What is the Creative Economy?
JULY 21, 2022 | CREATIVE ECONOMY, CALGARYGreat question... for a 20-year doctoral thesis.
Maybe that's a tad dramatic, but we work in the creative industries, so what do you expect?
We propose thinking of the creative economy in terms of 3 main threads: creative industries, creative talent, and creative occupations.
Defining the threads
CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
Let’s start with creative industries, which are the core of the creative economy—both because of their creative outputs and their concentrated use of creative talent (i.e., the workforce they rely on). Creative industries give us products, labour, and companies generally easily associated with creativity. For example, in Calgary, film, TV, and interactive digital media sustained 4,985 local jobs in 2021 and resulted in $522M in film and TV production spending on 123 film and TV productions—drawing a pretty clear line between creativity and the creation of wealth and jobs.
CREATIVE TALENT
Creative talent is different from other types of labour in that it generally involves creating an effect, outcome, or product without the usual “how-to” ahead of time. It’s the difference between assembly line work in a car factory and dreaming up a new vehicle design. Such talent offers organizations the ability to effectively differentiate and cater products to customers. The kinds of transferable skills that make creative talent so important to creative industries (e.g., critical thinking and creative problem solving, etc.) are expected to be especially important in our shifting economy.
CREATIVE OCCUPATIONS
As concrete as creative industry numbers seem, they don’t encompass the whole of the creative economy. You see, creative talent works in creative occupations across industries. For example, Alberta’s plethora of micro-breweries have a host of photographers, graphic designers, and content writers (highly creative occupations) pushing their hops to the top ... giving their sours power ... or making you halt for their malt... (why haven’t we been hired by a brewery yet?).
What makes a creative occupation? Borrowing from the excellent research at Nesta, they identified creative occupations based on 5 characteristics: 1) they solve problems or achieve goals in novel ways, 2) they produce work for which there isn’t currently a mechanical substitute, 3) the interaction of skills, inspiration and learning leads to variation in the process, 4) they add a creative contribution to the value chain, and 5) they involve interpretation rather than just transformation (e.g., book printers produce creative outputs, but it can be reasonably assumed the greater part of the—ahem—”novel” output comes from the author).
Applying this definition of creative occupations to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) reveals a number of creative occupations outside traditionally creative industries. For example, 11% of total employment in “541514 Computer systems design and related services” can be categorized as creative occupations. Yet we also see a high concentration of creative occupations and talent within creative industries, such as 90% of “711511 Independent visual artists and artisans” are in creative occupations. This supports the view that while creative industries are important, they don’t encompass the full creative economy.
So what are we weaving here?
Well, well, well. You are persistent.
We’ve introduced the creative economy using three main threads: creative industries, creative talent, and creative occupations. How these interact to form a vibrant creative economy depends on many factors, such as location, policies, available talent, and existing infrastructure. Getting an accurate scope of the creative economy, however, is important for appreciating both the direct and indirect impacts of the creative economy.
Having a definition—even a loose one—helps our work. With a definition we hone in on the best measures for tracking the health and impact of our region’s creative economy. We can help organizations, individuals and decision makers see where the most effective policy interventions can be applied. Finally, rather important to Bird Creatives, it allows us to fully value our work and that of our clients.
Stay tuned for more interesting information on Calgary's creative economy, including models on our creative industries and beyond.
Fascinated by all this? So are we! Check out the CreativeCITY: Prosperity through the Creative Economy ecosystem report to learn more about Calgary’s creative economy.
