Trojan horse or Rorschach blot? Creative industries discourse around the world

Abstract

One of the most wide‐ranging and sophisticated critiques of creative industries policy argues that it is a kind of Trojan horse, secreting the intellectual heritage of the information society and its technocratic baggage into the realm of cultural practice, suborning the latter’s proper claims on the public purse and self‐understanding, and aligning it with inappropriate bedfellows such as business services, telecommunications and calls for increases in generic creativity. Reviewing the broad adoption of the concept in policy discourse around the world, this paper suggests that rather than a Trojan horse, it might be better thought of as a Rorschach blot, being invested in for varying reasons and with varying emphases and outcomes. Based on spatial analysis, then, the critique may need modification. Temporally as well, the critique may have been overtaken by later developments taking policy emphases ‘beyond’ the creative industries.

Keywords:

• creative industries
• international cultural policy
• Nicholas Garnham

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Dr Harvey May for invaluable research assistance.

Notes

1. An example of this complexity is how the city of Leipzig attempted to revitalise the city through a media metropolis in connection with the city’s celebrated publishing heritage (Bathelt and Boggs 2003). At first attempting to create a new ‘Graphisches Viertel’ (printing and publishing quarter), the initiative evolved instead into a new video production cluster when the post‐reunification government located a new state broadcaster there.

2. For an overview of New Zealand’s policies, see: Developing creative industries in New Zealand available at: http://www.nzte.govt.nz/access-international-networks/Explore-opportunities-in-growth-industries/growth-industries/Pages/Creative-industries.aspx [Accessed 22 August 2009].