It’s easy to describe what culture and the creative arts are for.
They are the things that reflect life back to society and in turn shine new perspectives on the world. They make life worth living, bring us together through a shared experience, and intimately remind us all that the world is this complex, fun, scary, and interesting place all at once.
That is my view anyway but another thousand interpretations are also available. It is much more difficult to define the parameters of what culture and the creative arts are. There is a broader definition of the creative industries which is what the government uses in their industrial strategy. Derived from the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, this includes IT, software, and computer services. There is a narrower definition of the cultural industries which is defined as “film, TV and music; radio; photography; crafts; museums and galleries; library and archives; cultural education; and operation of historical sites and similar visitor attractions.” There is then also some economic methodologies which further split out creative industries, culture, tourism, heritage, and sport, into separate but overlapping sub-categories.
Definitions
The definitions are important because the larger the creative industries are the larger their economic impact and the stronger the case for investment into them. The challenge, is that the idea of culture is often too slippery to ease into a single definition and it therefore becomes everything. It becomes shorthand for some pretty intangible things like shared identity, place-making, and whether somewhere has good vibes. All the way through to the deep academic cultural practices including archiving, restorations, and libraries.
One of the benefits that STEM subjects often enjoy in the economic growth debate is their output are sometimes easier to point to. The pursuit of culture creates wonderful things but inherently those things are often less likely to be aimed toward profit motives.
The response to this awkwardness is usually to demonstrate the value of non-STEM subjects as an enabler of wider activity through inter-disciplinary work. To use measures like GVA and spillover effects to look at the creative industries more broadly as economic drivers through employment, visitors, and public engagement. The other is to try and demonstrate second-order benefits of culture and creative industries by demonstrating things like the benefits of connection to alleviating healthcare costs or articulating how culture improves employment outcomes.
Fundamentally, all of these things are valid and true. If universities were not maintaining libraries, running cultural events, and contributing to the cultural lives of their places society would be sicker, lonelier and poorer. These are not lesser measures because they are hard but more important because their benefits are so diffuse. The problem is that for all our dreams the government, and most governments, are moved by economic arguments. The key to unlocking a better world is to also fight for a more prosperous one.
Theories of growth
If it were possible to arrive at a unified theory of universities, culture, and economic growth, it would provide the sector with a powerful tool in making the case for further investment in the arts.
The most cited, loved, and hated, work on cultural and economic growth is Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class. Florida argues that it’s the density of creativity within a place which is key to its growth. The argument against his work (as he himself acknowledges in a subsequent book) is at the point culture becomes a tool for attracting people to live somewhere it increases costs and shunts out the very creatives that made the place attractive to live in the first place. As he puts it
I was always trying to make an argument that in knowledge-based capitalism cities are the new platform. It’s not the industrial corporation that’s a platform for accumulation and commodification, it’s the city. The city accumulates knowledge creativity, and innovation. I was trying to make a very quiet, neo-Marxist argument. But I think the artists were making a much more normative argument and an argument that was much more held close to the heart. Like, we want the right to the city, we want a place that’s ours by default. And I was trying to say, that’s not the way capitalism works. The way capitalism works is capitalism invades the crevices where value can be created, and watch the hell out. We’re making different arguments. They’re making an advocacy argument, and I’m making an argument about the logic of capitalism.
The benefit of a university is that they act as both an engine of creativity and they can act as a mediating force against some of its unintended consequences. Universities are employers of creatives, deeply involved in the planning of cities, teachers of future creatives, researchers into the creative industries, and some of the largest cultural funders. Universities both create the conditions through which culture led economic growth happens and set the codevelop the parameters through which its expansion occurs through investment in students, staff, and places.
Other dimensions
The role of universities within culture and economic growth may therefore usefully be considered across three key dimensions.
If culture makes a place more attractive to live it first needs people to make culture happen. The kind of culture that Florida describes often happens within neighbourhoods where universities sometimes have little reach and where artists will not always feel their benefits. Where universities have a more visible role is in the coordination of large-scale art, joining in on cultural events to increase their impacts, and supporting the funding of culture through the maintenance of heritage and wider infrastructure funding. Universities are living in constrained financial times but in making their places more appealing to live in they reap the rewards of increased footfall and investment.
The second is in training the future creative workforce. The current financial climate, and frankly funding incentives, militates against much of this work. However, only higher education providers are going to train the future heritage experts, architects, museum curators, and so on. Unfortunately, as the work of universities has been narrowed to economic utility this work must be continually defended. Demonstrating how creative industries make places richer is one of the ways this can be done.
The third is then about place. Take a look at New Writing North and Northumbria University which simultaneously is about making Newcastle a more vibrant place, engaging with local communities, and strengthening Newcastle’s creative distinctiveness to create a cluster of activities. As they put it
It will be a place for communities across the region to engage with creative writing, literature and reading. The centre will mean growing New Writing North and furthering our ambition to nurture writers from across the region. We know that whilst talent is everywhere the opportunities are not. The centre will strengthen Newcastle’s ambitions to become a national hub for writing and publishing and contribute to its growing status as a creative industries leader. The centre will be the first of its kind involving a cross-section of nationwide partners – from the arts, academia, media, and publishing industries – based in one, single dynamic site.
It’s an economic idea couched in cultural language. Play to your strengths, get partners to work together, and attention (and crucially investment) will follow. The research element is another crucial part of crowding in knowledge into places, attracting new partners, and in turn further growing regional distinctiveness.
Too big too important
If there is an agenda about funding, labour markets, and places, this work needs coordinating for the most impact. The creative landscape is as messily funded and supported as the higher education landscape. Local authorities, combined authorities, and the interaction between the two, are even messier still. Universities act as useful anchors to coordinate disparate activities. Programmes like culture at home by the University of Liverpool (disclosure I worked there at the time) are possible because the institution was able to bring partners together with its resources and shared approach with its partners. Even where not formally constituted by a university it is no coincidence that culture boards contain large numbers of people that work, or have worked, at universities.
Culture should not be forever twisted until it becomes a simple economic utility. It is too big, too delicate and too valuable for that. However, the key to preserving their value is partially about explaining their utilities. For universities, that is an argument about investment, labour markets, place-making, and coordinating disparate assets into a single whole.
Really interesting! And got me thinking about a number of gaps that still exist between universities, cultural organisations and marginalised communities.