NATIONAL CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
CONFERENCE™ 2007
‘Creative Places, Creative Economies’
Post Conference Report
The third annual National Creative Industries Conference was held in Leeds on 3 and 4th December 2007 and examined the role of People, Innovation and Place in supporting the development of sustainable places and economies.
On Tuesday 4th December, delegates and speakers congregated at the Leeds Marriott Hotel to look more closely at the role and impact of the creative sector in shaping places and the economy. Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Minister for Culture and Creative Industries, Will Hutton, Director, The Work Foundation and Wayne Hemingway, Founder of Red or Dead were among many leading policymakers and practitioners present on the day.
The previous day of the conference began with guided visits to Leeds-based projects including: Holbeck Urban Village, Opera North, Wellington Place, East Street Arts and First Floor Space at West Yorkshire Playhouse. Afterwards delegates and speakers attended a reception at the newly refurbished Leeds Art Gallery. Councillor John Proctor, Chair of the Leeds Cultural Partnership welcomed delegates on behalf of the city.
To view the programme and a full list of speakers please click here.
Summary of Conclusions
A number of key conclusions and further questions were raised during the conference:
The role of the creative sector in the economy:
- Commercial outputs possess a high degree of expressive value. Please click here to see The Work Foundation’s Report ‘Staying Ahead: the economic performance of the UK’s creative industries’.
- We need to be more conscious of the drivers of success in the creative economy, which include: Demand, Greater Diversity, Education and Skills –ensuring balance and supply.
The role of place:
- The creative must remain central to the continuity, growth and development of a place.
- City centre regeneration proposals need to take into account increasing corporate blindness and loss of distinctiveness when considering change.
- There is a current need to bring the ‘marginal’ into the mainstream. The vibrancy and individuality of ethnic minorities and other cultural assets must not remain a sideshow.
- The results of Creative-led regeneration do not always yield results for the wider creative economy and merely evolve into gentrification.
Fostering innovation and enterprise:
- Supporting Innovation needs to be ongoing. It is often driven by social / economic and environmental factors which must not be overlooked.
- The public sector needs to model enterprise capabilities to truly foster them – do they practice what they preach?
- There is a growing need to identify specialisms and the routes to market.
- Small companies are often disconnected, need development and support and can often gain strength through partnerships.
The role of People:
- Are we undermining our workforce – is it driven by white, middleclass males?
- Creativity in Schools and with / through education is a vehicle for new ideas, products and processes. There is a clear role of higher education but we need to be conscious of the scale of divergence.
Presentations given at the conference are now available online. Please click on the adjacent box.
Civic Conferences would like to thank all those who participated at the conference and made it a success, with particular thanks to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, The Work Foundation, Leeds Initiative, C3KE, University of Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan University and Yorkshire Forward.
