Industries Culturelles Ou Industries Creatives: Approche Critique

Industries culturelles ou industries creatives: approche critique

Susan Galloway

Introduction

Within Europe the UK government has led the way in terms of creative industries thinking. I want to talk about the UK model and its applicability elsewhere. I think it’s instructive to look at, because the signs are that creative industries thinking may now have run its course in the UK, and that inside central government this is a policy idea which has now expired.

I want to talk a bit about the UK government’s definition and conceptualisation of the creative industries, the way in which this has developed recently into the idea of the creative economy, and some of the problems and contradictions evident within it. These have been widely commented on in Britain for some time now.

I would also like to speak briefly about Scotland as a case in point of the problems of adopting and importing policy definitions from elsewhere. I’m particularly interested in the implications of creative industries thinking for cultural policy and especially for the creative arts.

Britain’s New Labour government is now closely associated with creative industries ideas. Soon after its election in 1997 it established a national Creative Industries Taskforce and work began on defining and mapping the sector. The UK definition of creative industries has since become a standard reference point, and the mapping of and strategy development for the creative industries, at regional, local and city levels, has become a growth industry in itself.

According to the UK government, creative industries have two main defining features. They involve activities based on individual creativity and they result in the generation and exploitation of intellectual property, the basis of their potential for creating wealth and employment.

What is significant about the UK definition is that it excludes the key communicative function of culture, in other words any reference to cultural goods and services as involving, in essence, the generation and communication of ideas.

It is this which distinguishes the UK creative industries definition from definitions of the cultural industries, with important consequences for what the purpose of public policy intervention is understood to be.

This omission was not an oversight, it is a reflection of the purpose the UK definition was designed to serve:

The mapping of a post-industrial future for Britain based on the idea of the ‘knowledge economy’;

The need to find new ways of justifying public provision and support for the arts and cultural sector, in the context of public service reform and new public management in the UK – in which public investment must produce demonstrable and measurable outputs that deliver on corporate objectives.

The concept of creativity fits both of these purposes:

rhetorically it appears democratic and inclusive and therefore provides distance from the what are portrayed as the elitist and exclusive traditions of post-war British state patronage of the arts.

It also fits neatly into the knowledge economy discourse, within which all types of creativity are the same and therefore, again, marks a break with an idealist tradition of arts support that privileges artistic creativity.

There are obvious problems with the UK definition. The two defining features of ‘creativity’ and ‘intellectual property’ could arguably apply to virtually any type of economic activity. There is therefore no particular rationale for why the UK government selected its particular set of industries for the appellation ‘creative’ – what is included or excluded is entirely pragmatic and subject to dispute. What is clear though is that this way of defining creative industries:

places cultural production firmly within an economic framework serving the goal of national economic competitiveness.

regards cultural products – ideas and information – primarily as an asset to be exploited within the knowledge economy.

In summary, it subverts the original cultural industries analysis, which recognised a role for public intervention in the economy of industrially produced culture for social and cultural objectives, justified in terms of various types of market failure. UK creative industries thinking therefore fits within a political and ideological framework in addition to a pragmatic, policymaking, one.

From creative industries to creative economy

In the years since it was first proposed, UK creative industries thinking has been criticised for its limitations in a number of respects. In 2005 the government established its Creative Economy Programme, in part to work on refining and developing the definition and model of the creative industries in response to these criticisms. This refinement, in the form of the creative economy model, was presented last year (2007) in a report for the British government by The Work Foundation (‘Staying Ahead’). What was presented is almost identical to the concentric circles model developed for classifying the creative industries in Europe in the 2006 study for the European Commission.

This model asserts that creative ideas originate in the core creative arts and that these ideas and influences diffuse outwards through a series of layers or concentric circles, with the proportion of cultural to commercial content decreasing as one moves outwards from the centre. In effect the creative arts – literature, visual and performing arts – are visualised as the heart of the knowledge economy.

The most recent policy development, the culmination of the government’s Creative Economy Programme, emerged in February this year, with the publication of a policy document ‘Creative Britain’. Beneath the rhetoric, this publication appears to signal a shift away from serious political interest in creative economy thinking within the UK government, precisely at the time that international interest is growing. To some extent this is due to changes in personnel, notably a change of Prime Minister, and departmental restructuring.

‘Creative Britain’ deals almost exclusively with the creative arts and broadcasting – those activities supported mainly by the Department for Culture Media and Sport. Those parts of the creative industries supported by the enterprise wing of government are notable by their absence. Despite continued advocacy for creative economy thinking to be mainstreamed within UK economic policy, this appears unlikely.

Instead it looks as if the creative economy argument has failed to convince. There are good reasons for thinking that is the case. One of the main conclusions of the 2007 Work Foundation report, was an admission that despite the best efforts to analyse what data is available, not enough is actually known about “what drives creative industries and the mechanisms through which its creativity spills over into the wider economy and society.” (Work Foundation, 2007: 23).

In place of facts, UK creative economy thinking, evidenced in the most recent policy document, rests on a set of rather dubious assumptions:

That ‘creativity’ is the engine of economic growth, and therefore by cultivating the innate creative and cultural impulses of the population, benefits will feed into the wider economy, making the UK a more competitive nation.

The notion that people in Britain are somehow more creative than people elsewhere in the world and that our renowned creativity is what defines us as a nation.

The rather worryingly counter-factual notion that the cultural sector suffers from labour shortages and that more young people need to be directed into careers in areas such as music, television and theatre.

As with the creative industries definition, it is the omissions that are instructive. While placing individual artists at the centre of wealth creation within a knowledge economy, ‘Creative Britain’ is silent about their status and economic position. There is abundant evidence that the low incomes, insecurity, poor conditions, and discrimination that characterise cultural occupations act as barriers to entry and to sustaining careers, especially for women. And that the practices of casualisation, employment cuts, and the ‘enhanced productivity’ of a reduced labour force have a negative impact on the output of cultural industries. Yet improving the conditions of the creators of cultural and economic value is not identified as an issue for public policy. Instead, in a modern take on the idealisation of artistic poverty, knowledge economy advocates have recommended the freelance, multiple job holding, flexible working practises of the creative industries as a model for the rest of the economy.

Creative industries, nationhood and cultural identity

In policy discourse, wealth and job creation are associated with the idea of ‘national’ interests. It is the national dimension of creative industries I want to speak briefly about.

It is very difficult to hold to a view of the creative industries as one where public policy is driven entirely, or even mainly, by economic interests. The UK government’s vote in favour of the UN Convention protecting cultural diversity serves to illustrate that.

In a context in which nationalism is perceived to be growing in response to globalisation, the communicative and cultural dimensions of the creative industries acquire greater significance. Further concentration of decision-making at EU level is likely to intensify these trends.

Scotland provides an interesting example here. Alongside an independent church, education and legal system, the cultural sector – including the Scottish press, media and literary sectors - has played an important role in maintaining a sense of nationhood throughout 300 years of economic and political union with a much larger neighbour. Since Scotland regained a national parliament almost ten years ago, within a devolved system of UK government, the importance of this has been accentuated. The election of a Nationalist Scottish government last year brought this even more sharply into focus.

Contrary to expectations, in the post-devolution period Scotland’s creative industries sector – particularly her significant press and broadcasting sectors – has declined in employment terms, largely as a result of market forces operating at a UK level. In recognition of the cultural importance of the media industries in a Scottish national context, there is a growing public debate about both ownership and control, whether existing companies and organisations adequately serve ‘national’ interests, and whether new forms of either ownership or institutional structure are required in order to achieve desired cultural and democratic goals.

In other words in Scotland cultural (and political), rather than economic considerations are driving discussion about public policy intervention within key parts of the creative industries. Whereas UK creative industries thinking presents the national interest solely in terms of wealth creation, in Scotland, within areas of the commercial creative industries – such as the press and publishing – the argument is made that the national interest is in conflict with the commercial interests of (usually) externally owned companies. And that the decisions of bodies such as the Competition Commission fail to adequately take account of cultural criteria in their determinations.

A case in point is literature and publishing. As I mentioned, a key tenet of the UK creative industries discourse has been to highlight post war state patronage of the arts as elitist and undemocratic. It has inferred that market failure arguments have been used to privilege and protect the cultural preferences of the rich. While this is undeniably true, it is also not the whole story.

From the late 1960s, the Scottish Arts Council has supported the development of indigenous Scottish publishing houses, as a way of ensuring that the literature and poetry of Scotland, written in the national languages and dialects – survives, and continues to thrive. Literature and language, although less influential than the press and broadcasting industries, are still of great significance for the construction of a distinctive cultural identity for the nation.

The goals this policy sought to achieve were cultural, but also democratic – to enable the freedom of expression both of writers and the reading public, whose access and choice would otherwise be constrained by market forces. The aims were cultural, but the instruments used were those of economic intervention. Although certainly not regarded or labelled as such in the 1960s, by any other name this was a cultural industries policy. And one which has been extremely successful. In the ensuing forty years Scotland has enjoyed an internationally acclaimed literary renaissance, earning Edinburgh the title of the world’s first City of Literature, awarded by UNESCO.

Arts Council support over the years is the main reason why Scotland still possesses a cluster of independent publishing houses, all small or medium sized enterprises. But their existence is precarious and they are highly vulnerable to further monopolisation within the publishing and retail sectors.

Concluding remarks

Given that the UK creative industries/creative economy model arose in a particular set of circumstances and appears already to have become a casualty of its intellectual weaknesses, it may be redundant to consider whether it should be transferred elsewhere. But it is precisely at this time, when creative industries/creative economy thinking reaches its endpoint in England that in Scotland the restructuring of government support for the cultural sector is proceeding - firmly based upon creative industries/creative economy thinking and with a name to match – Creative Scotland. Given the context I have briefly described, the construction of a new cultural institution based on these principles is proving to be problematic.

It is clear that cultural and economic considerations are not mutually exclusive. But it is certainly a problem if economic criteria are privileged, and if cultural questions are interpreted as economic, as the UK creative industries concept does.

In its cultural policy and in its creative industries/creative economy approach, the UK government has focused upon the economic and social impacts of the cultural sector. What is demanded is a much stronger focus on the cultural impacts of other areas of public policy, and especially economic and industrial policy – both at national and European levels of government. At the end of the day questions of ownership and control, and how the ‘national’ is defined, remain vital in relation to the cultural industries.