Governing Creativity

This is a gem! I was put onto it by Richard Charkin's excellent blog. It is a report on the vitality of Britain's Creative Industries and you can read more here.

This is the opening paragraph of the press release.

The value of Britain’s flourishing creative industries to the economy is now broadly comparable to that of the financial services sector, a new report says today. But without careful policy-making, targeted public investment and a supportive institutional architecture, the flow of creativity worth commercialising may begin to slow, it warns.

Well blow me down. Talk about waffle. And why does a report like this get written, well partly because we have a Minister for Creative Industries, Shaun Woodward in case you were wondering.

Take this from the report's findings.

8. Building greater business capacity. There are many small and medium-sized creative businesses with the potential to grow, but who struggle to scale up in practice.

And does the Government honestly think they can have any meaningful involvement in that? Oh yes, I forgot they have introduced more and more legislation that gets in the way. One publisher I know of recently had 8 people out of 35-ish off on maternity leave.

This is another of their pearls....

2. Greater diversity. Diversity – especially cognitive diversity - is critical to the continuing success of the creative industries.

Now if you can explain what cognitive diversity means in this context you're a better man than me Gunga Din.

The report is from The Work Foundation, an independent research organisation and consultancy. It was funded by the Treasury.