Transcript Smart Indicators for Smart Regions

Smart Indicators for Smart
Regions
Universities and the need for a new
knowledge base for the cultural and creative
sectors
Colin Mercer, Bristol, UK
(Member: European Expert Network on Culture and CoECompendium Expert Group on Cultural Participation Issues)
[email protected]
Some ‘killer facts’…..
• Economic crisis year 2008:
– Global contraction of international trade by 12% but
world exports of creative goods and services
continued to grow: $592bn in 2008 - double 2002
level - annual growth rate of 14% over 6 consecutive
years (UNDP/UNCTAD Creative Economy Report
2010).
– In the EU the growth of the sector's value added was
near 20% in 99-03. This was 12% higher than the
growth of the general economy. Where general
employment decreased in 2002-04, CCI employment
increased (KEA, The Economy of Culture in Europe,
2006 ).
Killer facts…
• In many advanced EU countries spend on
cultural/recreational goods and services is
the 2nd or 3rd highest household
expenditure category after housing and food
but ahead of transport.
• At city-region level cultural employment is
very high: Greater London Area - 24%, Paris
(Ile de France) 45%.
‘Portugal we have a problem…’
• What are the comparable figures for Portugal as a nation and its
constituent city regions?
• In London, employment in the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI)
sectors is the second largest employer after Financial Services. City-region
trends across the EU are following this pattern.
• What is the situation in Portugal? What can and should universities and
regional agencies be doing to build both the quantitative and qualitative
knowledge and evidence base for the CCIs and for policies towards them?
• Can Portuguese universities and regional agencies develop a ‘SPIRT’
(Strategic Partnerships with Industry for Research and Training) funding
model where ‘industry’ is taken to include government funding agencies
and the CCI sector as a whole – subsidised and non-subsidised –as
Australia did in the 1990s?
• Do they need to….?
Yes! – Europe and Portugal in the
creative age
• Richard Florida and Irene Tinagli, Europe in the Creative
Age, 2004:
– Portugal and Italy are lowest ranked for creative
employment in the EU with less than 15% of total ‘creative
class’ employment compared to 30% in the USA and
figures near that in Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland and
Iceland.
– Portugal was the only EU country to experience negative
growth in creative class occupations in 1995-2004.
– Portugal is at the bottom of the EU ‘Creative Class’ index
with 13.14% of total employment.
– The good news (in 2004) is that Portugal was ranked third
highest on the ‘Creativity Trends Index’ – because it was
starting from a low base, but the trends are positive.
Size doesn’t matter
• The familiar argument that the size of Portugal matters,
either by geographical area or by population (10.6
million), does not work because:
– It has a slightly larger population than Sweden (9.4 million)
– It has a population more than twice that of Norway (EEA)
at 4.8 million and nearly twice that of Finland (5.4 million)
and Denmark (5.5 million). All of these are near the top of
the European rankings.
– Final killer fact: It’s population is 33 times larger than
Iceland (320,000) which has the highest CCI employment
in the EEA, thriving music, fashion, design, and computer
games industries (all officially and statistically recognised
as CCI in EU and UN terms), and was ranked in a 2010 US
survey as ‘the most innovative nation on earth’.
Key drivers: digitalisation and
globalisation
• The digital revolution is as important for the CCI sector as the print
revolution was for the Reformation and the Christian church in the 16th
century because:
– The portable book – especially The Bible, prayerbooks, almanacs,
broadsheets, newspapers - in the vernacular language was as important for
transforming the 16th century Christian church and society as the devices of
the smartphone, the ‘pad’, the laptop, and the platforms of Facebook,
Twitter, etc., for the ‘Arab Spring’ in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen,
Syria – and many other non-Arab countries.
– Printing and mass publishing was the first ‘creative industry’ properly
speaking with a robust value chain of creators (writers), producers and
reproducers (printers), marketers and distributors (publishers, booksellers)
and consumers (populations increasingly literate in the vernacular language).
– The digital revolution is ‘building local [and regional, and national] and going
global’ by drawing on distinctive cultural and creative resources – ‘content’ to engage global markets. ‘Glocalism’ is the name of the game for content
creators in any form or genre.
Cultural Policy’s motto: ‘Only
connect…’ (E.M.Forster)
• Culture and cultural policy touch on all domains, both quantitative
and qualitative:
–
–
–
–
–
–
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Employment and economic growth
Quality of life and sense of place
Affiliation, belonging, citizenship
Well being
Celebration and affirmation
Capacity for innovation
New business models, new markets, and new forms of transnational
entrepreneurialism.
– Inward investment strategies and high growth, high yield cultural
tourism – cultural tourists spend more and stay longer. More than 50%
of EU tourists identify ‘culture’ as a key determinant in choosing their
holiday destination.
– Lessons for Portugal?
Europe 2020 and Regional Policy: terms of alignment
and 'unlocking the potential'
•
2010 EU Green Paper: Unlocking the Potential of the Cultural and Creative
industries:
'If Europe wants to remain competitive in the changing global environment, it needs to put in place the right
conditions for creativity and innovation to flourish in a new entrepreneurial culture.’ – EU President José
Manuel Barroso.
•
Smart growth - economy based on knowledge and innovation
•
Sustainable growth - resource efficient, greener, more competitive
•
Inclusive growth - high employment economy delivering social and territorial cohesion
•
S3: Smart Specialisation Strategies ’…a concentration of resources in an original and rather
unique area of knowledge expertise’. ( Being ‘rather unique’ is like being ‘a little bit pregnant’
but I think we know what they are getting at;)
•
Lessons for Portugal?
Creative Europe Programme 2014-2020
'The growing economic role of the culture and creative industries
sector is very much in line with the objectives of the Europe 2020
Strategy.' - A Budget for Europe 2020, Part I, p.17.
• New Single Framework Programme with Culture
Strand, Media Strand and Transversal Strand
• 37% budget increase to €1.8 billion
• Cultural and Creative Sectors Facility
• ‘Joined-up’ and cross-cutting approach to the
CCIs and links with regional agendas, Digital
Agenda for Europe, Cohesion Policy, etc
The need for a new knowledge base from strategic
partnerships between universities, regional agencies,
CCI stakeholders.
• Need to link the various forms of ‘capital’ in both conceptual and
operational terms for policy and practice by addressing and developing
indicators and new knowledge and evidence about about culture and its
impacts from:
– Cultural capital (cultural and other literacies)
– Social capital (bonds of trust and reciprocity)
– Human capital (‘arts of living, doing, and being’ – capacities and capabilities –
Amartya Sen)
– Environmental and infrastructural capital ( sense of place, stewardship and
custodianship, integrated and strategic cultural mapping and planning, new forms
of cultural ‘facility’, broadband capacity and roll-out, internet penetration and use)
– Economic capital (employment, turnover, % of GDP/GVA, growth and decline
trends, inward investment and tourism potential)
• Universities and regional agencies are well-placed to develop this
quantitative and qualitative research agenda on a combined stakeholder
basis involving government, the CCI sector and industry end-users if they
get the right mix.
Universities and the knowledge base
Need for :
– Interdisciplinary (knowledge) convergence - beyond silos,
departments, disciplines, compartments.
– Strategic partnerships attuned to new policy agendas ( Australian
SPIRT).
– Co-operative and collaborative work within and between disciplines
and beyond ‘fiefdoms’.
– Appropriate funding and results architecture not simply based on the
published monograph or chapter or the refereed journal artcile –
commissioned research too.
– Stakeholder research management and planning scenarios including
end-users of research and communities
So, Creative Europe, meet Creative
Portugal…
… and discover really, not ‘rather’ unique local and
regional resources you may not have been aware of.
For more on this theme and all the concepts and themes
addressed in this presentation you can consult my 2002
book Towards Cultural Citizenship: Tools for Cultural Policy
and Development which has been placed as a PDF file in the
S3 Seminar ‘Dropbox’ and there’s more on my website at
http://sites.google.com/site/colinmercer52/home/publicati
ons or my web page on http://www.academia.edu/