building creative partnerships
DESCRIPTION
Presentation for the Creative Exchange, Coal Exchange, Cardiff, June 2011.TRANSCRIPT
Developing sustainable urban creative clusters
BUILDING CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS
Oli MouldtaCity.co.uk@olimould
Cities breed collaboration…
Cit ies
Creative Industries
Clusters
Cardiff
Future Growth?
Shanghai from the air
“Economic development is a process of continually improvising in a context that makes injecting improvisations
into everyday life feasible… Cities provide not only new problems to be solved, but also the best environment to solve
them” (J. Jacobs)
The Creative Industries thrive when innovation, creativity and inspiration are allowed to flourish
Cities facilitate:CollaborationInspirationExchange of tacit knowledge or ‘buzz’
Cit ies
Creative Industries
Clusters
Cardiff
Future Growth?
In 1998, the creative industries consisted of 13 sub-sectors
In 2011, ‘siloization’ of creative industry activity
is unsustainable
Cross-pollination and inter-disciplinary
practice is commonplace
Cit ies
Creative Industries
Clusters
Cardiff
Future Growth?
Cities + Creative Industry activity (± political intervention) = clusters
‘Creative clusters’ can either be organic or
planned
Cit ies
Creative Industries
Clusters
Cardiff
Future Growth?
Cit ies
Creative Industries
Clusters
Cardiff
Future Growth?
Creative Industry growth is often serendipitous and evolves from unconventional (and illicit) collaborations
Cit ies
Creative Industries
Clusters
Cardiff
Future Growth?
NESTA report last year looked at Cardiff’s TV and Digital Media cluster…
TV firms protective over IP issues
Informal networking low in TV, high in Digital Media
Collaborative Digital Media industry facilitates flow of information
Cit ies
Creative Industries
Clusters
Cardiff
Future Growth?
Academic reports (Clifton, 2007) suggest that Cardiff has a high LQ in the UK, thereby ideally placed to attract ‘The Creative Class’
However, important to stress unique and distinctive
urbanity, avoid the ‘generica’ creative
development
Cit ies
Creative Industries
Clusters
Cardiff
Future Growth?
What can be done to encourage further growth?
Institutional Inertia is crucial – diffi cult to start from scratch
Encourage inter-disciplinary links with (free) events with broad remit
Connections with Higher Education crucial to future creativity/development
Allow for failure
Cit ies
Creative Industries
Clusters
Cardiff
Future Growth?
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better”
Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho (1983)