White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 3The Harvard economist EdwardGlaeser stresses, on the other hand,how the capacity to compete in thecreative economy is in fact linked tothe much wider and overall variable ofthe presence of a creative class, i.e. tothe spread of education andconcentration of well-qualified skilledpeople (Glaeser et al., 2001).In following these wider-ranging andmore holistic approaches we mightseem to have lost sight a little of therelationship with culture and thecreative industries. But that is not thecase. The creative industries play a keyrole in the processes of growth anddevelopment of cities, just as the havea very important role in thedevelopment of many creativeindustries. This double-bonded linkcan be briefly illustrated through ananalysis of two critical functions of thecity affecting the cultural and creativeindustries: consumption, on one hand,but also new forms of production, onthe other.Moreover, in addition to the creativeindustries, culture in the wider sense isstill a key element in organising morebalanced local urban developmentoriented towards the quality of thegrowth processes to be pursued. As anumber of Italian experts have written,culture becomes a platform ofaggregation and social learning whichhelps the local community to approachideas, problems, and life styles, whichare outside familiar patterns, and toengage in continuous creative dialoguewith them. Culture becomes athoroughgoing cognitive infrastructurenot only used to fill in leisure time butalso to stimulate learning andinvestment in skills. It increasinglyinforms the meaning of daily life,shapes models for the quality of life,forges visions of the future with whichthe local community dialogues in aconscious participatory way, giving riseto an “industrial atmosphere” nolonger based on a culture of theproduct but on a shared interest in theproduction and spread of knowledge(Sacco, Tavano Blessi and Nuccio,2008). viiWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 75