FeedbackAugust 2007
So what do you do?
A Demos report, published ahead of a Green Paper on the Creative Economy, warns that the Government is ‘confused’ about how to support the creative industries.
So, what do you do?1 highlights that the sector2 is growing at twice the rate of the rest of the economy, however it seems the Government is creating ‘confusion, indifference and irritation’ because it doesn’t understand how the creative industries work – they “are a new way of doing business but the policy interventions to support them proceed to work in old, industrial ways”.
Tom Bewick, Chief Executive of Creative & Cultural Skills and contributor to the report said: “Our current approach to publicly supporting creative industries, or creative practice, isn’t working. Non-departmental public bodies and even sector skills councils do not have all the answers. We are living in a consumer savvy, technologically promiscuous ‘creative age’ which needs a more flexible approach from Government.”
Whether ‘a more flexible approach’ was apparent in James Purnell’s first speech as culture secretary3 with his analogy “What’s the trellis on which the plant can grow? We create the trellis, and the artists do the flowers...”, is yet to be seen. But his previous role, in 2005, as minister for creative industries and his acknowledgement in the Demos report suggests his understanding of the sector may be greater than the overly simplistic metaphor implies.
Worthy of underlining in the Demos report is the recommendation that “the challenge to support creative practice depends not on ‘serving’ the creative industries, but on distributing the toolkit that enables them to produce themselves. Non-stop. All day, every day.” That’s something that all organisations working to support creative practice should be aiming towards, and something that is genuinely at the heart of what we strive to achieve at a-n.4
Gillian Nicol
a-n Editor
2 The creative industries are broadly defined as advertising, film and video, architecture, music, art and antiques markets, performing arts, computer and video games, publishing, crafts, software, design, television and radio, and designer fashion.
3 The Guardian, Friday 6 July 2007.
4 AIR members can contribute to our survey designed to improve services for AIR members, by telling us by 31 August how they rate our website and what they want more of – see www.a-n.co.uk/AIR and click into the July e-Bulletin.
a-n
First published: a-n Magazine August 2007
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