OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

3. PROMOTING LOCAL DEVELOPMENT BY CREATING CULTURAL PRODUCTS
rollers. Limoges is now the leading independent research centre in industrial ceramics
and surface treatments.
- California is today home to multimedia cultural clusters that have managed to
combine the traditions of the cinema and television district of Los Angeles
with the technological innovation potential of Silicon Valley. This clustering
brings together producers and broadcasters of digital audiovisual programmes.
In fact there are two clusters, one around San Francisco Bay and the other in
Greater Los Angeles, each of them accounting for nearly 40% of the firms (431
for California as a whole). But while San Francisco Bay is oriented primarily towards
producing computer equipment and systems, Los Angeles has drawn upon
Hollywood’s artistic traditions of film and TV production to develop new products.
These two clusters can be said to be operating as a network (the articulation
between network and cluster will be discussed below). Table 3.1 (Scott, 2000)
illustrates the situation, showing the convergence of contents and containers
and the differentiation of roles.
Table 3.1. California’s multimedia districts
Activity San francisco bay Greater los angeles Total employment
Computers (SIC 357) 74 % 26 % 62,000
Data processing (SIC 737) 55 % 45 % 104,000
Audiovisual production (SIC 781) 4 % 96 % 133,000
Audiovisual services (SIC7812) 1.9 % 98.1 % 83,000
Source: data from Scott (2000), op. cit., page 139
For these purposes, San Francisco Bay covers the counties of Alameda, Contra
Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara; Greater Los Angeles covers
the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura
These linkages between arts, culture and creativity are not limited to the big cities:
examples can also be found in rural communities or in small towns. Recent studies
by the Clustering Alliance have found clusters of this type in the United States, where
creativity is driving the design, packaging and marketing of products to make them
more competitive (Clustering Alliance, 2004). A plumbing fixture company, Kohler
Corporation, has artists-in-residence working in suburban or rural areas around
Wisconsin to produce new product lines with an artistic dimension. ACEnet, in Athens,
Ohio, helps local food processing companies design imaginative labelling and tell
stories about their products to create brand recognition and get higher prices.
Generally speaking, a “creative enterprise district” will involve people or companies
whose product is art or design, or for whose product art or design provides the
distinguishing feature, or who help to sell such products 75 .
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