Widening local development pathways : transformative visions of cultural economy

Soon after the November 2013 launch of the United Nations Creative Economy Report 2013, subtitled Widening Local Development Pathways, Justin O'Connor posted a blog in The Conversation that made significant claims on the publication's behalf. He thought it would free international cultural policy from the reigning 'creative industries/creative economy' approach, whose advocates 'stand accused of over-emphasizing the commercial aspects of culture, reducing creativity to intellectual property rights, ignoring the growing exploitation of creative labour, and becoming narrowly economistic, reducing cultural value to the bottom line' (O'Connor 2013). He also thought the report could counter 'the uncritical adoption of creative industry policy nostrums from the Global North, [that] wrapped in promises of a dynamic new source of economic growth, has become increasingly counter-productive.' Countering those nostrums was among the purposes that I brought to the task of serving on behalf of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as the principal investigator and lead writer of the report, a task it assigned to me after having taken over responsibility for the new edition. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) had prepared the 2008 and 2010 editions. The subtitle Special Edition suited both, since the idea was that it would take a markedly different approach. Although UNESCO chose prudently to stick with the existing 'creative economy' brand, my conceptual preference went to the more inclusive notion of 'cultural economy'. That is the term I would have used and is the one I shall therefore employ throughout this chapter, whose main aim is to give the reader a sense of how the report might justify O'Connor's claims. In order to do so, I shall paraphrase or cite passages from the text.