Session proposal: 'Opening the Black Box of Creative Policies'

 

For cities and regions the creative economies discussion poses a challenge: it has long ago been swept away from the confined playgrounds of academia, appropriated by urban politics and recast as a prompt to planning and development departments to “do something” without specifying what that might entail. This has triggered, in its initial reaction, a wave of creative industries reports that typically identify a high potential for local economic development and reiterate the demand that supporting measures are in need, sometimes merely concluding with this statement and sometimes naming more concrete future objectives and targets. But what usually remains unaddressed is the question of how these recommendations could be put into practice, what the appropriate tools should look like, and how they could be applied. Refashioning the outmoded instruments of locational policies and presenting them as custom made solutions for the creative economies challenge was one reaction to this demand, while starting a rather vague trial and error game with new tools was another.

 

This session aims to open the black box of creative policies by asking the questions: how, by whom and for whom creative policies and tools are discussed, designed, assembled and applied; which forms they take; what effects they produce; and how they are contested in the urban arena. Thus it intends to go beyond the strand of critique which primarily sees a uniform neoliberal development script at work to allow for a better understanding of the localized conditions and contestations which shape and in/transform the implementation of creative policies. We are particularly interested in discussing these topics in the context of broader debates on the shifting economic, cultural, social, welfare and planning logics of urban politics, since these shifts prepared the ground for the implementation of creative policies. We welcome theoretically-informed papers from diverse conceptual and empirical perspectives that deal with one or more of the following themes:

* Performativity: Which kinds of performative effects are brought about by creative policies? Do creative policies produce and change a field of social practices which they presumably only enhance?
* Marketization: In how far are creative policies successful in expanding the boundaries of the market principle to new areas? How do they either dominate or incorporate other logics which might have prevailed in the fields of creative work, arts, and (sub)culture?
* Governance: Are creative policies successful in governing the creative economy or at least parts of it? How does governance in this field work? How do creative policies contribute to neoliberal mechanisms of governmentality?
* Transformations: Which processes of translation, transformation and compromise does the process of designing policy tools involve? What influence do other fields and logics such as “culture and arts” or “urban planning” have on creative policies?
* Differentiations: Which direct and intended inclusions and exclusions are produced by creative policies? Who is the target group and who is marginalized? How is marginalization indirectly brought about?
* Participation: To what degree are ‘creatives’ from different sectors involved in the establishment of creative policies in urban administrative institutions and organizations? How do they respond to creative policies? How do their actions shape urban institutions?
* Measurement: How are creative policy tools evaluated? How are qualitative effects quantified to rank them? In which way are evaluation and benchmarking tools used to foster competition between cities and to legitimize creative policy action? Which new criteria and measures are set up and used? What consequences are drawn?
* Contestation: How is the implementation of creative policies contested? Which actors articulate antagonistic positions? Which actors rearticulate their needs in the language of the creative industries in order to receive funding or recognition?

The organisers welcome abstracts of 250 words or less by 14 September 2011. Please send inquiries and abstracts to [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask].