London

visionarypeopleCase Study

To this point we have taken a brief journey through contemporary creative and cultural policy. We started at a personal level with some assumptions based on professional experience and personal interest. Those assumptions were very broad in scope and concern.  Generally they sought to clarify the role of words and images in fostering international mutual understanding. They were also driven by a desire to understand global concerns, expressed in the international media on the role of government in promoting culture and cultural policies.

After the broad international perspective of the original assumptions the study took on a more structured form. A spiralling technique of exploration was chosen as were strict elements in reading and interpreting secondary research and literature.  From existing literature on issues relating to the formulation of cultural policy a few important themes emerged that guided the rest of the journey. Themes such as the role of the individual, entrepreneurship and self reliance were highlighted. Muhammad Yunus said a balance between social needs and economic means is necessary, possible and vital to live in harmonious societies and to achieve full self-realization.

Florida and Lessig pointed towards a path to achieving a social and economic balance in harvesting a natural resource that is abundant. The resource is human creativity. The tools for the harvest are digital technology, intellectual property law and cultural and creative industries policy.  Florida, in particular, pointed towards large amounts of quantitative data signalling the growth of a new movement forming, a ‘creative class’ emerging that shares a creative ethos.

We now know also that one country has a decade of experience in developing the range of support services and regulatory frameworks necessary for the flowering of human ingenuity towards social and economic ends. Since the launch in the UK of their creative industries policy experiment the rest of the world has joined the movement.

The last leg of this study is to once again narrow the focus.  It is time to zoom in on a local policy structure and a specific creative institution.  The local creative industry policy we will now explore is the one developed for London. The creative enterprise we will discuss is the London Design Festival.  We will slow the pace of the study to attempt to truly understand what and how policy translates to the local level. At the end, the goal is first to comprehend the effects of cultural and creative industry policy on a local institution. We will also discuss how a local creative entity can benefit from strategic implementation and interpretation of existing international, European, national and local creative industry policy.

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