Anatomy of a techno-creative community – the role of brokers, places, and events in the emergence of projection mapping in Nantes

ABSTRACT

This article aims to study the role of brokers, places, and events in the structuring of a community of innovation whose practice is at the intersection of art and technology – projection mapping. Using an exploratory case study, we observe the relationships between the different actors who form a community, sharing a common interest in a techno – creative practice – but whose collective innovation dynamic is only in its beginnings and remains unstable. We document the critical role of places and events as intermediary platforms for these actors. This reveals preferential circulations – patterns of moves among a set of focal locations in the city for a community – and the crucial role of these locations in communities’ emergence.

KEYWORDS:

• Techno-creative innovation
• community
• network analysis
• places
• events
• brokers

JEL CODES:

• D85
• O32
• R11
• Z10

Acknowledgements

We are also grateful to the participants of the Rethinking culture and creativity in the technological era workshop in Florence, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 So called, STEAM based Innovation.

2 According to the Agence d’urbanisme de la région nantaise (AURAN), the city has around 26,300 jobs in digital technologies and services (2019), and around 31,000 jobs in the cultural and creative industries (2019).

3 Some mappers could have been overlooked because of being isolated, or invisible to the people we interviewed. We were also unable to interview some for material reasons (they were not in the area, or unavailable during the study period).

4 For more details on the definition of links, see the Appendix.

5 Data analysis was conducted with the igraph package of R software.

6 For the moment, the first edition is postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Additional information

Funding

The authors wish to thank the RFI West Creative Industries (RESET project) and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (SCANEA project - n°ANR-18-CE22-0012) for their financial support.