Fleshing out expertise: The making of creative industries experts in the United Kingdom

The place of expertise in modern systems of government continues to be of concern to critical social scientists. Recent years have seen something of a shift away from conceptions of expertise that tended to see it as distant, overly technical and aligned with the needs of the state and capital. Expertise is increasingly recognised as having a more complex relation with the subjects of government than just as a means for shoring up authority, offering them a space for engagement, critique and counter-expertise. This paper argues that focusing on particular experts and their changing roles in governmental assemblages can flesh out one-dimensional conceptions of expertise and provide insights into governmental change. Drawing on a variety of literature, it is argued that expertise can usefully be conceived as; first, a social relation based on one party having access to knowledge which gives them authority over another; second, as distributed across a governmental assemblage in a particular way, with some expert relations being positioned to have more influence, understood here as expert power, across the assemblage; and third, as a matter of strategic engagement on the part of experts located in particular epistemic communities seeking to gain expert power. The potential of this perspective is explored through an analysis of an emergent expert system for the creative industries in the UK where a small community of actors have realigned their practices and cast themselves as creative industries experts. This has allowed then to reshape the governmental assemblage forming around this economic sector in a direction favourable to their own ideas. It is concluded that efforts to convert expertise into greater expert power is a key dynamic transforming governmental assemblages.     

Thinking creative clusters beyond the city: People,places and networks

This paper develops an ethnographic study of a small rural based ‘creative cluster’, called Krowji, situated in the town of Redruth in West Cornwall, UK. The dominant geographies of creative industries research and policy in recent years have an acknowledged urban bias together with a focus on narratives of agglomeration. This paper sits alongside research that brings to the fore ‘other’ geographies of cultural production, and reflects an increasing interest in work on creativity in rural areas. Following work by Storper and Pratt, we explore Krowji’s complex interdependencies, investigating ‘the relations within, without and across the cluster’. We focus on the relationships between Krowji and its surrounding area together with the spatialities and temporalities of the relations that occur across and beyond the cluster. We address the dynamics and durability of relations formed within the cluster also paying attention to their disconnections. In offering this analysis we develop a valuable counterpoint to the urban bias of much work on creative clusters and we contribute to work that is looking more closely at the temporalities and spatialities of cultural production. Further, we point towards the value of ethnographical research on the creative industries.     

Risk and trust in the cultural industries

Preliminary claims have been made that working practices within cultural industries such as fashion, music, design and the night time economy may differ from Fordist or modernist arrangements. Cultural firms are often imagined to be more innovative, information-rich, dynamic, flexible, non-hierarchical and dependent on local clusters and networks than their Fordist counterparts (Lash and Urry, 1994). As their impact and significance increase, understanding how creative and cultural industries actually work is of high priority. This paper presents preliminary findings from an on-going ESRC funded study of cultural Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) within Manchester, England. Drawing on one element of the project, this paper considers the significance of risk and the importance of social trust for the cultural entrepreneur. Following a discussion of Beck’s development of risk as an analytical concept, and its intersection with Giddens’ notion of ‘active trust’, the paper examines how risk and trust are defined, experienced and negotiated by entrepreneurs in Manchester’s cultural industries. It is suggested that senses of risk are constitutive and often pivotal to the whole economic and social basis of cultural entrepreneurship – risk being central to choices made not only in business but in the lifeworld more generally. The paper then investigates the importance of trust for facilitating as well as countering or offsetting risk. Empirical evidence is presented to show how risk and trust co-relate and interact as constitutive elements within a wider set of shifting relationships between work, leisure and lifestyle in the ‘creative city’.     

Cognitive mapping of creative practice: A case study of three English design agencies

This paper examines the relevance of causal mapping - essentially a form of visual aid to enhance our understanding of the thoughts of an individual, group or organisation - as a means of analysing innovation and creativity within English design agencies. Focussing upon successful design contracts in three selected case studies, the discussion considers how far cognitive mapping can be used to understand the relations between design practices, firm routines and conventions, and the local creative milieu. The paper argues that cognitive mapping confirms the value of a situated learning perspective in which knowledge is inseparable from practice. It reveals that successful design is based on deliberate practices pertaining to relationships with clients, group dynamics, and team collaboration within the design consultancy. These practices narrow uncertainty and allow designers to exercise imagination and creative brokering. Whilst cognitive mapping can be a useful heuristic tool, the analysis suggests that it is limited as a means to unravelling tacit knowledge.     

Marginalised men’s emotions: Politics and place

Men living in the informal settlement of Cato Crest, Durban, South Africa, where violence and crime are high, are marginalised in a variety of ways, but also cling to patriarchal ideals. These relations of power are witnessed through the expression of a range of emotions which point to the interconnections between emotions, place, politics and performances of masculinity. This paper contributes to debates over the significance of politics in analyses of emotions, as well as broadening attention to geographies of emotions of, and beyond, fear. Using an example from the global South, the particular politics informing marginalisation and their relations with emotion are examined. This is achieved through a focus on three key government policy agendas shaping these men’s lives, namely housing, gender and employment.     

Meanings of place and aspects of the Self: an interdisciplinary and empirical account

Although geographers have largely investigated the notion of place, the relationship between place and Self does not seem to have received a similar attention, both theoretically and empirically. After the initial interest expressed by humanistic geographers, social constructivism and cultural materialism (two dominant paradigms in use since at least the 1980s) have somewhat moved the interest towards a sort of social(izing) discourse, which has pushed the individual dimension to the margin. Accordingly, this dimension has been treated as a mere product of social discourses, as purely embodying and (re)enacting certain social categories (gender, sex, race, etc.) or, again, it has been discredited as psychologically ‘mentalistic’ and geographically ‘trivial’. In the present article, I aim to rescue this personal, intimate dimension and show how, beyond an all-encompassing social(izing) logic, it remains at work in the ways people relate to place. Theoretically, the study builds on the early contributions of humanistic geography, complemented with more recent works in environmental and social psychology. Empirically, it is grounded in narratives of place collected during interviews and focus groups administered in four regional case studies in Western Europe. The article advances and illustrates, with empirical materials, a simple theoretical framework, which aims to contribute to the understanding of how meanings of place implicate and are implicated in the construction of the Self.     

The consumption of space: Land, capital and place in the New Zealand wine industry

Geographers have developed a keen interest in the social production of space - in the way meanings and values are ascribed to places as a result of changing social, cultural and political processes. There is a need to explore this approach further, seeing how social and economic values of places are inter-related and how these values are constructed in often deliberate and concerted ways. There is also a need to explore how such values are consumed: how the values in place are traded, appropriated and redistributed, both through the products of places and in land markets. This paper examines the New Zealand wine industry where certain wine regions have been identified and developed in ways which attempt to emphasise their distinctiveness in terms of wine quality and thus enhance the value of the wine produced. Different strategies have been employed in this process of place construction and this reflects the differential role of capital, striving on the one hand to increase the price and marketability of the products of distinctive places but, on the other, careful not to over-inflate land values and thus restrict further expansion. The paper suggests that the issue of consumption of space, involving a complex relationship amongst land, capital and place, is worthy of further exploration.     

The organizational paradox in advertising and the reconfiguration of project cooperation

In recent literature, projects are mostly seen as an efficient form of organization which is particularly suited for mastering tasks of high complexity and creativity and adapting to changing economic and institutional conditions. This paper challenges the assumption that inter-firm projects are persistent organizational arrangements of production in the advertising industry and presents a novel argument about the potential threats to forms of project organization in crisis situations. By exploring the cases of Frankfurt/Main and Leipzig (East Germany), we show that the organization of production is substantially affected by periods of economic crisis or political transformation. We demonstrate that inter-firm projects might be replaced by more durable organizational configurations or might not be viewed as viable options in situations of severe rupture. This applies particularly to the cooperative arrangements in the creative process and leads to an organizational paradox. Although creativity is often a pivotal force to gain competitive advantage, the advertising agencies respond to the challenges of crises by reducing cooperation with external partners to a minimum and sometimes fully rely on in-house personnel. This threatens the potential of the respective firms to develop innovative and creative ideas which would enable the firms to acquire new customers and market segments. Instead of trying to overcome crises by focusing on their creative capabilities, many advertising agencies develop a cost-cutting strategy and rely on more durable network-forms of organization instead of inter-firm projects.     

Influences of place characteristics on hazards, perception and response: a case study of the hazardscape of the Wellington Region, New Zealand

The biophysical characteristics of a place not only bring variations in natural hazards, but also influence people??s associated perception and response to the hazard. Although these influences are noted in the literature, their relationship has been less explored for planning hazard mitigation and disaster response. This paper evaluates the role of place in a hazardscape by using a case study of the Wellington Region, New Zealand. The study explores the differences between the physical and perceived susceptibility to natural hazards and how this affects people??s response to a hazard. The analysis is based on a questionnaire survey and interviews conducted with local people. It finds that disparities between physical and perceived hazard susceptibility engender different motivations and types of response. A close alignment of the two produces a high response rate for earthquakes and droughts, whereas a significant divergence leads to a poor response as observed for volcanic ash fall. The relationship, however, is not linear, as indicated by the poor response even to such well-perceived hazards as tsunami and bushfire. The reasons behind this uneven response can be related back to place characteristics, such as the nature of hazard susceptibility, as well as factors such as fatalism or blasé effect. It is concluded that mapping physical and perceived susceptibility to hazards over space, understanding their relationship and ultimately narrowing the gap between perception and reality can contribute to effective hazard management at a place.     

Organic functionalism, `community' and place: refugee studies and the geographical constitution of refugee identities

The growth in the global population of refugees over the last 20 years has been paralleled by the development and growth of refugee studies as a recognised discipline. However refugees do not comprise a naturally self-delimiting domain of scientific knowledge and have been constituted by refugee studies through discourses that emphasise humanitarian, apolitical and organic functionalist discourses that root refugee identities in particular places. This paper argues that the presently inadequate constitution of refugee identities in refugee studies has been compounded by geographic representations of regional refugee emergencies, stable conceptions of refugees and asylum seekers and dated and unproblematic understandings of space as inactive and not constitutive of social life. Using data collected in interviews held between 1995 and 1998 with representatives from refugee and asylum institutions and organisations this paper illustrates how discourses and funding policies that unproblematically assume community groups represent refugees asylum seekers ignore transnational differences and tensions that can exist in marginalised communities. However it should be pointed out that the discourses about place, nationality and identity and `natural' communities can also be used by the powerless to resist their marginalised and excluded positions.     

Environmental awareness,the Transition Movement,and place: Den Selvforsynende Landsby,a Danish Transition initiative

The Transition Movement, originating in Ireland and the United Kingdom, gathers and supports community-led actions to meet the global challenges of climate change, peak oil and energy descent. In our study we analysed a Transition Network project, a Danish village built from scratch by its inhabitants and named the Self Sufficient Village (SSV). Employing the theories of constructed landscapes and place attachment, we studied how the Transition Movement ideology shaped the constructed landscape of the village and influenced the inhabitants’ attachment. The research team, following the grounded theory approach, conducted a field study staying in SSV. We collected data with focus groups, individual interviews and participatory observations, taking part in daily life of the community. The analysis revealed three, intertwined themes which altogether create the constructed landscape of SSV. They were named Community, Ideology, and Individual impact, respectively. Our findings showed that the community and strong social ties were predominant factors in shaping place attachment. Transition ideology and environmental awareness, although less pronounced, still turned out to be vital for the feelings of belongingness and empowerment, resulting in a positive impact of the village on the local scale. Using our case study as an example we discuss the importance of environmental concern and place attachment for similar grass-root initiatives.     

Creative industries, creative class and competitiveness: Expert opinions critically appraised

In the debate on urban and regional competitiveness, it has become fashionable to stress the growing importance of creativity for economic development. Especially scientist-consultants with a keen eye for what politicians and business people want to hear have taken centre stage in this discussion. Each city and region in the advanced capitalist world seems to prefer a label as creative city or region, and all look after the same type of industries and try to produce the same set of conditions, while investing in higher education and research institutes, networking and lobbying institutions, and the promotion of spin-off companies. A vast number of leaders and spokesmen of local and regional (quasi) governments believe that a major thing to do is to become more attractive places to live for creative knowledge workers or the ‘creative class’, as it is euphemistically labelled.However, in academia there is a lot of scepticism with regard to the use of these concepts and their meaning for urban and regional competitiveness. Also citizen movements and NGOs, and some political parties, voice their concern about the extent to which policies that apply these concepts and ideas might only benefit an elite of higher educated, well- paid professionals while at the same time these policies might result in decline of other activities and in social polarisation and poverty as well.In this paper we contribute to the critical discussion through a critical appraisal of local experts’ views on developments in seven European city-regions, first with regard to policies towards the development of creative and knowledge-intensive industries; and secondly with regard to the impact the development of ‘creative knowledge regions’ may have in social and other respects. In contrast to the rather homogeneous yet dominant advice to facilitate ‘the creative class’, in this paper we will argue that a range of parameters related to the firms and regional institutional, geographical and historical contexts promote a much more diversified view on urban economic development.     

Curating the “Third Place”? Coworking and the mediation of creativity

Coworking spaces (CWS) and the associated practice of coworking, have emerged in numerous forms and various urban contexts to critically challenge traditional concepts of the workplace and location of creative work, while simultaneously confronting the way in which creative workers interact with and relate to each other as well as with space and to place. Heralded as a solution to increasingly atomised work patterns, CWS are imagined and presented as spaces of serendipitous encounter, spontaneous exchange and collaboration. Nonetheless, little is known about how coworking positively supports workers and how coworking relates to wider urban transformation processes has been largely un-researched. This paper contributes to a critical discussion through empirical analysis of a project aimed at establishing new creative CWS in city-centre locations across SE England. The study adopts a novel approach using Q-methodology. Motivations for coworking and benefits (or dis-benefits) of co-location are assessed, as is the extent to which coworking facilitates interactional effects and wider neighbourhood interactions. In particular, the role of the CWS manager as “mediator” is explored. Coworker benefits relate primarily to peer-interaction and support rather than formal collaboration. While CWS managers play a key connecting role, also ensuring coworker complementarity and compatibility, the coworker profile (motivations, needs, experiences) ultimately influences outcomes. The study cautions against the use of CWS as “quick fix” urban renewal tools, with little indication that the benefits of coworking reach beyond immediate members or that linkages are easily established between coworkers and local (resident or business) communities.     

Women’s use of public space and sense of place in the Raval (Barcelona)

This article deals with women's use of public space and sense of place in El Raval, a neighbourhood located in the historical center of Barcelona. Attention will be paid to discover to what degree the existence of a quality public space fosters the creation of socially meaningful places, thus contributing to the construction of womens sense of place and urban identities. A qualitative approach, based on direct observation and in-depth interviews with women living in the neighbourhood, has allowed us to capture the main aspects of the building of a sense of place and belonging, that is the use of public space and facilities, the attitude towards living in the neighbourhood, etc. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Navigating the terrains of transnational education: Children of Chinese ‘study mothers’ in Singapore

This paper demonstrates the value of child-centred migration studies which highlight children’s role in shaping the migration journeys of their families, as well as their own projected journeyings. It examines the case of children from China who move to Singapore, an aspiring global education hub, expressly for the purpose of an overseas education that will facilitate longer-term migration and life goals. Focus is given specifically to the children of ‘study mothers’ or peidu mama (literally: ‘mothers accompanying their children who are studying’). Through interviews with the teenagers and the conceptual optic of ‘social navigation’, our paper demonstrates that children are resilient and creative beings able to navigate the twists and turns of their immediate trajectories, as well as develop their own goals and projected destinations for their futures. The paper calls for a refinement in the way we understand children’s mobilities. First, in arguing that their spatial journeying across the terrains of transnational education cannot be decoupled from their process of social becoming and emotional development from passive followers to active negotiators, we wish to disrupt hegemonic discourses and dominant representations of children in migration as simply ‘migrant’s children’ and restore them to the status of ‘migrant children’. Second, adopting the concept of social navigation as an analytical lens allows us to highlight the fluid ways that young people think about their futures and the different pathways by which they can get there. This leads us to conceive of social and cultural capital accumulation through transnational education as a process with many more degrees of provisionality than what is often presented in the literature as a ‘strategic project’ with a fixed and abstract goal.     

Sheinkin as a place in the globalizing city of Tel Aviv

Sheinkin is an example of a place constituted by global forces. Yet Sheinkin creatively responds to scalar jumps of global forces, drawing from the capitals of the global system like Soho and Greenwich village. These models are embedded in the Israeli reality with Sheinkin becoming an incubator of post-Zionist identity. Young people from all over Israel concentrate in the place on Fridays to participate in choreography of strolling along the street with its’ designers’ shops, mingling with celebrities and others who belong to the cult and around the ‘Hyde Park’ corner in which environmental, spiritual and other worldviews are promoted. The article suggests a model to investigate such places as the organic integration of a community whose participants do not live in the place but pilgrimage to the place, a landscape that appraises creativity, originality and individualism, a choreography of strollers who search for stimulations and a set of norms and values promote in the place.     

Forms and sources of place attachment: Evidence from two protected areas

Sense of place is a widely researched concept that has been used to describe and analyze people–place relationships. However, there is no consensus regarding the forms of place attachment, the relative importance of the sources for such attachments, or the spatial extent of place formation. The purpose of the paper is to contribute case examples of sense of place for significant natural areas, thereby adding to the body of evidence that explicates the diverse sources and forms of place attachment. Using content analysis of qualitative stakeholder interviews, we identify these dimensions of place attachment for two nationally significant Australian natural areas. Our data support a tripartite structure for sense of place comprising affective, functional and cognitive forms of attachment. We also examine the extent to which these place attachments are localized on the study sites and/or spatially generalized across sites possessing the same sources of place formation. Our case studies provide evidence for both localized and generalized senses of place. Localized place attachments had affective and functional components, respectively founded on social and biophysical sources. Generalized senses of place comprised functional and cognitive components, with appreciation of historical values of these places key to the formation of the latter. Our results indicate the spatial diversity of place attachments for protected areas and their social, cultural and biophysical sources.     

The role of consumption and globalization in a cultural industry: The case of flamenco

The rise of cultural industries is in part facilitated by the rise of leisure and entertainment in the advanced industrialized economies. This article explores one such example, taking ‘ethnic’ art, flamenco, and examining the role of consumption in shaping flamenco, both as an art form and as an industry. The global reach of the flamenco industry is assessed by focusing on two major markets, Japan and the United States. It suggests the presence of a geographic paradox in contemporary cultural industries, which, on the one hand, points to the need to retain their place-based identity, and on the other hand, indicates the need for regional cultures to establish links to export markets for their survival. It also shows that contemporary cultural change is not a unilateral process of the global invading the local. Rather, it is a process of consumers interpreting, appropriating, and adopting a cultural commodity in their own terms.