The Creative Economy: Vision or Illusion in the Structural Change?

Abstract

This contribution discusses the hopes associated with the rise of the creative industries and gives explanations for the debates in politics, science and the media. In doing so, our underlying thesis is that the culture and creative economy is a virtual sector and that a uniform promotion—also by means of staged events that attract a lot of media attention—needs to be challenged. In a further step, the scientific implications will also be outlined on the basis of the term's “career” in the public debate. A brief analysis of the empiricism of the creative economy will provide further insight into its real significance and demonstrate possible definitional weaknesses of the term. The creative industries are an essential element of modern economic infrastructure. They will play an important role in the future, especially for cluster strategies. However, the scientific research so far is not able to reach more accurate conclusions regarding the effects of governance on the culture and creative industry. Therefore, this contribution shows future research fields. We will conclude by venturing an outlook on the further development of the sector and demonstrate its social and economic effects using the example of the Ruhr Area in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank Fabian Beckmann for his assistance during the revision of the manuscript.

Notes

Regarding the here shown term, one should consider that the naming of this sector differs in other countries. The commonly used term seems to be “creative industries” (cf. Fesel & Söndermann, 2007, p. 11). In this text we use the term “cultural and creative economy” as a translation of the German term “Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft”; this definition will be shown in part 4.

The gross values of the different sectors were in 2006 as follows: Engineering–74 bn, automotive industry–71, culture and creative economy–61 bn, chemical industry–49 and energy sector–43 bn (cf. Söndermann et al., 2009, p. 4).

It is, however, difficult to account for the provenance of the term itself; Mittag and Oerters (2009, p. 66) point to the use of the term in an Australian report of 1994. Then again, Weckerle et al. (2008 p. 9), date the emergence of the term in the 1970s and locate it in Europe and Canada.

Calculation of the percentage on the basis of data of the Federal Statistical Office (cf. Statistisches Bundesamt, 2008b, p. 69ff.).

Keller and Seifert (2007, p. 12), e.g. cite the following aspects as central characteristics of normal employment: a full-time job with a corresponding income; hence, a resulting integration into the social security systems; a permanent employment contract; the identity of employment contract and actual employment as well as the fact that the employee is bound to his employer's directives.

Cf. Eurostat (2007), Söndermann et al. (2009) as well as UNCTAD (2008).

The culture economy thus comprises: the publishing industry, the film industry, the broadcasting industry, artistic and other groups, journalists/press agencies, museums/art exhibitions, the trade with cultural goods, the architecture market and the design industry (cf. Söndermann et al., 2009, p. 14).

Of course, there are many reasons for such a procedure, last but not least the impracticability of a functional analysis due to the unmanageable complexity. What is important though is to realize that the sectoral differentiation leads to an ambiguity that should not be underestimated. An in-house designer in the furniture industry, for instance, thus does not rate as culture and creative industry employee, whereas a caretaker of a software company would be ranked among the creative industries employees.

Researched under www.uamr.de/facts (last viewed 29 March 2010).

Here, it must be pointed out that this assumption has not gone uncontested either (cf. Martin-Brelot et al., 2009).