>> 1.5 THE FORMAL AND THE INFORMAL
A key feature of the creative economy, notably in developing countries, is its deep reliance on informal cultural systems, processes and institutions. In developing countries, many creative workers, including musicians, artisans, performers, craftspeople and even professional designers and technicians, find themselves beyond the reach of official regulation and measurement. Many cultural enterprises operate “off the books”. The layer of governmental, commercial and civic institutions that is central to cultural life in advanced economies, e.g. public service broadcasters, museums, art schools, film studios, etc., is generally very thin, if not absent. Informality shapes the political economy of creative industries in developing countries, particularly as government capacity for subsidy and regulation is limited in these countries.
Collectives, micro-enterprises, vendor associations, clubs and guilds occupy the place of major cultural institutions and bureaucracies as creative agents tend to be smaller and less visible than their counterparts in the global North. These ground-level actors are less likely to interface with international arts/culture bodies or appear in the kind of data compiled by international agencies. Moreover, the intellectual property frameworks that have been central to creative industry policy in rich countries are not designed to protect many kinds of non-industrial creative endeavour, such as dance and textile design. In other words, there are often systemic asymmetries in the developing world.
What is more, a sizeable proportion of cultural production is impermanent by intent since it is designed for immediate consumption, e.g. rituals and ceremonies and accompanying cultural expressions that have both intrinsic value and a creative dimension. Such creativity cannot be framed in terms of intellectual property. To do so would be to reject understandings of the economy in which market mechanisms and trading practices are often mediated by the collective values of generosity or sharing. These values “complicate the neo-classical premises of economics regulating the transactions of everyday life cultures.”12
The link between informality, development and the creative economy is not a hard and fast rule, of course. Some developing countries are home to highly structured and extensive cultural sectors, as can be seen in the example of Bombay cinema (Bollywood) or the Latin American recording industries. Equally, developed countries are home to many creative cultures, from handicraft to hip hop, many of which are not institutionally supported and can thus be described as informal. However, given the comparatively larger scale of informality within the developing world, a global perspective inevitably requires some recalibration of policy settings and orientations. A different, indeed creative, policy approach is required for effective engagement with this sector.
The first challenge for policymakers is to obtain reliable data on cultural and creative activities. Aggregated national-level data on cultural flows, inputs and outputs do not provide the kind of information needed to understand the dynamics of cities and regions and are not always useful when mapping local creative economies. International survey data relying on responses from cultural agencies or governments are also of limited use. Cultural statistics are often patchy and unreliable as they are also designed to only measure those things that are deemed to be worth measuring, particularly to justify public funding. Hence, major creative industries in the developing world often have little visibility in international cultural-policy discussions (see case study 1.1 on Nollywood). These lacunae feed into a wider power dynamic between and within developing countries with respect to their representation in global arts and culture forums. Activities promoted at the international level, e.g. varieties of “world” music and visual art, often represent a selective sliver of the wider scene or arise as a result of brokering by connected individuals who understand the value of being captured in data and having official representation.
Given the difficulty of obtaining formal economic indicators at the local level, how can the vibrancy and scale of the creative economy be properly assessed? Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. Creative activity presents an empirical challenge as it is a universal human capacity and occurs across a very wide variety of public and private sites. Nonetheless, a few recalibrations of assessment methods can be suggested. For example, research in developing countries may benefit from contextualized, ground-level case studies, as showcased in this Report, which are often of greater use than large-scale surveys. Or, when using survey approaches, a snowballing design (the technique of using a small pool of initial informants to nominate, through their social networks, other participants who meet the eligibility criteria and could potentially contribute) may help to pick up the many unregistered creative practitioners embedded in local cultural networks. The objectives of such work need not be comprehensive mapping.
Methods that identify the connections between the informal and formal sectors will be particularly useful for policy development and analysis. These connections already span many areas relevant to creative-industry development, including training, employment and urban planning. Creative economies typically rely on inputs from both the formal and the informal sectors of the economy. By the same token, it will be important to gauge how policy initiatives aimed at fostering creative activity in informal settings may shape the way these activities evolve and feed back into the formal cultural economy.
Positive cultural policy, whether in the form of subsidy, state-funded promotion or other kinds of official support, brings cultural activity into the realm of state oversight and bureaucracy. While such support is often actively courted by cultural producers and usually benefits the individuals and organizations involved, any such intervention will, by definition, change the way in which they currently operate. This is the “variable geometry” of informal economies: as regulatory and policy boundaries move, the dynamics of formal and informal activity shift in response. Policy attention is needed at all levels of government, from the local to the transnational. As in other sectors of the economy, strategies for formalizing labour relations and other aspects of creative work are likely to have positive outcomes in terms of encouraging investment and growth. However, the complexity of cultural infrastructures around the world means that the best policy responses are not always obvious or straightforward. Where a great deal of creative activity occurs under informal conditions, targeting specific actors for subsidy or promotion may have an unwelcome “museumization” effect, converting embedded aesthetic traditions into officially sanctioned spectacle. For all these reasons, then, informal creative activities require a different kind of policy thinking. Appropriate responses and interventions will vary widely from locality to locality. We will return to these issues in subsequent chapters as we explore specific instances of creative production.