European inventory of
societal values of culture

O'Connor - After the creative industries

O'Connor, M. J. (2016) After the creative industries: Cultural policy in crisis. Law, Social Justice and Global Development,  (1): 1-18.

This paper unifies and articulates a series of debates that brought together the Global Cultural Economy Network (GCEN), an informal group of policy experts currently attempting to re-frame international policies on culture and economy. Directed by the author, the Network is critical of the rhetoric on the creative industry/ economy agenda as routinely used by policy makers and public officials, at local, national and international levels (by UNCTAD, WIPO and UNESCO, among others). Subjecting key terms in this rhetoric to scrutiny, this article considers the historical evolution of the culture-economy nexus, and observes that even where the arts and culture have evidently benefitted from their cooption into mainstream public policy agendas, the current dominant and now popular discourse of creative economy is problematic. The article sets out the dilemma by considering the various policy trends involved in this cooption – from creative industries to creative cities – and how advocates for the arts and culture have all too easily accommodated the re-orientation of culture for the production of economic value. The article argues that dominant policy trends have marginalised the social character of culture and so its unique forms of productivity, and have generated an obfuscation of the broader political imaginary that has divested cultural policies of their facility for inspiration and alternative futures.