Creative Economy Debate

Can Yorkshire capitalise on its creative talent and show the way forward for the rest of the UK? Integreat Yorkshire hosted a debate to find out.

Creative artists who succeed commercially used to be accused of selling out. Not any more: digital media is bringing commerce and creativity ever closer.

In Yorkshire and the Humber, artists, film-makers, designers and a host of other creative professionals have worked with regeneration agencies and financiers to develop what is believed to be the fastest growing creative and digital economy outside London, employing 45,000 people and forecast to contribute £4.78bn to the region’s wealth by 2012.

But rest of the world is catching up rapidly and creativity is gaining commercial currency on a global scale. The knowledge economy represents 30% of the European workforce. In the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia, both the public and the private sectors are seizing opportunities to promote creative enterprise.

‘This is the kind of global economy we are up against. Are we matching the scale and ambition of other countries?’ asks Sally Joynson, chief executive of Screen Yorkshire, the regional agency for film, television and interactive media.

Ms Joynson was among leading lights in Yorkshire and Humber’s creative industries who came together at the Round Foundry Media Centre in Leeds in May to examine how the region can build on its head start in the creative economy. The debate, organised by Integreat Yorkshire, the regional centre of excellence for regeneration and place-making, was sparked by the new Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) strategy, Creative Britain: New talents for the new economy.

This blueprint for making the UK the world’s ‘creative hub’ acknowledges the 7.3% contribution of creative industries to national GDP and showcases ideas for nurturing talent, including creative apprenticeships and five hours a week of cultural activities for every school child. It also proposes public interventions, such as strengthening protection for intellectual property and developing regional best practice ‘beacons’ and creative clusters.

So what will the strategy mean in practice? Most of the creative entrepreneurs, academics and public sector leaders who took part in the debate felt Yorkshire and the Humber were already at the forefront of many of the ideas suggested. But the growing national and international profile of creative enterprise provided an impetus for the region to ‘take things up a gear’, as the debate’s facilitator, creative industry consultant Lee Corner, put it.

Richard Motley, programme director at Integreat, added: ‘We have a clearly engaged regional development agency, a strong regional infrastructure and a considerable number of respected practitioners and academics and have to take full advantage of that.’

And Franco Bianchini, professor of cultural policy and planning at Leeds Metropolitan University, commented: ‘We need to lay claim to Yorkshire and Humber as a place that has invested in cultural industry structures.’
But to maximise this potential, we need to understand better the complexity of this emerging and amorphous sector in order to meet its requirements for investment and development.

The creative sector is difficult to pin down: its businesses tend to employ fewer than ten people and there is no clear definition of which enterprises are included and which aren’t. The DCMS definition includes 13 sub-sections. Lucy Wurtlin, programme director for Melt, a three-year pilot programme by the Culture Company to stimulate innovation in digital media – involving the BBC, Channel 4 and Orange – said the government did not seem to understand adequately the relationship between different parts of the sector.

‘Some parts are perceived as “economic performers” and others are perceived as “subsidised”,’ she said. ‘In my view that does not show the need to examine the sector as a whole or what big businesses and small creative innovators can learn from each other.’ She argued that early stage investment and greater sharing of risks between established bodies and new entrants to the market were needed to encourage creative innovation and enterprise.

‘The creative and financial sectors need to communicate better,’ observed Anamaria Wills, chief executive of the Cultural Industries Development Association (CIDA), which was established six years ago to support creative talent. ‘The creative economy does not fit the models of nineteenth and twentieth century industry and requires a new language and methods to communicate that.’

There needs to be more clarity in order to align businesses with the right funders: in Yorkshire there are 65 different sources of public and private investment for creative enterprises.

Ms Joynson suggested the DCMS strategy was ‘nowhere near ambitious enough’ and that Yorkshire and Humber should develop its own vision for ‘nurturing innovation, collaboration and knowledge-sharing among practitioners’.

Yorkshire Forward hopes to step into that gap. It plans to work with practitioners to produce a strategy to build on the national blueprint in a way that best fits regional strengths and challenges, said Stuart McFarlane, sector manager for digital and new media at the regional development agency. He pointed out that national and regional plans to maximise the economic potential of creative industries would link into the comprehensive spending review, the government’s business improvement programme and the Treasury review of sub-national economic development and regeneration.

Yorkshire Forward, local authorities and other agencies will work more closely under new government guidelines. And while some panel members highlighted the potential tension between creative innovation and contractual needs for tangible ‘outputs’ from public investment, Richard Motley argued this approach was changing. 

He hoped the sub-national review and local area agreements would encourage more holistic and qualitative approaches in the public sector. ‘Most of the investment in creative industry comes from the place-making programme, which amounts to £100m a year,’ he said. ‘Economic masterplanning is the way we can knit things together. The connectivity between place-making and the creative sector is one of the things this region has been pioneering and we need to maintain and accelerate that.’

Some local authorities are ‘light years ahead of others in terms of supporting creative industries’, according to Malcolm Warrington, creative industries officer at the Arts Council. That creates a series of ‘hotspots’ and ‘cold spots’ – a situation that requires stronger regional economic masterplanning.

Calvin Taylor, senior lecturer in creative industries at Leeds University, suggested the DCMS strategy presented opportunities that could be exploited, such as its commitment to five hours of creative education each week for children. ‘This is about the public sector being a commissioner of creative services. The capacity is not there to meet that at present and we need to develop it.’

The growing emphasis on environmental issues, changing live-work patterns and the downturn in the global economy could also offer new openings. Rick Faulkner, creative director of Chrysalis Arts, which works with artists and craftspeople in rural areas, explained: ‘Climate change and sustainability are encouraging home working. That means making the village buzz rather than commuting to the city.

‘In terms of world markets, environmentalism is the next area of expertise we have developed in this country. All of this can be married effectively with developing creative industries in the region.’

Calvin Taylor agreed that the creative economy in Yorkshire and Humber should respond to economic change: ‘The era of growth economy is over. I would like to see the region leading the push for creative education for sustainable living that is in this DCMS document – as a positive response to the no-growth economy.’

Creative industries in Yorkshire and Humber are already at the cutting edge internationally. But key players in the region are stepping up efforts to keep that edge. Working towards a vision that takes all of these challenges on board will be crucial to that, and Integreat Yorkshire and Yorkshire Forward are both planning further events to keep up the momentum.