NESTA PROJECT: FINE ARTSITS AND INNOVATION

etween creativity (the generation of new ideas) and
innovation (the successful exploitation of those ideas).
In similar vein, Potts (2007) argues that economic growth
comes from the origination, adoption and retention of novel
ideas, with the arts plainly having a role in all three stages.
However, in describing that role, he focuses on the role of
creativity and on creative services such as design and
advertising, rather than on the arts.
Potts argues that the creative industries form part of a
broader ‘creative system’ – an adapted version of what is
sometimes called an ‘innovation system’ (Freeman, 1995).
Potts’s creative system is concerned with the adoption of
social as well as physical technologies (how people use the
Internet, rather than just the Internet itself). He is concerned
with how innovations are adopted and retained in the
economy, as well as how they are generated.
For Potts, creative services such as advertising or marketing
are thus very important. For Cox it is design, to make
products and services more usable. But neither argument
gets us any closer to the role of the arts – particularly the fine
arts – in innovation.
We have seen that researchers have argued that culture
provides raw material for other sectors to be creative
(Venturelli, 2000 and KEA, 2006). But while it seems entirely
plausible that the arts are a source of ideas, stories and
images that are reproduced in other parts of the economy,
the mechanisms by which this happens remain elusive.
The focus of this study on the absorption and use of
‘artistically trained labour’, allows us to begin to think about
the mechanisms by which the fine arts, as embodied in the
work and skills of artists, link to creativity and innovation.
There are at least three ways why artistic labour seems
important to the process of innovation. These are discussed
below.
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