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Recent years have seen the increasing valuation and promotion of 'creativity'. Future success, we are often assured, will rest on the creativity of our endeavours, often aligned specifically with 'cultural' activity. This book considers the emergence and persistence of this pattern, particularly with regards to cultural policy, and examines the methods and evidence deployed to make the case for art, culture, and the creative industries.

Creativity has become part of the language of regeneration experts, urban planners and government policy makers attempting to revive the economic and cultural life of cities in the 21 st century. Concepts such as the creative class, the creative industries and bohemian cultural clusters have come to dominate thinking about how creativity can contribute to urban renewal. Spaces of Vernacular Creativity offers a critical perspective on the instrumental use of arts and creative practices for the purposes of urban regeneration or civic boosterism. Several important contributions are brought into one volume to examine the geography of locally embedded forms of arts and creative practice. There has been an explosion of interest in both academic and policy circles in the notion of creativity, and its role in economic development and urban regeneration. This book argues for a rethinking of what constitutes creativity, foregrounding non-economic values and practices, and the often marginal and everyday spaces in which creativity takes shape. Drawing on a range of geographic contexts including the U.S., Europe, Canada and Australia, the book explores a diverse array of creative practices ranging from art, music, and design to community gardening and anticapitalist resistance. The book examines working class, ethnic and non-elite forms of creativity, and a variety of creative spaces, including rural areas, suburbs and abandoned areas of the city. The authors argue for a broader and more inclusive conception of what constitutes creative practice, advocating for an approach that foregrounds economies of generosity, conviviality and activism. The book also explores the complexities and nuances that connect the local and the global and finally, the book provides a space for valuing alternative, marginal and displaced knowledges. Spaces of Vernacular Creativity provides an important contribution to the debates on the creative class and on the role of value of creative knowledge and skills. The book aims to contribute to contemporary academic debates regarding the development of post-industrial economies and the cognitive cultural economy. It will appeal to a wide range of disciplines including, geography, applied art, planning, cultural studies, sociology and urban studies, plus specialised programmes on creativity and cultural industries at Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels. Tim Edensor teaches Cultural Geography at MMU. He is author of Tourists at the Taj (1998), National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (2002) and Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality (2005). He is currently researching landscapes of illumination, geographies of rhythm and urban materiality. Deborah Leslie is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto. She is interested in the role of cultural industries in urban economic development, and has done research on a range of industries including design, fashion, art, furniture, advertising and more recently the circus. She has related research interests in the creative city initiatives and urban governance, and in the geography of commodity chains. She is author of a number of publications relating to these topics. Steve Millington is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research interests include landscapes of illumination, vernacular creativity and geographies of play. He is co-author of Cosmopolitan Urbanism (2006) and has recently published journal articles in Global Networks and Sociology . Norma M. Rantisi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Planning & Environment at Concordia University (Canada). She is author and co-author of numerous articles on the themes of fashion design, the cultural economy and policies governing design in urban settings. She has co-edited two special journal issues: one for Environment and Planning A on the creative economy and one for The Journal of Economic Geography on relational economic geography. 1. Introduction: Rethinking Creativity: Critiquing the Creative Class Thesis (Tim Edensor, Deborah Leslie, Steve Millington and Norma M. Rantisi) Part 1: Governing and Practising Creativity 2. Creative Spaces and the Art of Urban Living (Graeme Evans) 3. Creativity by Design? The Role of Informal Spaces in Creative Production (Rantisi and Leslie) 4. Art goes AWOL (Malcolm Miles) Part 2: Decentering Creativity 5. Creative Suburbs: Cultural ‘Popcorn’ Pioneering in Multi-purpose Spaces (Alison Bain) 6. Beyond Bohemia: Geographies of Everyday Creativity for Musicians in Toronto (Brian J. Hracs) 7. Mapping Vernacular Creativity: the Extent and Diversity of Rural Festivals in Australia (Chris Gibson, Chris Brennan-Horley and Jim Walmsley) 8. Imagining the Spatialities of Music Production: The Co-constitution of Creative Clusters and Networks (Bas Van Heur) 9. Remediating Vernacular Creativity: Photography and Cultural Citizenship in the Flickr Photosharing Network (Jean Burgess) Part 3: Everyday Spaces of Creativity 10. Creativity, Space and Performance: Community Gardening (David Crouch) 11. Growing Places: Community Gardening, Ordinary Creativities and Place-based Regeneration in a Northern English City (Paul Milbourne) 12. Creative Destruction and Critical Creativity: Recent Episodes in the Social Life of Gnomes (Tracey J. Potts) 13. Christmas Lights Displays and the Creative Production of Spaces of Generosity (Edensor and Millington) Part 4: Alternative Creativities 14. Challenge, Change, and Space in Vernacular Cultural Practice (Ann Markusen) 15. The Politics of Creative Performance in Public Space: Towards a Critical Geography of Toronto Case Studies (Heather E. McLean) 16. Creativity Unbound: Cultivating the Generative Power of Non-economic Neighbourhood Spaces (Ava Bromberg)

In his compelling follow-up to The Rise of the Creative Class , Richard Florida outlines how certain cities succeed in attracting members of the 'creative class' - the millions of people who work in information-age economic sectors and in industries driven by innovation and talent. \"Florida and others are changing the American urban agenda. This is a guidebook to the new knowledge-based economy. He mines the best available research to lay out powerful new policy options. No wonder he is in such demand.\" - Terry Nichols Clark, Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project, University of Chicago Richard Florida is the Hirst Professor in George Mason University's School of Public Policy and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He lives in Washington DC.

\"Undisputedly, China has become the world's manufacturing powerhouse, accounting for more than two-thirds of the world's output in DVD players, children's toys, and microwave ovens, as well as half of all personal computers, digital cameras and kitchen appliances. However, China is not only a low-cost manufacturing country, it is also in the process of transitioning towards becoming a major source of global innovation, by creating pioneering new business models and policy frameworks alongside the technical inventions the country has become known for. This book documents China's transition by highlighting the key elements, events, underlying trends and drivers that have contributed towards China's relentless progress in the realm of innovation. The book explores the innovation, research and development scene in China, whilst outlining the cultural and historical barriers to innovation and analysing the country's output. Individual entrepreneurs responsible for China's new economy are profiled, along with the research institutes and universities who are building the technological backbone that runs through the country. It concludes with a look at the anticipated trends for the future\"-- Provided by publisher.

Neo-Bohemia brings the study of bohemian culture down to the street level, while maintaining a commitment to understanding broader historical and economic urban contexts. Simultaneously readable and academic, this book anticipates key urban trends at the dawn of the twenty-first century, shedding light on both the nature of contemporary bohemias and the cities that house them. The relevance of understanding the trends it depicts has only increased, especially in light of the current urban crisis puncturing a long period of gentrification and new economy development, putting us on the precipice, perhaps, of the next new bohemia. Richard Lloyd is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University \"Lloyd has done an excellent job of fleshing out a postmodern bohemia…This is an insightful look at the hip neighborhoods that loom so large on the cultural radar and the role they play in the new global division of labor.\"— Sharon Zukin, Sociology, Brooklyn College \"[Lloyd] turns over an entertainment-district economy descended from Montmartre. … He understands… that in rock and roll and design just as in gallery art there are a few geniuses, hustlers, and genius hustlers who win the lottery and a great many exploited young workers.\"— Robert Christgau, from barnesandnoblereview.com \"This is fascinating, original and deeply humane sociology at its finest; [Lloyd] demonstrates that in the name of freedom, young people working in allegedly relaxed service-sector jobs waste years of their lives in a whirl of drugs, alcohol and deceptively low wages.\"— Andrew O’Hehir, Salon 1. Introduction 2. Production and Neighborhood 3. Bohemia 4. Grit as Glamour 5. Living Like an Artist 6. The Celebrity Neighborhood 7 . The Neighborhood in Cultural Production 8 . Making the Scene 9. The Digital Bohemia 10. The Bohemia and the Spirit of Flexibility

You don't have to choose between a creative life and a prosperous one. Goins believes we live in an era of unprecedented opportunity, and invites readers to drop the myths and flat-out lies that have been drilled into them. Real artists don't starve-- they thrive. And you can, too.

This book provides a vivid and detailed analysis of life in modern China. It brings together researchers, sociologists, entrepreneurs, and the findings of 20 years of polling research to show how the people of China have coped with the immense changes to their lives in the past two decades. It examines how people in China have had to balance traditional values with modern day demands, how they have emerged as consumers dealing with modern technology, and how they have struggled for a better life. It is a detailed study of the people who were instrumental in the economic success of their country. Written by leading executives at the Beijing-based Horizon Research Consultancy Group, the book is rich with data and analysis, and it discusses nearly all aspects of life in China, including love and marriage, changing family relations, fast food, fashion, work and careers, migrant laborers, real estate, investment, shopping online, health care, etc. A constant theme throughout is the phenomenal change that is taking place in the lives of the Chinese people, from their goals and aspirations, to their challenges and achievements.

How does a group of people, brought together because of their diverse skills and professional knowledge, set out to be ‘creative’? How are ongoing tensions between beauty, fame, and money resolved? In The Business of Creativity, Brian Moeran, a leading scholar and writer on the creative industries, takes the sacred relic of creativity out of the crypt and airs it in the ethnographic alley. In contrast to the persistent image of creativity as the spontaneous inspiration of a gifted individual, Moeran shows how creativity emerges from collaborative engagements among people, genres, institutions, materials and technologies. He alternates thick description of work in fashion, advertising, and ceramic art with theoretical innovations that shed new light on the aesthetic, symbolic, and economic dimensions of creativity and the production of worth. “Brian Moeran’s deep, detailed investigations of a sparkling variety of work situations lead him to an understanding of creativity, solidly based on close observation of people at work, that anchors this field, so often mired in vague talk, in the real world of potters, fashion magazines, perfumers, and other workers who are on creativity’s front line.” —Howard S. Becker, author of Art Worlds “This brilliant book is filled with profound insights on every page. Professor Moeran’s book is a window into the creative process; he convincingly shows that creativity is embedded in cultural practices and collaborative relationships. His ethnographic studies, mostly in Japan but also in Denmark, reveal that creativity emerges from collaborative improvisations, unpredictable but always grounded in conventions, norms, and cultures. If you are interested in creativity, innovation, and the role of creative work in today’s economy, you absolutely must read this book.” —R. Keith Sawyer, Morgan Distinguished Professor in Educational Innovations, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill \"...Focused primarily on creative practices in Japan, business anthropologist/artist Moeran here alternates chapters on ethnography with propositions on the nature of creativity. Too many Anglo-European theorists romanticize creativity as indescribable, based only on individual talent. By studying creative worlds in a contemporary Eastern context, the author offers an interesting counterview. ... Readers should start with the case studies and then return to the introductory chapter, 'Overture.' This approach will allow a better understanding of Moeran's theories on how cultural agents, institutions, and materials compete for resources, and of project collaboration for creating economically valuable art. Useful for multidisciplinary collections. Summing Up: Recommended.\"... --CHOICE Magazine \" The Business of Creativity is a fascinating and helpful volume in its own right, on business, advertising, fashion, and ceramic arts. However, its message and methods are relevant far beyond those specific subjects and settings. Anthropologists can and have begun to apply the concept of affordance in many contexts, together with the view of culture as creative practice, as future-directed thought and planning, and the understanding of all of social life as an assemblage of 'motley crews' of people, institutions, 'things,' and environments. There are lessons in this book and in Moeran's career that are already revolutionizing anthropology and will continue to reshape it, for the better, into its own creative disciplinary future.\" --Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database Acknowledgments Overture 1. Circuits of affordances 2. Putting on a show 3. Ensemblages of worth 4. Shooting an ad campaign 5. The organization of creativity 6. Editing fashion magazines 7. Symbolic markets 8. Designing ceramics 9. Craftsmanship 10. Judging artworks 11. The politics of evaluation Coda References Index About the Author