1.1.4 CULTURAL CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION
Critics of the creative industries agenda, and a fortiori of creative economy thinking, find that the terms tend to blur the boundaries between “creativity” in a very general sense and the expressive qualities that characterize cultural goods and services. They also find that the term “creativity” is used far too broadly. It is true of course that the term “creativity” itself has always been open to multiple definitions, and there have never been as many as there are today. Even in the domain of psychology, where individual creativity has been most widely studied, there is little agreement as to its nature and precise location, or whether it is an attribute of people or a process.
In a recent variant of creative economy thinking, some argue that the cultural and creative industries not only drive growth through the creation of value, but have also become key elements of the innovation system of the entire economy. According to this viewpoint, their primary significance stems not only from the contribution of creative industries to economic value, but also from the ways in which they stimulate the emergence of new ideas or technologies, and the processes of transformative change.
The creative economy should be seen, therefore, “as a complex system that derives its ‘economic value’ from the facilitation of economic evolution – a system that manufactures attention, complexity, identity and adaptation though the primary resource of creativity.” In this view, the cultural and creative industries are trailblazers, nurturing overarching societal dispositions which stimulate creativity and innovation, working to the benefit of all. Critics point out, however, that the mechanisms enabling this creativity to radiate are never clearly identified, although it seems entirely plausible that cultural expressions can be a source of ideas, stories and images that can be reproduced in other forms in different economic sectors. Recent analyses of input-output tables find only weak evidence that firms with supply chain links to firms in the creative industries are more innovative than those with no such links, but say nothing about what takes place in these engagements, and hence offer no clues as to causality. It may simply be that more innovative firms buy more creative industry inputs, such as design, branding or advertising.
It is difficult to argue, therefore, that all aspects of economic, social or political creativity are generated uniquely – or even principally – by cultural and creative industry processes themselves. For this reason, the term ‘creative economy’ will be used in this Report to privilege activities involving cultural creativity and/or innovation. The bulk of the case studies and examples are therefore drawn from activities that could be also classified as cultural industries in order to uncover the increasingly symbiotic relationships between culture, economy and place. The emancipatory social potential of the latter is implicit in their very constitution and the wellspring of expression is itself a means to forms of liberation. This potential cannot be separated from factors that underpin the success of the creative industries in purely economic terms.