From Arts Policy to Creative Economy

Abstract

This article considers the may the Labour Party, since its election in May 1997, has promoted ideas about the value of the creative economy to Britain's industrial future. It argues that the Party's approach to the creative economy has more in common with new business and management theories, rather than being a fully worked-out approach to cultural policy. There is now a disjunctive between the recognition of the creative economy and the continued existence of traditional arts policy-making institutions. New government initiatives around the idea of re-branding Britain and promoting Britain's creative economies through the public spectacle and millennium celebrations have opened up this incipient gap between traditional arts policies and new thinking about the creative economy. The article notes that much of the pioneering work developing the idea of cultural industries was carried out more than a decade ago by city councils in Britain, which sought to sustain their small cultural businesses with limited programs of investment and business support. At the time, this work was largely ignored by traditional arts policy bodies. The paper concludes by speculating about whether the Labour Party can turn its rhetoric about the creative economy into a more substantive policy which brings together the mixed economy of public and private in the cultural sector.