Creative Economy: A Feasible Development Option

CHAPTER8Policystrategies for the creativeindustries8.1 IntroductionKnowledge and creativity are becoming powerfuldrivers of economic growth in the contemporary globalizingworld. They have profound implications for trade anddevelopment. Together with technology, they open up ahuge potential for developing countries to develop newareas of wealth and employment creation consistent withnew trends in the global economy. For such countries torealize this potential, it is necessary to carefully formulatespecific policies for enhancing creative capacities throughstrategic actions to be taken by governments at local,national and regional levels, while exploring possibilities forinternational cooperation and strategic alliances.A wide range of measures is available to governmentsat all levels to stimulate the creative economy; to reinforcethe connections between social, cultural and environmentalaspects of its functioning; and to promote the achievementof sustainability through linking economic and culturaldevelopment. The policy arena within which governmentaction dealing with the creative economy falls is the broadarea of creative-industries policy. Traditionally in manycountries, this area of policy concern has been known as“cultural policy”. Yet the scope and coverage of the term“cultural policy” differ from country to country. For somecountries, especially in the industrialized world, cultural policysimply comprises policy towards the creative arts. Suchcountries support the arts through measures such as subsidiesto artists and performing companies; tax concessionsfor donations to the arts; assistance to education and trainingin music, drama, the visual arts and so on; and the operationof public cultural institutions such as museums andgalleries. For other countries, particularly in the developingworld, cultural policy has tended to connote principally policytowards cultural heritage. In these cases, the policy task isseen as one of preserving or protecting both tangible andintangible cultural heritage, where the sites, artefacts and traditionsinvolved are vulnerable to exploitation and possibleloss through deterioration or disappearance.Lately the notion of “cultural policy” has broadenedto has broadened to emcompass creativity and the creativeindustries. This expansion parallels the widening of thescope of the creative economy from the traditional culturalindustries, as discussed earlier in this report. In Europe, forexample, policy interventions in support of the culturalindustries began in the 1920s and were reaffirmed in theTreaty of Rome (1957) and the Maastricht Treaty (1992),which progressively defined the support for culture in thecountries of the European Union. Originally such supportwas directed towards traditional art forms, but as the marketeconomy has grown and diversified, the scope has widenedcontinually to embrace the audiovisual industries, publishing,the media and so on. The Europeans have stressed theimportance of the cultural content of the output of theseindustries. Public expenditure on culture in the EuropeanUnion has continued to expand, with countries such asFrance and Germany committing more than €8 billion toculture in the early years of the twenty-first century, withtotal public expenditure on culture across the enlargedEuropean Union now totalling approximately €50 billion(KEA 2006:125).In line with the cross-cutting and multidimensionalnature of the creative economy, creative-industry policy inits broader interpretation embraces aspects of a number ofother areas of economic and social policy. Perhaps mostimportantly, consideration of the creative economybecomes a key element of industrial policy, whereby industrialdevelopment strategies can exploit the potentialdynamism of the creative industries in generating growth inoutput, exports and employment. A positive outlook for8Policy strategies for the creative industriesCREATIVE ECONOMY REPORT 2010209