*CFP* “THE CULTURAL AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIES: PATHWAYS BEYOND ECONOMIC GROWTH”, RGS-IBG ANNUAL 2020 CONFERENCE

RGS-IBG Annual 2020 Conference 

1-4 Septiembre de 2020

King's College, London

The cultural and creative industries (CCIs) have been subject to increasing policy and academic attention in the past twenty years (Gross, 2020a). The sector has been seen variously as a flagbearer for the future of the digital economy, a stimulus for urban regeneration, a fix for local and regional development disparities (Chapain & Comunian, 2010), a way to address income inequality and a catalyst to address exclusion and marginalisation. These discourses have been prompted by, and reflected in a series of shifts in material, financial and discursive support for the CCIs around the world. 

For example, in Latin and South America the creative industries have evolved into the Orange Economy, and are seen as a key way to simultaneously develop the economy, society and infrastructure (Restrepo & Márquez, 2013). The Inter-American Development Bank has urged Latin and South American governments to ‘squeeze the orange’ and assimilate cultural production into the economy through new accounting techniques, policy interventions and IP regulations. Similarly, policymakers internationally have used CCIs in new rhetoric for economic development like Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s current Minister of Information and Culture, declaring them “Nigeria’s new oil” (Lai Mohammed, 2017).

In the UK, funding bodies have reoriented their priorities to shift from research about the creative industries to work with or for creative industries enterprises, individually or in specific places. As funding schemes policy foci are shifted, scholars have reflected on the tensions between advancement of knowledge, critique of the creative industries and reproduction of problematic discourses and potentially damaging policy interventions (Banks & O’Connor, 2017; Moreton, 2018).

At the same time as policy discourse surrounding the CCIs has grown more hyperbolic, academics have levelled criticism for a number of important reasons. For instance, for being too economistic and erasing the cultural value of the activities creative companies undertake (Comunian, 2009; Kong, 2005; Walmsley, 2013); for silencing, or at least overlooking, some of the negative aspects of the CCIs (Dent, 2019); for focusing too much on Anglo-American case studies and the Global North (Fahmi, McCann, & Koster, 2015; Kong, Gibson, Khoo, & Semple, 2006); for an urban-centric bias to a lot of policy for the CCIs (particularly towards very large cities) which draws on ideas of city-led agglomeration economies (Lysgård, 2016; Mayes, 2010; Rantisi, Leslie, & Christopherson, 2006; Swords & Wray, 2010). 

The methodology, too, has been critiqued for lacking dynamism (Bakhshi, Freeman, & Higgs, 2013) and data on which it is based is not as robust or revealing as it might be. Further, this way of thinking continues to instantiate an understanding of creative practice which far from collectivising or galvanising collaborative endeavours is ultimately individuated, and whose success is measured by the accumulation of wealth, prestige or market shares (Mould, 2015). This neoliberalising tendency needs to be unpacked and addressed, not least because it does not necessarily represent the intentions, values and aspirations of many at work in the sector.

The proposed session aims to push the borders of the CCIs to advance emerging (and long-held) debates and criticism in order to provide an account of alternative perspectives of the CCIs from a research and practice perspective. We would therefore welcome contributions from different countries and disciplinary areas. In particular, we aim to make more visible alternative narratives from and for the sector and question the (unquestioned) connection with economic growth (Gross, 2020b). In doing so we welcome reflections on issues of sustainability, inclusivity as well as activism, care and access.

These are some of themes we would like to engage with, but this list should not been seen as exhaustive:

• New theoretical approaches to the CCIs
• Theorising the CCIs from beyond the ‘usual’ geographic locations
• New methodological approaches to the CCIs
• New / alternative narratives for and from the CCIs
• Environmental crisis and the CCIs
• Social sustainability and accessibility of CCI careers
• Social economies and the CCIs
• Care, activism and alternative work futures for the CCIs
• Critical approaches to CCI policy formation, delivery and evaluation

Please send abstracts to beyondCCIs@gmail.com by 31st  January, 2020