Creativity and Creative Sectors, Clusters and Networks : 2
Yesterday I was down at the Creativity and Creative Sectors, Clusters and Networks event at the Birmingham University Business School. Here are some new publications I came across there:
Technology, Talent and Tolerance in European Cities: A Comparative Analysis (2007). This unconvincingly attempts, based on very shaky data sets, to test Richard Florida’s theories of the ‘creative class’ in a UK context.
Berlin, The Economy of Culture: A Proposal for a European Strategy (PDF link) and The Economy of Culture in Europe.
There’s to be a 450-page Routledge Companion to Creativity published in Sept 08.
Music Matters : a regional profile (a profile of Birmingham and the West Midlands).
There will be a second follow-on event, “Creativity and the City: sector, cluster or network?” in Birmingham on 4th April 08.
Also interestingly revealed by the event was the way in which previous support structures and initiatives are quickly forgotten; I heard people saying things like “there was nothing before us”, when I know there were many previous attempts at supporting the creative industries in that sub-sector. And the ceramics industry in Stoke-on-Trent seems to be completely overlooked, and almost unknown, as an established creative cluster in the West Midlands; it’s as though it’s ‘too far out’, both in terms of geography and as a specialist type of creative production.
