2. Materials

The material included in this study ranges from website information, newspaper and magazine articles, to governmental, non-governmental and official reports, to interviews, meeting notes and internal documents of the London Design Festival during the case study.

Throughout the first and second phases of my research, extensive use of the internet was the most efficient way of collecting, annotating and analyzing existing data.  I created a blog, The Idea Feed, to track in the broadest possible way news articles, opinions and reports on creative industry policy issues.  This purpose built website is an online repository of over 200 articles, links and downloads relating to creative industry policy. (Appendix 13)

As the research grew more focused my reliance on official reports and government documents became more important.  At this juncture it was important to rely on published organizational and governmental papers, reports and reviews as opposed to understanding the delivery mechanisms and policy activities of institutional bodies. One objective of the third phase of the study was to identify existing cultural and creative industry policies at the international, regional, national and local levels. This work was carried out in order to develop a theory on policy to later ground in a real world example. Therefore, the work and projects of specific institutions will not be discussed in this study.

Archival texts from international, European, national and local levels provided greater focus to my paper. The criteria on the selection of documentation was two-fold: it had to contain direct references to creative industries or the creative economy.  The cultural policy field is vast; therefore, a strict criteria on the keyword associations was established before analyzing text.

The delineation of the creative industries used during the study was the one adopted by the European Union. This delineation encompasses the creative and cultural industries. Please see the EU breakdown on the following page.  (Appendix 14)

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