labour market participation. The article will end with a consideration of what this tells us about New Labour politics more generally and how we might begin a re-statement of policy in this area. Part 1: Contradictions and Tensions in Creative Industries Policy One of the difficulties in analysing creative industries policy is, as Pratt (2005) has commented, that there is relatively little of it about. The current Creative Economy programme at DCMS is expected to produce a Green Paper in the autumn, but until then one is forced either to return to old texts such as Chris Smiths’s Creative Britain (Smith, 1998) or piece together what passes for policy from Ministerial speeches and statements (Purnell, 2005). On the other hand, statements about the creative industries and their role in economic development find their way into a whole host of regional policy documents (see Table 1), appearing as ‘priority sectors’ in almost every English region (and Scotland and Wales). Cities, regions and even rural areas have taken up the message promoted by DCMS that public investment in this sector can help stimulate economic growth. Indeed, former Creative Industries (now pensions) Minister James Purnell described this as activity that had happened ‘under the radar of national policy’ (Capitalising on creativity, 2005), though one might more accurately describe it as happening in the absence of national policy. Confusions and tensions therefore are often more apparent to those working ‘on the ground’ in creative industries developments, than they might be from simply perusing the statements of DCMS. Many of these are ‘publicly funded creative intermediaries’ (Fleming, 2004), an occupational group which has seen considerable growth since 1997. They are also increasingly a self-conscious group with networks and forums of their own (e.g., FOCI1) and it is among such intermediaries that I want to suggest that awareness of these contradictions is highest. That this awareness has few ways of feeding back

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Table 1 Creative Industry Strategies—Regions and Nations Region

Broad definition

London

Creative Industries identified as a key growth area for the London economy. ‘Creative London’, a 10-year strategy, launched in 2004, includes support of 10 creative hubs, the provision of workspaces, advice on intellectual property rights etc. www.creativelondon.org.uk Support for both ‘culturally led regeneration’ of south coast and Thames Gateway and ‘creative inputs into broad knowledge economy’ of inner south east Media and Cultural Industries identified in economic strategy as one of 9 sectors forecast to experience strong employment and output growth over the decade

South East

East of England

South West West Midlands

Creative Industries one of 8 key sectors Creative Industries identified as priority sector in RDA’s first economic strategy

East Midlands

A mapping of the region’s Creative Industries has been undertaken. Creative clusters have been identified at a sub-regional level: Derbyshire— design, crafts and architecture; Leicestershire—design and publishing. Next version of Regional Economic Strategy may drop the mention of ‘creative industries’.

North West

Creative Industries identified as one of 16 priority clusters

North East

Focus has been very much on cultural regeneration, e.g., Gateshead/ Newcastle. But Creative Industries are identified as one of 14 main clusters Creative Industries identified as one of 5 clusters in the economic development strategy

Yorkshire and Humber

Sub-sectoral focus

Focus on digital technology in inner south east—visual arts-led developments on the South Coast and Thames gateway EEDA has a lead officer for the sector. Film, animation, new media, games, software, architecture and electronic publishing have all been identified as important Uses DCMS definition Priorities have focused on clusters and sub-sectors: media; ICT; and ‘high value consumer products’ (designer-makers, ceramics, glass, furniture, jewellery) Definition in use encompasses digital and non-digital creative industries in alignment with DCMS, but is augmented by print and packaging; heritage, museums and archives; internet publishing; and trading Priority sectors: music, design. Others: media, designer fashion, and visual arts

The ‘digital cluster’ has been identified as the major priority (Table continued )

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Table 1 Continued Region

Broad definition

Sub-sectoral focus

Scotland

One of 15 clusters identified in the Winning Scotland strategy. Within Creative Industries, the focus is on digital content industries and the aim is for 30% growth over 3– 5 years

Games; radio and television; new media; film; music production; design; publishing; architecture; advertising; arts; and cultural industries

Wales

Media, Creative and Culture-related sector seen as one of 11 critical to growth and where Wales can gain competitive advantage. Concentrations identified in Cardiff and Caernarfon Arts and creativity in very broad terms are promoted through the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure. The purpose is to harness and mainstream creativity in cultural, education, training and economic areas. Under the Unlocking Creativity Action plan, Invest NI plans a £4.5 m investment in creative companies, infrastructure and capability development support

Northern Ireland

into policy and even fewer ways of feeding into academic discourse in the creative industries is testament to the separation between ‘thinking and doing’ that plagues many areas of public policy in the UK. One of the most apparent tensions in creative industries policy is that described by Hesmondhalgh and Pratt as, the intertwined story that we are told of the development of the cultural industries as big businesses and the development of local and national cultural industries policy. (2005, p. 6)

In other words, is the DCMS responsible for producing a set of policies for Pearsons and EMI, or for one and two man organizations? And if the answer is ‘both’, can both sets of needs be accommodated in policies about intellectual property, funding, training or land use? It could be argued that the UK has been more successful in generating small firms than it has been in growing larger ones and indeed that it has lost international competitiveness in some of the creative industry sub-sectors, such as videogames, where it showed earlier promise (Leadbeater & Oakley, 2001; NESTA, 2006). If this is the case, then it may need to re-orient its strategy away from the ‘independents’ towards firms and sub-sectors where the UK has a genuine international advantage. But if it decides to do so it must do so in the full knowledge that this will undermine much of the


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activity of the last eight years or so and may widen regional disparities, already acute in these sectors, even further. The tensions with which this paper is primarily concerned, are those between the creative industries as a source of economic growth and simultaneously a source of social inclusion. Arguing that there is a link between increased employment, economic growth and the development of welfare policies to ameliorate the worse aspects of inequality, is hardly new and was a feature of both (non-Thatcherite) Tory and Labour governments throughout the twentieth century. But these tensions have sharpened under New Labour as inequality has increased (Barry, 2005; Giddens & Diamond, 2005) and regional disparities have grown (Adams, Vigor & Robinson, 2003). At the same time, and in a departure from Thatcherism, rhetoric about and indeed policies for, combating social exclusion, have also grown. A Labour government, however ‘new’ and however keen to challenge the shibboleths of its past, cannot rid itself entirely of a concern with ‘social inclusion’. Indeed, it was a defining element of the ‘third way’ (Giddens, 1998) politics that the party briefly espoused, that while state-based solutions to exclusion were considered to have failed, the fact of social exclusion was argued to be neither inevitable nor necessary for economic prosperity. Some (Leadbeater, 1999) went so far as to argue that in an economy where high levels of human capital were increasingly necessary for competitiveness, the waste of human capital represented by unemployment or poor educational attainment could harm the UK’s competitiveness. While this (together with the performance of the economy) strengthened Labour’s economic credentials, it did so by again casting an instrumentalist hue on traditional concerns with social justice. In other words people needed good schools and hospitals, safe streets and effective transport, because it enabled them to be more economically productive. The ‘good life’ thus became rather thin in conception and when yoked to a neo-liberal economics policy, rather fragile in execution. ‘Helping Those Who Help Themselves’—New Labour Meritocrats As David Hesmondhalgh has recent argued in an article on New Labour’s media and cultural policy (2005), although clearly neo-liberal in many of its attitudes towards the supremacy of markets and its preference for private over public approaches, the current New Labour government also retains elements of older Labour traditions including social authoritarianism, paternalism and social democracy. Indeed, one of the more unremarked-upon tensions in New Labour is between its sometime celebration of ‘creative modernity’ (Redhead, 2004), particularly in the first Administration, and its social authoritarianism—displayed clearly in its confusion over the Licensing Act (DCMS, 2003), anti-smoking legislation and rave culture (Home Office, 1997) and the current ‘respect’ agenda (Blair, 2006). Where it departs clearly from its social democratic antecedents (Clarke, in press; Coates, 2001), is in its attitudes to class and to work—entrepreneurs ‘in’ and workers ‘out’. It has distanced itself from the trade unions and generally shown itself to be more comfortable in appealing to ‘middle England’, than to its traditional


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roots in the labour and trade union movements. While it has retained elements of both regulation of markets and of re-distribution, it has done the latter ‘by stealth’ (Jessop, in press) and regulated, while continuing to deplore the need for regulation, and publicly at least, aspiring to set business ‘free from the burden of red tape’. But, as Marquand (2004) has argued, it is in its attitude to the public realm and the denigration of this in favour of private interests and marketization, that New Labour has perhaps most profoundly broken with its past. Hesmondhalgh (2005) gives the example of the Communications Act 2003, and the use of the term ‘citizen-consumer’ within Ofcom, to explore the narrowing nature of the notion of ‘publicness’ under New Labour. He argues that the ‘public’ as in ‘public service broadcasting’ shrank from an ‘expansive concept of market failure’ as late as 1997 (p. 103) to a situation where the role of public service broadcasters is simply to make programmes that would not be made by the private sector. As Hesmondhalgh comments, Labour’s media policy then, is imbued with a notion of the public interest and the public service; but it also involves a marketisation of media and communications which threaten ultimately to erode the public domain. In this respect it echoes its policies more generally. (p. 104)

More intriguingly, in a debate at Goldsmith’s College on ‘Media Policy Making and Power’,2 Lord Puttnam in his discussion of the battle over the 2003 Communications Act revealed that New Labour policy makers were confused by the anxiety displayed by organizations such as Public Voice over the term ‘consumer-citizen’. Not because the term itself was confusing (although it is) but because they thought ‘citizens’ to be subset of consumers, and that looking after the interest of citizens would naturally follow from a ‘consumer-centred’ strategy for broadcasting. New Labour’s notion of the ‘citizen’ is thus as Clarke (2005) described it, a hybrid, ‘drawing on social democratic and communitarian conceptions of the citizen, but dominated by the neo-liberal concern to liberate the citizen from the state’. The focus of policy moves from the collective to the individual, albeit an individual with responsibilities to his or her neighbourhood, company or family. In this context, difference becomes diversity, an individual characteristic, with a liberating potential, rather than a social condition that leads to inequality. The structural conditions that produce inequality thus receive rather less attention than the individual characteristics needed to make the most of an insecure, competitive world. What Hesmondhalgh (2005, p. 99) calls Labour’s ‘meritocratic’ impulse leads to an emphasis in its social policy on attacking exclusion rather than challenging inequality. The processes that produce exclusion—class differences, the role of education, the operation of markets—become a given—all one can do is ‘adapt’.

Part 2: New Labour Creative Industries Policy In fashioning creative industries policy in the wake of its landslide victory, New Labour was focused firmly on the creative individual or independent (Oakley & Leadbeater, 1999). It accepted that such people were, or at least thought of themselves as being,


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highly individualistic, anti-authoritarian and in some cases, anti-corporate. The ‘downsizing’ of the 1980s had convinced them that the job for life was unattainable, and possibly undesirable and that work could be about self-expression, as well as personal enrichment. But this was not the nineteenth-century cult of the creative genius revisited. If the focus was on individuals to adapt to changing economic circumstances, they were not alone in doing so. Not only was New Labour interested in re-designing the role of public services to aid individual empowerment, but it was also keen on encouraging new forms of collaboration. The site of this collaboration had changed, the network rather than the trade union say, but it would be wrong to under-estimate the degree to which these collaborative forms of endeavours were seen by New Labourpolicymakers as a counter-point to the atomized individual. Alongside the rhetoric about creative entrepreneurs therefore, there was also a set of assumptions, some more explicit that others, about the role that such entrepreneurship could play in remaking places (see Evans & Shaw, 2004, for discussion) and in aiding social cohesion. The idea that these activities were rooted in, and in some cases expressive of, place meant that they were seen as good long-term investments, particular for cities and regions still struggling with de-industrialization. The perception that the creative class was meritocratic, open to talent and unlikely to be bound by prejudices about race, gender or sexuality, led to the hope that these sectors opened up routes to participation among those from excluded groups. Traditions of popular culture from music to videogames, the strength of subcultural identity, the informal skills associated with creativity and in some cases the low capital entry that digital technology opened up, all combined to suggest that the growth of a ‘creative economy’ was one in which everyone could play. The stress on supported self help and entrepreneurship tied in with the search for new ways of tackling the so-called ‘wicked problems’. And New Labour’s rejection of ‘old Labour’ ways to tackle poverty and inequality meant that it had to look elsewhere for solutions to these problems. Creativity fitted the bill not just because, as Gibson and Klocker (2005) say, it spoke to the liberated individual, but also because it spoke to the ‘new collective’. Creative entrepreneurs may be individualistic, but they were collaborative; they may be competitive but they were ‘concerned’. But the limitations of this ‘self-help’ strategy were soon to become apparent. The development of the creative industries was taking place within a highly unequal context, both socially and geographically. The much-vaunted ‘knowledge economy’, (DTI, 1998) represented an aspiration rather than a reality for many of the cities and regions trying to develop the creative industries. In other words the conditions that were needed to support the growth of localized creative economies, high levels of human capital, a developed consumer market for local creative products, institutional understanding and collaboration did not, in many cases, exist. And the barriers to entry in these sectors, while sometimes opened up by digital technology, were often closed again just as quickly by individuals’ lack of social connections. The limitations of ‘network sociality’ (Wittel, 2001) as a mechanism for ensuring not just labour market participation, but a broader sense of social cohesion, would soon become apparent.

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Next we will look at the how the creative industries market has developed and in particular at the evidence for social inclusion through labour markets, regional distribution and re-generation.


Happy Mondays? Work in the Creative Industries Even in his relentlessly optimistic account of the ‘creative economy’, Richard Florida (2002) admits to a ‘gaping hole’ in his picture of high technology, meritocratic, talent-driven growth that his creative class inspires. His so-called ‘diversity index’, in fact captures the presence of foreign-born workers within a regional economy, not its ethnic diversity and, as he admits, within the US, the ‘gaping hole’ refers to the exclusion of US-born African Americans and other non-white citizens. Within high technology in particular, with which Florida is primarily concerned, he detects a negative correlation between concentrations of firms and the percentage of US-born nonwhite citizens. One might have thought that in the broader ‘creative industries’, away from high technology, black and minority ethnic (BME) populations would fare better, but despite the celebrated ‘creativity’ of the BME population and the influence of urban black culture on everything from fashion and popular music to everyday speech patterns, the picture in the UK is similarly bleak. About 4.6 per cent of the creative and cultural industry workforce in the UK is from an ethic minority background (Leadbeater, 2005) compared with 7 per cent of the UK labour force as a whole. This is even more disturbing when one considers the concentration of creative industry employment in London, where over a quarter of the labour force is from an ethnic minority background—up to 35 per cent in inner London. And the younger age profile of the BME population means that it should make up a relatively higher proportion of the economically active population than a simple per capita comparison with the white population might suggest. This pattern is repeated and even intensified in particular sub-sectors such as the media. Skillset, the training organization that covers the audio-visual sectors, reports that employment of ethnic minorities in these industries is around 7 per cent—though more than half the industry is based in inner London where around 35 per cent of the working age population are from an ethnic minority. When one looks at what people actually do, a clear occupational skewing also becomes evident. Much ethnic minority employment in the film industry is accounted for by the exhibition and distribution end of the value chain—a quarter of all cinema cleaners are BME—at the higher occupation level, BME representation drops off dramatically. Although the Skillset census, from which these numbers are drawn, has only been in operation since 2000, making long-term trends difficult to calculate—short-term movements give little reason for optimism. Reported representation of ethnic minorities had decreased slightly between 2003 and 2004 and although the degree of change is well within any margin of error, it suggests that reaching representative levels of employment in these sectors may be some way off.


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A study of BME-led creative industry businesses for the London Development Agency (Respect, 2004; see Table 2) noted that BME business ownership and self-employment is generally higher than in the white population and argued that there was some sort of ‘shift’ into sectors such as design, music and media among businesses owners, away from more traditional sectors such as retailing. In addition, such business owners were more likely to be formally educated in the activities connected to their business, indicating the importance of a BME graduate labour force among these ‘creative entrepreneurs’. Despite this, in sectors where professional employment was strongly connected to education pathways—such as architecture—BME participation, particularly at the higher level, remained very low. In other words, where barriers to entry are relatively low or require modest capital input—such as in crafts or some forms of new media— BME participation is growing. Where barriers to entry are qualification or education based and hence the influence of social class is stronger, less progress has been made. In terms of gender the picture is less stark. The proportion of men and women in the creative and cultural industries workforce is very similar to that of the whole economy— 55 per cent of employment is male and 45 per cent is female. Those sub-sectors with an above-average proportion of part-time employment, such as crafts, museums and galleries, employ proportionally more women than men. While sectors such as advertising, which is 60 per cent male, have generally higher levels of full-time employment. In the audio-visual sub-sectors (radio, TV, film), however, where competition for entry is particularly fierce, there is generally lower representation of women (only 40 per cent of the labour force is female) than in the other creative industry sectors. In addition, while women make up almost a third of the film production workforce, they are not only concentrated in lower paid occupations but are also lower paid on average than men in equivalent age and occupation brackets. The Policy Fix—Opening Up the Networks It is fair to say that the unrepresentative nature of the creative industry workforce has at least attracted a good deal of policy attention, not only in London, where the large Table 2 Ethnicity of the Creative and Cultural Industries Workforce,1 by Sub-sector (% of Total Employment, UK)

Whole economy Advertising Design Heritage, museums and galleries Performing, visual and literary arts Publishing

White (%)

Asian

Black (%)

Mixed other (%)

93 92 96 95 95 91

2% 2% 1% 1%

3 2 2 3 3 3

2 3 1 1 2 4

3%

Source: Labour Force Survey, Spring 2004. 1 Data is only available for particular sub-sectors and these categorizations correspond to those used by CCISkills, the training organization that covers some of the creative industry sub-sectors. too small to be counted within the margin of error.


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ethnic minority population makes this an issue of particular political importance, but even among the national training organizations. Both Skillset and Creative and Cultural Skills (CCSkills), who are charged with developing skills and training policy for most of the activities which comprise the creative industries, have committed themselves to ensuring a more diverse workforce in their respective industries—in both cases by developing a more formal set of qualifications and accreditations to promote labour mobility. The argument is that in a sector heavily dependent on social networks for entry and advancement and where ‘experience’ is often gained in unpaid first jobs such as film industry ‘runners’, the disadvantage to those who lack friends or relatives in these sectors, or cannot afford to work for ‘free’ is very clear. The Skillset 2003 labour force survey reported only 28 per cent of those surveyed had gained a first job in these sectors via an advertisement in a newspaper, with the majority using less ‘formal’ channels such as friends and relatives (Skillset, 2003). The traditional scepticism of employers in these sectors about formal qualifications (versus ‘experience’) could act as a break on such initiatives and it remains to be seen how successful the skills councils are in issues such as the accreditation of prior learning, which can help overcome educational disadvantage in some cases. More difficult to counteract is the impact of social networks as an element of labour market exclusion. Mark Granovetter’s observations in the 1970s about the ‘strength of weak ties’ (1983) has been taken up by policy makers to argue that such loose social links—to a range of people well beyond kinships and family—can be more effective in securing access to the labour market (and to other social goods) than the formal structure of job centres or employment agencies (see Perri 6, 1997, for a discussion). The notion that government has some role in enabling people to develop and use such weak tie networks has thus become accepted, but the problems of doing so remain immense. In part this is because of self-image of the creative industries labour force (encouraged by writers such as Florida who praise their tolerance and diversity), is indeed one of openness to talent and lack of overt discrimination. In many years of interviewing creative industry workers, the notion that these sectors remain the preserve of a well-educated e´lite is always greeted with protestations of horror and evident discomfort. But it is perhaps the very unconscious nature of these barriers which makes them most difficult to surmount. In recent study (Oakley & Erskine, 2004) of a creative industries network based at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), the issue of participation in the networks was a subject of discussion. The ‘Club’, as it is known, is a network of over 500 ‘young cultural entrepreneurs’, from fashion designers to filmmakers, digital producers to architects. Established in 2000, it is hosted at the ICA and aims to gives its members a forum in which to network and initiate commercial and creative collaborations. It offers members monthly seminars and practical workshops to develop business skills and, as such, is similar to tens, if not hundreds, of other such creative industry support networks across the UK. The membership is youngish (44 per cent are below 35), gender balanced (53 per cent of members are women) and relatively diverse (14 per cent

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were BME, which is lower than the proportion of London’s working age population, but higher than creative industries’ employment figures would suggest). But it is also heavily weighted towards graduates, particularly from e´lite colleges such as the Royal College of Art. Introduction to the network is via personal recommendation, yet many interviewees expressed surprise that this should have any limiting effects on the type of people who become members. One interviewee3 commented, the fact that you have to find out about it yourself is good, as it means it attracts the right crowd—people who are ambitious, sociable and dedicated to working in creative fields, not just there for a free drink.

Other argued that the ICA was an ideal place to host such a networks as it was, ‘really easy to find’, or ‘in the middle of London’. The notion that having the confidence to go to the ICA and introduce yourself to strangers, albeit ones who are open to such introductions and having to do the same themselves, is not a characteristic that is equally distributed in the population, was seen largely as a personal failing, if it was seen as all. The Club is indeed collaborative, members give freely of their own time and many expressed a willingness to mentor new recruits or to take part in (unpaid) collaborative activities such as re-design of the website. The argument is not that such networks are simply masks for self-aggrandisement and individual advance, nor that the individuals who take part in them are ‘de-spatialized’ or ‘de-socialized’ (McRobbie, 2000); but that they are themselves the product of structural social inequalities of which, despite high levels of formal education, they are profoundly unconscious. If traditional means of opening up employment to excluded groups, such as via ‘equal opportunities’ legislation, has been less than successful, the problems facing those seeking to integrate the workforce of these looser forms of employment are, if anything, more complex and difficult.

The London Effect—The Geography of the Creative Economy Unlike labour market participation, which has at least attracted policy makers’ attention, the issue of geographic concentration in the creative industries has so far attracted less attention. This may be because much of the activity has happened at regional and local level, whether it is the establishment of networks such as the Creative Industries Development service (CIDS) in Manchester or high profile ‘cultural regeneration’ projects such as Sage in Newcastle/Gateshead. There is a perception that much of the running has been made at regional level, and this is arguably true, though it has done little to shift the bulk of economic activity or job creation from its traditional home. By far the greatest proportion of employment in the Creative and Cultural Industries is located in the south of England—namely London and the South East. Combined, these two regions account for 46 per cent of the creative industry workforce compared with 27 per cent of the total UK workforce.


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Only 11 per cent of creative industry employment is located in the devolved administrations (Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) and 43 per cent in the remaining seven English regions. There are also distinct concentrations of employment in specific sub-sectors, such as advertising. Around 40 per cent of advertising employment is located in London, compared to just 16 per cent of design employment and only 17 per cent of heritage, museums and galleries employment is located in the capital. The subsidized cultural sectors tend to have a more graphic dispersed profile, in part at least as the result of 60-odd years of Arts Council and other public funding. This is also consistent with other parts of the UK economy, where the public sector is relatively more important as an employer (particularly of graduates) the further one gets from the capital (Local Futures, 2004). Another way of looking at the same phenomenon is the percentage of turnover represented by London-based firms in creative industry sub-sectors. As Table 3 shows, in many cases this is even more significant than the percentage of employment, in part because highly specialized, high-value-added activities are more likely to be found in the capital, and some activities, such as film distribution are almost only found in London. The more local nature of the creative industries outside London and the South East is indicated by levels of export activity, which are strikingly uneven across the UK, and are dominated by London and the South East. Even in the North West region, with the third highest creative industries workforce, exports account for less than 3 per cent of sales. In recent years most of the growth in cultural and creative sectors in the UK has been in small cities. Surprisingly only 18 cities exceeded the English average change of 0.89 per cent (ODPM, 2006). The majority of these are located in the south and east. They include obvious places like Cambridge, Oxford and Brighton, but also

Table 3 London’s Share of Creative Industry Employment

CI sub-sector Advertising Arts and Antiques Design Film and Video Music Publishing Television Architecture Crafts Designer Fashion Performing Arts Software and Services Radio Source: Respect (2004).

London as a percentage of UK employment (%)

London as a percentage of UK turnover (%)

35 –40 20 25 –30 25 –30 30 30 –35 30 20 10 –12 35 30 –35 25 –30

40 25 30 – 35 30 35 35 30 – 40 25 15 35 – 40 35 – 40 30

35 –40

35 – 40


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less obvious ones like Luton, Aldershot/Guildford, Crawley and Milton Keynes. The geography of change in the creative and cultural industries shows a by now familiar pattern. There is a club of cities in the south and east that have experienced the highest rates of increase in creative and cultural industry employees. Outside this club there are other isolated cities that have had positive rates of change, but the regional effects of these appear weaker. The uneven nature of nature of these developments is not peculiar to the creative industries and is indeed symptomatic of the UK economy as a whole. Despite much of the progressive-sounding rhetoric that has accompanied it, the focus on developing knowledge based sectors (finance and business services, science and technology, creative industries) has led to widening economic disparities in the UK, both between regions and inter-regionally. In the UK, it is commonly referred to as the North–South divide—although in reality it is one between London and the South East of England on one hand and the rest of the UK on the other. While knowledge workers, thanks to the growth of ICTs, could in theory be based anywhere; in fact around a third of knowledge-intensive employment in the private sector is in London (Local Futures, 2002) If one considers economic productivity measured by local authority area, only four of the top 50 districts in the UK are not from London, South East or East (sometimes referred to as the greater South East); none of the bottom 10 is from that region (Local Futures, 2006). The political centralization of the UK has a clear role in this, as is reflected in concentration of R&D (research and development), higher education, media, cultural spending, large government sectors, technical and scientific institutions and so on. Rather than countering this, Government policy appears to support it, particularly when it comes to investment in R&D (ODPM, 2006). On most measures there is a strong centralization of research in the UK and research-related activity (staff, funding, PhD awards, publications) is highly concentrated in the three regions of London and the South East (Cambridge obviously boosts the standing of the East of England). This is strongly the case in science, where London and the South East receive 49 per cent of direct Government funding and 47 per cent of money routed through universities; compared to equivalent figures of 3 per cent and 10 per cent in the North West, say, but similar arguments from arts funding or the lottery could be added, not to mention the huge regional boost represented by the location of the Olympics in East London. Despite this, the nations and regions of the UK are following remarkably similar strategies for economic development, particularly with regard to clusters of companies. In regional development strategies, there is often a focus on bio-pharma, communications and IT, creative industries and tourism. These are common to many national strategies on competitiveness in other parts of the world as they are seen to offer potential for growth, but it seems unrealistic to suppose that each part of the UK could develop critical mass in all sectors. Unlike bio-pharma, however, the barriers to entry in creative industries (with some exceptions) are lower and it therefore seems reasonable to expect that one could develop some sort of economic activity in these sectors in some, if not all, of the


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UK’s regions. The issue is to do so within the context of a clearly defined regional policy, which sees regional policy makers focusing on the development of local creative economies (in say performing arts, crafts and visual arts, music) where it makes sense, and developing improved relationships with London’s clients, customers and supply chains where the market is national or global. Doing this would mean breaking up the notion of the ‘creative industries’ as a homogenous group and focusing more on sub-sectoral strength and weaknesses. A regional policy for the advertising industry would make no sense, as the UK’s advertising industry clearly benefits from its concentration in a global city and the strengths of its international networks; while sectors such as music, visual arts or even broadcasting could build on regional strengths, as the BBC might demonstrate if it ever completes the move to Manchester. At the moment, regions are desperately trying to ‘compete’ with one another to grow ‘competitive clusters’ of their own, with little prospect of delivering more than the last eight years has done and seeing regional disparities grow still wider. Bricks and Mortar—The Creative Class Wreaks Havoc Into the midst of this uneven geographic and social picture, the work of US academic Richard Florida (Florida, 2002, 2005) has been taken up with enthusiasm by policy makers keen to follow his prescriptions for economic development based on attracting the ‘creative class’. While fundamentally a re-stating of the ideas of ‘new growth theory’ put forward by Romer and others (Romer, 1994), Florida’s use of the word ‘creative’, and his stress on the amenities provided by urban environments, have lead some to assume that he has a prescription for creative industry-led economic developments. In fact, Florida’s work is largely concerned with high technology growth and the degree to which his class is ‘creative’ is more aligned with their consumptions patterns (although much of Florida’s evidence on this is anecdotal), that with their productive activities. In other words, the group of people he is talking about in no sense represent a ‘class’ in the Marxian sense, either in their relationship to the means of production or in their collective class consciousness (Nathan, 2005). Criticism of Florida’s work, particularly that its rapid adoption into policy outside the US reveals a lack of recognition of the different political, social and economic circumstances that prevail elsewhere (Douglas & Morrow, 2003; Gertler, 2004; Gibson & Klocker, 2005; Oakley, 2004), has grown and I would like to focus here in particular on the issue of mobility and its potential to damage the stated aspirations of policy makers for more ‘socially balanced’ economic development. The first thing to say is that economic development based entirely on labour mobility is unlikely to work in the UK as Britons, in common with other Europeans, are much less geographically mobile than people in the US. Only about 10 per cent of households move every year in England, of whom only about 1 per cent move between regions (Donovan, Pilch & Rubenstein, 2002). Thus trying to regenerate, for example, the North East of England, solely via a strategy of attracting the ‘mobile creative class’, not only risks problems associated with gentrification, but is unlikely to succeed in attracting people in sufficient numbers.


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Moreover, even in countries where geographic mobility is higher, such as Australia, the number of favoured places to which the creative class will move is generally very small. In a regional analysis (National Economics, 2002), based on Florida’s ‘indexes’, ‘winning regions’ (i.e., those with high level of patenting, with a highly qualified labour force and that attracted migrants) were all in the central areas of state capital cities, predominantly Sydney and Melbourne. This should surprise no-one. As Heath and Potter (2005) remark, in the past every city had its own members of the bourgeois e´lite, judges, bankers, professors, doctors and so on, ‘now the members of the creative class are almost completely abandoning entire regional areas and congregating in a handful of centres’ (p. 208). The truly problematic aspect, as Gibson and Klocker (2005) point out, is that instead of seeing this unevenness as an outcome of longer term social and economic inequalities, it is all too easy to conflate this with particular cultural characteristics. In other words, groups that score less well on ‘creativity’, indexes are deemed to be ‘lacking’ in particular characteristics; places that are insufficiently attractive to this group, are deemed to be ‘failing’. The fact that such characteristics are often simply the taste preferences of a particular class, is disarmingly revealed in the Australian State of the Regions report, which remarks in passing, Where concentrations of the working class exist, the requisite locational characteristics to attract the creative class are absent. (National Economics, 2002, p. 12)

As Haylett (2003, p. 410) has observed of such discussions, ‘working classness is often reduced to a condition in need of alleviation’. Instead of being attempts to release the imagination and innovation of local communities, therefore, public money is spent developing amenities that appeal to outsiders—the pay off presumably being that the jobs and growth they are deemed to bring, will trickle down to local communities. Thirty or more years of research on this suggest that the evidence for beneficial trickle down effects is non-existent. Thus, using Florida’s prescriptions, regional growth strategies are reduced to both a recipe for, and a justification of, gentrification. And this is where gentrification is even possible—in a competition for mobile labour, what of the places that lose out? Conclusion—A New Agenda for Creative Industries Policy The argument of this article has been that post-1997 creative industries policy has contained a rather incoherent social policy agenda, based on flawed assumptions and on which is has therefore ‘failed to deliver’. Assumptions about the spread of a ‘knowledge economy,’ across the UK, have fallen foul of the UK’s traditional economic geography, which sees a continuing concentration of political, cultural and business activities in London and the South East. Attempts to remedy this through regional initiatives have been varyingly successful in supporting small and micro businesses, but have in no way reversed the traditional patterns of uneven development. The perceptions that the creative industries are open to talent, and are indeed dependent on diverse talent, have also been somewhat optimistic. The employment of black and ethnic minority workers in these sectors is below the national average


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for other types of work. There is not enough research on this to be definitive—but it appears that the strength and importance of social networks in these sectors act as a barrier to more diverse employment in many cases. And the rather disastrous flirtation with notions of the ‘creative class’, has simply increased inner-city property prices such that local ‘creatives’, and other lower paid workers, are often forced to move elsewhere. A reasonable response might be to query why anyone should expect anything different. The answer is that the ‘socially sustainable’ possibility of these developments has been a constantly re-iterated theme since 1997 and has indeed formed part of a defining New Labour idea, that economic development is the pre-requisite of social justice. In addition, the patterns of ‘network sociability’ to be found in these sectors have often been advanced as alternatives to traditional public policy: remedies for everything from crime to poor educational attainment. ‘Creativity’ has been vital to New Labour’s re-positioning of itself as the party of the aspirational middle class and the withdrawal of interventionist positions in a variety of policy areas in favour of a ‘self-help’ strategy. If creativity has been fetishized at the level of the individual, it has also fed notions of enhanced social capital as the answer to both individual and collective problems. The particular mix of cultural, economic and social assumptions buried in the terms ‘creativity’, now need to be unpicked and critically examined if we are to progress either in economically developing the creative industries, or in understanding the role of creative activities in society more generally. This is not just a plea to ‘shed the regeneration baggage’, from creative industries particularly in a situation where it is not clear who/what else will pick it up. But the economic potential of these activities, in terms of employment and growth, are more likely to be met by a focus on those high growth activities in creative content production, than they are by using the same terminology for everything from visual art in Folkestone to the software and services of the M4 corridor, to the BBC. Moreover, policies for social inclusion or enhanced equality need to be developed in their own right, not as an adjunct to economic development. There is no evidence to suggest than an ‘economically competitive’ society cannot be one with a great degree of inequality and injustice—tackling that should be a social and political priority, not an instrumental way of producing more film makers or videogames designers. Notes [1] See www.foci.org.uk [2] See http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/departments/media-communications/journalismunit.php and www.foci.org.uk [3] Interview by the author in September, 2004.

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