Synonyms

Aesthetic innovation; Aesthetic research; Re-culturalization of societies; Social design; Societal transformation

Creative Industries or Creative Societies

While in the 1930s, Theodor W. Adorno still was able to say “art is magic – relieved from the lie to be truth,” works of the arts more and more are transformed to mere objects of trade. But is not this politically and historically only consistent in an economy-driven society when pieces of art rather have the status of shares at some kind of stock market than artistic statements. Is it really surprising that art dealers change to brokers and art collectors to speculators?

It would be wrong to claim that art would uncouple itself from the social and political relevance. It is rather the society, which virtually strategically is going to be depoliticized by increasingly dominant economic structures. Apparently unbiased economic mechanisms take the place of political, cultural, and educational impact parameters in our societies. And this development has not passed by art. How should it? This paradoxically is exactly the evidence of the convexity still existing between art and society. In times when the social and political systems of values are replaced by the shareholder value, when educational contents get degenerated to statistically quantifiable measurements and educational institutions to knowledge-providing factories for the purpose of producing employability to increase economic growth – in such times it would be more than surprising, if this tendency toward the economization of our society would stop in front of the arts?

Since the late 1980s of the twentieth century, the “invisible hand” of the market increasingly has taken over the steering wheel in the stormy system of the arts and the artists are the rowers – although autonomous rowers. The artists, once depending on religious or secular rulers, became producers for the Creative Industry: galleries, fashion and music labels, training companies, theaters or publishing houses, etc. The artists transform to suppliers for the Creative Industries – and only a few of them succeed in actively influencing the market system by taking over the roles of art producer and bidder at art auctions at the same time – like Damian Hirst did.

Promoting the term “Creative Industries” as a political trademark is a real masterpiece of political strategy, initiated by the Blair government in the UK and then perfectly continued by the institutions of the European Union. In 1997, the UK Creative Industries Task Force was established by the Blair administration.

In 1998, the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport defined the creative industries as “those industries, that have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property.” (Creative Industries Mapping Document 1998).

In the same year, the UK Department for Trade and Industries continued in a White Paper: “In the increasingly global economy of today, we cannot compete in the old way. Capital is mobile, technology can migrate quickly and goods can be made in low cost countries and shipped to developed markets. British business must compete by exploiting capabilities, which its competitors cannot easily match or imitate. These distinctive capabilities are not raw materials, land or access to cheap labor. They must be knowledge, skills and creativity, which help create high productivity business processes and high value goods and services. That is why we will only compete successfully in future if we create an economy that is genuinely knowledge driven” (White Paper 1998, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20000517080533/http://www.dti.gov.uk/comp/competitive/wh_int1.htm). In 2000, the European Council adopted the so-called Lisbon Strategy. Its aim was to make the EU “the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion, and respect for the environment by 2010.” In 2003, the European Commission demanded: “Europe needs excellence in its universities, to optimize the processes which underpin the knowledge-society and meet the target, set out by the European Council in Lisbon, of becoming the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.” (Communication from the Commission – The role of the universities in the Europe of knowledge/* COM/2003/0058final)(http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri= CELEX:52003DC0058:EN:HTML).

In 2005, the European Cultural Foundation declared the Creative Sector as an “Engine for Diversity, Growth and Jobs in Europe. The important role of the arts and heritage for the economic development of cities and regions, based on direct and indirect revenues and their employment effects, is of particular importance for regions suffering industrial decline in a post-Fordist age.” (The Creative Sector 2005).

And the 2010 document about the EU-flagship Initiative Innovation Union points out clearly again: “Businesses should also be more involved in curricula development and doctoral training so that skills better match industry needs building for instance on the University Business Forum. There are good examples of inter-disciplinary approaches in universities bringing together skills ranging from research to financial and business skills and from creativity and design to intercultural skills. Design is of particular importance and is recognised as a key discipline and activity to bring ideas to the market, transforming them into user-friendly and appealing products.” (Brussels 2010).

The strategy was quite sophisticated and multilayered:

  1. 1.

    Tell the cultural sector that it is necessary to stress its effects on economic growth and jobs to gain a better position in the political decision-making processes.

  2. 2.

    Transform the semantics from Cultural Sector to Creative Industries – thus indicating, that culture now is a part of the industrial sector.

  3. 3.

    Make the members of the former Cultural Sector proud and give them a new feeling of social importance by telling them they would be the new heroes of the society by replacing the weakening old economy.

  4. 4.

    Transform the leading management guidelines of the former cultural sector toward the rationalities of entrepreneurial business administration by implementing a system of mainly quantitative performance indicators for measuring success or failure and for indicating the direction of future development.

  5. 5.

    Express that the mission of the whole Creative Industries Sector is to strengthen the economy and the labor market by providing creativity for innovation.

  6. 6.

    Deplore that cultural activities, which do not have enough short-term quantitative measurable economic effects, cannot have political priority in these hard times.

  7. 7.

    And then declare that Creative Industries is about to become the leading term in cultural policies.

Yes. Cultural industries are on the way to become the most important economic sector – especially in urban areas and especially when the leading economic sectors are in trouble. The creative industry does not give a complete image of the system of the arts, not even of the cultural sector, but signs and symbols in communication are important factors – structures and semantics effect habits and minds. So: What does it mean for a musician, a video artist, a poet, and an actor, if he or she is told to be part of the creative industries, because he or she is generating or exploiting intellectual property to earn revenues?

What does it mean for orchestras, dance companies, theaters, art galleries, design-studios, and architects to tell them that their activities are socially justified primarily because they contribute to economic growth and to the stability of the labor market.

What does it mean to art schools if they are told that their existence is socially and economically justified because they contribute to the aim of making Europe the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world?

The mission of art schools is not just to produce human resources for the creative industries, but there would be no art schools if there were no possibilities for graduates to earn money with their artistic skills within the cultural sector. Architects do not plan buildings because they want to support the construction industry – but finally they want to physically realize their plans. Painters do not create their works because they want to increase the economic impact of galleries and museums – but what would happen to all the painters, if there were no galleries, museums, and art fairs? Poets do not write books, because they want to strengthen the printing industry – but what would happen to poets if there were no editors, no printing industry, no theaters, and no broadcasting industry? What would happen to the graphic designers if there was no advertising market? What would happen to the filmmakers if there were no film-industry, no producers, no distributors, and no cinemas?

Creative Industries are not a threat for the arts but the advancement of this term semantically represents the recent social and political developments toward a commercialization of the society quite clearly. The subsectors which are summarized under the term “Creative Industries” of course are important elements of any society. The problem is the hierarchy. Universities are not important, if and because they improve the economy. Culture is not “the heart of knowledge based economy,” as the European Cultural Parliament stated (ECP, Lisbon Agenda Research Group 2006). Culture, art, and even science should not primarily be seen as the engine for the vehicle called economy, which is moving the society. No, culture has to be recognized as the vehicle, which moves the society. And in fact, it is like that. To paraphrase Bill Clinton: It is the culture stupid! At least in the long run, it is the broad range of culture that matters and that remains in history. Just look at cultural history: Music, theater, literature, architecture, visual arts, visual communication; changing techniques, and changing media from stone carving to digital media, from affecting human thinking and behavior to recently even manipulating genetic and microbiological material – for centuries, these were and still are some of the most significant factors of human development. Factors caused and influenced by the arts.

The main directions of action, interaction, and mutual influence between societal subsystems in general and between the sociopolitical paradigms of economy and culture are of crucial meaning for the direction of societal development.

Two centuries after the Industrial Revolution and in the middle of the Information Revolution, again standing on societal and economic crossroads, the crucial question now is: Is it possible to make the development as well as the realization of creative ideas and visions the very trademark of our societies? If ever human societies can succeed in turning themselves into creative innovation societies – and for the sake of the future generations, this option undoubtedly must be undertaken! –the next societal and economic revolution will have to be a “creative revolution.” Thus, the valences of societal paradigms must be shifted – from a mere commercialization toward a re-culturalization of the society – which in particular demands consequences for the educational and economic systems. Instead of the fabrication of products, the creation of new ideas will have to be the focus point for the shape of educational and economic systems. Therefore, providing creativity will have to be the leading mission of educational systems and creativity must not be a separate sector of the economy (creative industries vs. noncreative industries). Following these principles, the arts in general and art education in particular need to be integrated parts of education and economy as the economy will have to become a creative economy in total. Of course, this is a revolution indeed and naturally, the usual arguments can be heard: Regarding the recent nature of industrial companies, the employment structures, and the needs of our population, it is not possible to change the types of the existing economic structures! But similar concerns were raised on the threshold of the beginning industrial age when most of the population was working in and living from agricultural production.

The education system in so-called western societies is still characterized by the spirit of the industrial revolution, whose engines were fragmentation, specialization, and rationalization. Art education and art schools have to be counter-models to this development. Not isolated specialized knowledge is the basis for later success, but creativity, flexibility, the ability to think and act in interdisciplinary and intercultural contexts, questioning existing intellectual as well as behavioral habits arriving at with new scenarios and producing amazement with its own work. Thus, the arts and art schools are indispensable elements of societal infrastructure – at least as important for the development of societies as streets and financial services. The political positioning of the arts and art schools has to be changed from a servant of economic growth toward a leading factor of societal progress, at least in a role of an equal partner to the economy in steering the society!

With industrial-production increasingly moving away from the developed world, creative education will be one major stronghold on the way to securing the economic as well as intellectual and social future. Transformations of the workplace as well as throughout our societies require art-institutes to rethink their societal role and emancipate themselves as crucial players on the way to a creativity-based and innovation-driven future society. On the way toward the highest and competitive aims, not only the so-called western societies will be moving away from industrial, agriculture, and service-based economic structures and increasingly focus on the development of an economy coined by visions, ideas, and a permanent drive for innovation. This new creativity-driven economic model must help to erase the economic structures in place since the Industrial Revolution. Creativity, intellectual flexibility, and innovation must become the very basis of all economic efforts. To meet this aim, significant changes in the educational and economic systems as well as in the interrelations between education and economy are to be implemented: Creativity and creative skills will have to penetrate the education sector as well as the economic sector in general.

It was at the end of the twentieth century when politics exclaimed the end of utopias. Economic and political pragmatism should dominate and secure the future; feasibility and quantifiability increasingly became the rulers in education and science. Was it really by chance that a few years after proclaiming the end of utopias, after having stopped searching for totally new ideas and paradigms for the future of our social and economic systems, the waves of economic crisis overwhelmed most societies in rapid sequence. With the crisis of the existing market-oriented economic and social system “the chance may arise for a repositioning of the arts as well as art schools within society – not in terms of a re-politicization of art according to historical examples, but rather in the sense of a ‘re-socialization’ of the arts focussing communication and identification.” (Bast 2010) Maybe this could be the first step towards a creative revolution.

Of course, it is correct to say that the arts have become massive economic factors and that art education at the universities must refer to practicality and requires contacts, projects, and cooperation with the economic sector – namely the creative economy sector as well. But, at the same time, practicality is not the primary task of universities. Undoubtedly, it seems that the universities and the people connected to them are steadily submitting to economic pragmatism, when in fact, they should be generating the courage to experiment with regard to thought, design, and action: A courage, which – paradox enough – in the final analysis, is also in the interests of economic prosperity. Art schools must be associated more than ever with the development of the arts and the emergence of new artistic approaches, and not be perceived only as places where artistic traditions are passed on, or where students merely prepare for other places outside the art schools where artistic innovation actually happens. In the twenty-first century, the potential for the renewal of art and art education lies in the synergistic coupling and integration of artistic research and art production, aesthetic innovation, and scientific research, preparing artists for the traditional art market as well as for the various means of societal communication.

Conclusion and Future Directions

Art universities and academies will have to decide quickly whether they will continue in the future to be merely a supplier of human capital for the art, architecture, design, music, and theater market, or if they themselves want to claim the organizational rights to the art system and attain effective power: power in terms of fostering, creating and – yes – even defining aesthetic innovation. Of course, such a goal will require not only a change of consciousness, but also a change of contents and structures.

If art universities, in their function as aesthetic research laboratories, are to develop into an effective force beyond the university walls with an impact on the system of arts and on society, if they are to have even more of a social presence when it comes to contemporary art, architecture, and design as well as music, dance, and theater, then the existing institutions must be prepared to expand their traditional roles and spheres of activity. The universities of the arts must seek closer ties with museums and exhibition houses, with activities in the field of urban and social innovation, with theaters and the music industry, as well as connections to current forms and platforms of alternative and popular culture. And art universities must focus on artistic research – much more than they have done so far.

In current social perception, which is colored by the media and politicians, the term “innovation” is more than ever associated with technological and economic progress.

Therefore, the universities of the arts must take care that they do not stumble into an identity trap. The Zeitgeist, which dictates that universities – like factories – must also be as efficient and practically oriented as possible, is placing increasing pressure.

Cheaper and quicker output, necessity, need, and economic utility are the dominating arguments in discussions about universities and art universities in particular. The principal ideas of what is university seem to get paler and paler in present times. Universities do not produce products; they had and still have to generate ideas, attitudes, and perspectives in the hearts and in the brains of people who are enthusiastic enough to meet the challenge of leaving the trodden paths of thinking and acting.

In other words: The output of universities in general and especially of universities of the arts is shaping the future. Therefore, universities of the arts should adopt an offensive and self-confident attitude in the societal competition relating to the definition of progress and, thus, generate courage.

Cross-References

Business Creativity

Creativity from Design and Innovation Perspectives

Entrepreneur in Utopian Thinking

Higher Education and Innovation

Interdisciplinarity and Innovation