Beyond the Creative Economy – A Minor Manifesto

analfrehnthoughtpaper

#2Beyond

the

Creative

Economy,

a

Minor

Manifesto

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(The

following

is

based

on

a

keynote

I

gave

at

the

first

Creative

Economy

and

Beyond-conference

in

Helsinki,

Finland

on

September

12

th

2009.)

A spectre is haunting business thinking – the spectre of creativity. All the powers of theworld have entered into a holy alliance to hail this spectre: Pope and CEO, Amabile and Collins, French Radicals and German auto-makers.Where is the company in ascendance that has not been described as creative by itsadmirers in power? Where is the company that has not hurled back the branding reproach of traditionalism, against the more advanced parties, as well as against itsreactionary competitors?

Dangerous

Pretty

Things

Are we loving the creative economy to death? Are we, in our desire to hail it, in factdoing it damage? Looking at the contemporary discussion, one comes away with thesensation that the



eld of the creative economy is surrounded by what can only bereferred to as a halo. Engagements in the



eld are obsessed with proving its excellence,and the cases used seem to say that the



eld is a cornucopia of delights, where analmost endless array of fantastically interesting creative businesses are presented asproof positive that the creative economy is the panacea to our current ailments. It isnot surprising that all this razzle-dazzle – in that most beloved of cases,

Cirque duSoleil,

quite literal such – has bewitched people and turned the notion of the creativeeconomy into the policy equivalent of the kitschy picture postcard, a magical landwhere the lighting is always perfect and everyone is permanently pretty. Dangerously pretty.It’s interesting to note that the person that might best describe the current state of public discourse around the creative economy is in fact derided and looked downupon by the people engaged in it. I am of course talking about the genius of



omasKinkade, Painter of Light™, the person who took cornball scenic portraiture and

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turned this into big business

1

. By playing shamelessly to the lowest commondenominator and pouring on the shlock with a heavy hand, he has turned his ratherhackneyed aesthetic into a successful corporate venture, and shown that it is possiblefor even a mediocre artist to become a spectacular success. His paintings, which sellwell both as originals, as prints and as something in between when one of his trainedcadre of touch-up artists inserts some of his trademark so



-light-e

ﬀ

ects onto a print,may not be high art, but in the eyes of their buyers they are decidedly “pretty”.



ey donot try to challenge, and instead sell the idea of idyllic Americana wholesale to anadoring public.My astute readers will of course have picked up on my not-so-veiled criticism. Muchof what is written today on the creative economy is the intellectual equivalent of a



omas Kinkade-painting. Yes, much of this is done in a skilled, highly artisanalfashion. Yes, there is an audience out there for it. But does it have anything,

anything

to do with creativity?I love creativity, but I’m no great fan of pretty things. And as I look at the discussionsregarding the creative economy, I see a lot of the latter, and precious little of theformer.



e academics, the policy-maker and the practitioners are all complicit inthis, we all are, for in our desire to hail this thing that we love, we’ve also turned it intoa pale copy of what it can be. In our desire to make the creative economy legitimate,we’ve chosen the prettiest pictures, the nicest perspectives, the best-



tting stories. Butin doing this, we’ve also done symbolic violence to the



eld, for we’ve been far toogood at making the



eld something that can



t in with the world-view of politiciansand policy-makers, something legitimate enough to be acknowledged by professorsand CEOs. We’ve turned it into a dangerously pretty thing.And so today, the creative economy is presented as a beacon, as not only moreaesthetically pleasing, but also

morally

superior to the old economies, particularly the



nancial one that crashed so spectacularly.



e same processes that tend to paint (

sic)

the creative economy in a permanently favorable light (

sic)

are also part of positioning