The workshop examines how higher education institutions contribute to local
socio-cultural and economic regeneration through processes, initiatives and
projects which involve cultural and creative elements or strategies. It will
explore the effects of these partnerships and consider how projects involving
higher education institutions and local cultural and regeneration partners might
re-shape local communities and economies in both positive and negative ways, for
example, through gentrification.   It will explore how local communities
are engaged within the process, the roles they play, and the relationships, tensions and exchanges of knowledge between higher education, local communities and policy makers in the practice of regeneration. It will also look at the impact of higher education intervention in local regeneration from economic, social and skills perspectives.  
  
Contributing to the seminar
As part of the call for papers we are looking for two different kinds of contributions:
  
Research papers
These papers will provide a theoretical perspective or present research outcomes which help us understand the dynamics of interaction between higher education and the arts and cultural sector. Selected speakers will be given 20 minutes to present their research followed by 10 minutes for Q&A
       
Case studies or reflections from practitioners, academics or policy makers 
These shorter presentations (10 minutes) aim to creative opportunities for discussion of best practice, case studies and reflecting on the current relationships and modes of interaction between higher education and the arts and cultural sector. The presentations will be organised in panels and will be followed by group discussions. 
 
 
Download the Call for Papers

Session Title: Creative industries, creative jobs and creative clusters: An evolutionary perspective
 
Organisers: 
Su-Hyun Berg (Dept. of Geography, University of Kiel, Germany)
Roberta Comunian (Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London)
Robert Hassink (Dept. of Geography, University of Kiel, Germany)

Call for abstracts

During the last decades an increasing interest can be observed among urban and economic geographers in creative industries, the creative economy, creative cities, as well as the creative class (Chapain et al. 2012). In addition to this increasing academic
interest, testified by several recent special issues in journals such as Urban
Studies, the Journal of Economic Geography, Regional Studies and the Creative Industries Journal, also policy-makers at several spatial levels (urban, regional, national, as well as supranational) try to find ways how to foster creative industries. Many studies focused both on the economic functions of creative industries, mainly in terms of employment, value-added production, and exports, as well as on their current organizational features. However, evolutionary and history-informed perspectives are often neglected (Rantisi et
al., 2006), as well as explaining differences in dynamics between different creative industries in a regional context. Why is it that some creative industries grow fast in some regions while stagnate in other regions? 
 
The aim of this session is therefore to shed a more evolutionary and dynamic light on creative industries in a local and regional context. In a similar vein as Comunian (2011) recently used complexity theory and complex adaptive systems to explain the development of creative industries in the North East of England, this session particularly welcomes abstracts linking theories used in other fields to shed a new, more dynamic light on creative industries. One potentially fruitful paradigm to draw on, in this context, is evolutionary economic geography (Boschma & Frenken 2011). In contrast to neoclassical theory, this school takes history and geography seriously by recognizing the importance of place-specific elements and processes to explain broader spatial patterns of technology evolution. In this session, therefore, we would like to explore whether notions of evolutionary economic geography, such as path creation, path dependence and co-evolution, can  contribute to analyzing and explaining the spatial dynamics of creative
industries.

We welcome both empirical, theoretical, as well as policy-related abstracts. The focus can be on any  creative industries, such as publishing and literature, performing arts, music,
film, video and photography, broadcasting, design, fashion, visual arts,  advertising and interactive media as well as creative jobs. We also welcome  abstracts that go beyond the narrow focus of creative clusters, namely those  dealing with creative cities, the creative economy, as well as creative class in  relation to creative industries. 

Potential questions include:

1) How do creative industries in cities and regions develop through time?
2) How can we explain differences in dynamics between creative industries in a regional economy?
3) What is the impact of policies at several spatial levels on the dynamics of creative industries and jobs?
4) How can individual talents be fosted in the creative industries?
5) How can firms in creative clusters be fostered?
6) How does the national institutional context affect the development of creative industries in cities and regions through?

References

Chapain, C., Clifton, N., & Comunian, R. (2012) Understanding Creative Regions: Bridging
the Gap between Global Discourses and Regional and National Contexts. Regional
Studies, (ahead-of-print), 1-4.

Comunian, R. (2011) Rethinking the Creative City The Role of Complexity, Networks and
Interactions in the Urban Creative Economy. Urban Studies, 48(6), 1157-1179. 
 
Boschma, R., & Frenken, K. (2011). The  emerging empirics of evolutionary economic geography. Journal of Economic  Geography, 11(2), 295-307.

Rantisi N M, Leslie D, Christopherson S (2006) Placing the creative economy: scale, politics,  and the material. Environment and Planning A 38(10) 1789 – 1797

Abstract Submission:

If you would like to contribute to this session, please send your abstract of not more than 250 words to Su-Hyun Berg (berg@geographie.uni-kiel.de) by Friday, 8th February 2013.