July update

Our July update features articles from John Holden and Cubitt's Andrew child. John's speech, The Arts in a Recession, given at the Belgrave Bahano Peepul Centre, is reproduced in full. And Andrew offers us a post-crunch view of artists' studio groups in Four walls and top lighting. Download the July update now.

Keep up to date

If you would like to be kept informed about the next chapter of After The Crunch, please complete this short form: Keep me informed about the next chapter

After The Crunch

In the last ten years the creative industries have become one of the most fashionable and talked-about components of the global economy. Are they just froth on the surface of exuberant capitalism, about to be blown away by global recession, or are they a paradigm for a new networked future in which quality rather than quantity will become the ultimate arbiter of success in a world whose population is growing but whose resources are diminishing?

In After The Crunch the editors Tom Bewick, John Holden, John Kieffer, John Newbigin and Shelagh Wright join forces with 42 artists, entrepreneurs, commentators, analysts, policy-makers, policy-sceptics, academics, financiers – and citizens – to set out their hopes and fears for the future.

Now it’s your turn to join the debate about what kind of world you want – After The Crunch.

The contributors to this book share a common theme: things can be different, and better, if we make the right choices. The narrative is fundamentally optimistic, but shot through with the fear that we will lose our nerve and go back to ‘business as usual.’

There are big gaps between today’s reality and the possibility of a creative, fulfilling, greener and more equal society. To create the bridges that carry us from our current malaise to a solid and sustainable prosperity, we need action at every level: individual, organisation, government, and society.

Here are twelve big issues that need to be sorted out:

1 Global players:

We don’t want to replace the existing global business elite with another, “Creative Industries” elite. International trade agreements and tariffs must recognise the expression of creativity as a universal human right, and see cultural expression as fundamental to human existence, like DNA, and not as a commodity. Who gets a voice in the creative economy is a big issue. Until now, culture and creativity have been parked as the ‘exceptions’ within international trading arrangements, often with very good reason, but perhaps the time has come to address the issue directly.

2 Intellectual Property:

The single greatest impediment to the success of the creative economy is our failure to balance effective rewards for creativity with the transformative power of universal access to digital content. The old models of exploitation and enforcement are utterly redundant. How can we force the pace to find new ways through? A stronger commitment from government? An open-source forum? Can we get government, finance, academia, creative producers and consumers to work together for a solution?

3 Open source and free content:

 The UK probably has more publicly owned content than any other country in the world. The public service broadcasters, academia, libraries and archives could take the lead in beginning to build a global commons of data, knowledge, news and entertainment. How can they be encouraged to do that?

4 Competition:

There is a common assumption that the UK leads the world’s creative economy but the truth is that competition is intense. Other governments are investing heavily in education, skills and infrastructure. Financial institutions in other parts of the world are quicker to engage with innovative business ideas. How can we make Britain’s public and private institutions bolder, quicker, and more reflexive?

5 Understanding policy:

The UK has a long history of being good at invention and creativity but bad at investment and management. We generate the microbusinesses that drive innovation, but we own almost none of the big distribution businesses that reap the benefits. An unqualified enthusiasm for competition as the driver of change has overlooked the economic and social force of collaboration and partnership. Ditch linear models of knowledge transfer and replace them with analyses of how the world works in reality. New circumstances demand new solutions: how can government become an enabler of self-organising solutions?

6 Administrative coherence:

DCMS, BERR, DCSF, Treasury, DIUS between them, spend a lot of money in the name of ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’, but much of their effort is frustrated by the lack of a coherent approach. What’s more, big government speaks a different language from small creative businesses. How can we broker a more effective relationship between the two sides, and re-configure government and its agencies so they are fit to manage the new economy?

7 Metrocentrism:

Scotland’s open and experimental initiative of Creative Scotland, the work of local and regional agencies and clusters in England, all provide strong evidence that the small-scale nature of creative industry enterprises connects more easily, and more productively with smaller-scale government. Can we reverse the trend of the last half century and begin to see policy thinking flowing upwards from the communities and regions of the UK to inform thinking in Whitehall?

8 Digital Britain:

Making super-fast broadband freely available to all, including the poorest, has the potential to release mass creativity, transform lives and galvanise the economy – but only if the services, tools and content available are sufficiently attractive and accessible to engage individuals and businesses. What more can we do to achieve the high ambitions of ‘Digital Britain’?

9 Short-termism:

The events of the last six months, coupled with the reality of climate change, highlight the inadequacy of consigning oo much power to the short-term energy of the market. We need to invent new ways to incentivise longer-term thinking, including investment in people and infrastructure. How do we integrate the strengths of the creative industries into that process?

10 Data collection and analysis:

The UK has a poor record in collecting and analysing data on the creative economy. In the US comprehensive data is an integral part of business planning, much of it built on close co-operation between academia and business. Can we do the same, through our research councils and others?

11 Public procurement:

Government, local authorities and public agencies purchase more than £140 billion’s worth of goods and services each year, giving them enormous potential to influence markets and change behaviour. How can citizens more directly influence procurement, and how can it be made more local, green, creative and open to SMEs?

12 Credit:

In common with every other part of the economy, the creative sector is suffering in the credit crunch. But its situation is worse, because it creates wealth from ideas and newness rather than pledgeable assets and well-tried formulas. With several of our biggest banks now effectively in public ownership, there needs to be firmer direction to ensure that the investment needs of the creative economy are met. Given the lack of engagement in the past between the finance sector and the creative sector, this means there is a substantial brokerage task to be done in teaching the two to talk to each other. How can we do that – and do it quickly?

Some of these issues will need inter-governmental co-operation to achieve real change, some are issues for our government structure, and some for local businesses and communities. The one certainty in the present circumstance is that no-one can claim a monopoly on wisdom.

As the IMF recently said, we are in uncharted waters. The question is – do we attempt to forge a new way forward or retreat to what we know to be environmentally and economically unsustainable and socially inequitable?

By John Holden, John Kieffer, John Newbigin and Shelagh Wright

Read further articles like this in: After The Crunch