Report on seminar The Creative Industries: Capitalising on Creativity

Report on seminar The Creative Industries: Capitalising on Creativity
‘Collaborations and Networks’
3 March 2011Funded by Institute for Capitalising on Creativity and Economic & Social Research Council

“Cultural Industries and the Creative City Fever in Germany”
Professor Klaus Kunzmann, Chair of European Spatial Planning, School of Planning, University of Dortmund

In the past Kunzmann has been a key exponent of creative city theory with the likes of Landry and more latterly Florida, but the tone of his presentation was not entirely positive.

He discussed the proliferation of creative cities and projects all over Europe and suggested several key reasons for the popularity of the concepts:
  - Positive and open concept of creativity (multi-lingual term, survival concept)
  - Widely communicated message
  - Discovery of creative economy
  - Success of cultural flagships and events (e.g. die elbphilharmonie, Hamburg)
  - Changing values, new lifestyles and the power of consumption: but have we reached absorptive capacity? Are there enough consumers?
  - Appeal to urban marketing and tourism managers
  - An opportunity to bridge urban policies (coincided with rediscovery of comprehensive spatial policies for urban districts)

Creative city policies have embraced many different themes:
  - High tech university cities
  - Arts focus
  - Tourism
  - New lifestyles
  - Open city- organic, grassroots
  - Innovative bureaucracy

He talked about the different factors that make a city creative and recommended ‘the arts in the economic life of the city’ Perloff, 1979

The focus of the discussion then turned to German cities, which was fascinating:

• Berlin
o Duplication of cultural institutions (operas, orchestras etc) as well as universities due to East West division. These have remained despite reunification. This means that there is a wealth of institutions.
o Tempelhof airport: now closed, but an example of bold ideas for new Berlin and the creative reuse of infrastructure http://www.creative-germany.travel/en/architecture-en/tempelhof-airport/
o Cheap space: ideal for artists.
o Create Berlin – networking agency:  http://www.create-berlin.de/
o http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/22/berlin-new-economy

• Munich
o Expensive city to live in
o More marketed on tourism, design, quality of life and creative milieu

• Ruhr region
o Creative islands
o Kulfur: reuse of industrial spaces of coal industry for CCIs
o Emscher Park

• Leipzeig
o Spinnerai

Kunzmann laid out many positive ways in which the creative city movement had been used to transform cities, but also drew attention to gentrification, the difficulties faced by smaller cities and problems sustaining flagship infrastructure etc (the real Guggenheim effect?). He emphasised that absorptive capacity had been reached in many places, but this was disputed by audience members, particularly those who were creative workers and asserted that they indeed spent a high proportion of their income consuming the work of other creatives and thereby sustaining a range of cultural institutions, other artists and creative workers and businesses producing creative products.