What are the creative industries?
The difference between creative industries, cultural industries, and the creative economy
In the past years, words like innovation, creativity, and culture are thriving. So many new concepts are being introduced, and that might be confusing. So here is an essential introduction to CCI and the creative economy.
When it comes to creative and cultural industries, the most crucial part is to understand what defines those fields and whatnot because both concepts overlap although they are very different from each other. And for that, I would like to start by defining a very confusing term nowadays which is culture.
Definition of culture:
The ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people or society.
But unfortunately, this definition is incomplete as it doesn′t define what′s excluded from it. A Pakistani cultural critic by the name of I.A Rehman said that
Culture is what people practice not what they believe
Elements of culture:
- What are our behaviors towards relationships?
- How do we approach education?
- What collective activities do we share?
- How do we regard and interact with the arts? Which utility do we see in them?
What are the cultural industries?
Cultural industries are “producing and distributing goods or services which at the time they are developed are considered to have a specific attribute, use or purpose which embodies or conveys cultural expressions, irrespective of the commercial value they may have. Besides the traditional arts sectors (performing arts, visual arts, cultural heritage — including the public sector), they include film, DVD and video, television and radio, video games, new media, music, books, and press.
- Music
- Publishing
- Radio/Tv
- Cinema
- Video games
- Visual arts
- Performing arts
- Heritage
What are the creative industries?
Now that we defined the cultural industries let′s pass to the creative ones. The European Commission defines creative industries as ”industries which use culture as an input and have a cultural dimension, although their outputs are mainly functional. They include architecture and design, which integrate creative elements into wider processes, as well as subsectors such as graphic design, fashion design or advertising.”
- Design
- Architecture
- Advertising
What is the creative economy?
Definitions of a modern creative economy continue to evolve. When John Howkins popularized the term “creative economy” in 2001, he applied the term to the arts, cultural goods and services, toys and games, and research and development. The most common models of the creative economy share many elements. Howkins’ creativity-based model includes all kinds of creativity, whether expressed in art or innovation. The narrower culture-based models concentrate on arts, design, and media and are normally restricted to nominated industries. The term increasingly refers to all economic activity that depends on a person’s individual creativity for its economic value whether the result has a cultural element or not. In this usage, the creative economy occurs wherever individual creativity is the main source of value and the main cause of a transaction.V