Creative Economy Reset: Insights from South Africa

The creative economy, often synonymous with cultural economy, has enjoyed heightened scrutiny among academics in recent decades, generating a growing body of research and practice that increasingly spans the globe.  Disciplines such as music, dance, film, visual art, literature, architecture, and urban design have spilled over from more traditional academic departments.  Scholars, practitioners, policymakers and artists, increasingly working together, raising the visibility, quality and dynamism of artistic fields of thought and practice. 

Many of us in higher education have contributed, often teaming up with others in our universities and communities. National, state and provincial government agencies, as the US National Endowment for the Arts, have funded new research projects and strategies, including improved government data on arts and cultural output, employment and international exchanges as well as funding programs that require local governments agencies to partner with arts and cultural organizations in their cities and towns to engage in creative placemaking.

In recent years, at international gatherings of cultural scholars and practitioners, researchers have shared advances in theory, methods and practice, expanding our understanding of a broad array of arts ecologies and policies to engender them. Academic scholars and researchers are contributing to the creative economy’s reach, innovations, and challenges. In this short paper, I reflect on gatherings that have taken place in the last few years in Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Pretoria, South Africa, in which I have presented papers and learned a great deal from the ways that various countries have encouraged (or not) and shaped their creative economies.

In December of 2019, I participated in a gathering of cultural economists from Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries in Valdivia, Chile, where I struggled to comprehend some of the presentations. Many presenters used powerpoints that helped bridge language barriers. I understood much of the discussion and learned a great deal about how countries like Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador organize their cultural sectors, and also how scholars had developed new techniques for sizing and evaluating arts sectors, public sector interventions, the regional distribution of artists and cultural activities, and the occupational challenges and accomplishments of artists.

In June of 2021, I was invited by the faculty at the University of Portugal to give an opening keynote at a campus-wide conference of faculty and students embarking on a new interdisciplinary research and education initiative designed to integrate teaching in the social science disciplines and generate joint research projects across the campus. I learned a great deal. It was the beginning of Covid, and the presentations often explored how different occupational groups, small farmers, for instance, were coping with challenges in reaching markets and making a living.

In June of 2022, I participated in the SEIC conference at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where I presented a case study of an innovation in which I’ve played the leading role:  creating and managing an art gallery within the offices of a new weekly and award-winning newspaper in which I am one of five investors. I found and contacted regional artists (from a list of ninety), relying on a top regional curator and a veteran teaching artist as advisors.  They recommended a special system, called the Walker, available from a firm in our region for hanging artworks.  

They helped me build a list of some ninety artists in our region of northern Minnesota who would receive a call for our upcoming bimonthly exhibits. In the fall of 2022, I participated virtually in a cultural economics conference in Cartagena, Colombia, by zoom. At each of these conferences, all convening cultural social scientists and practitioners, I learned a great deal about the arts ecology of each hosting country and how cultural social scientists were engaged in studying their structures and operations.

In November of 2022, I was invited to join and present at a conference in Pretoria, South Africa, entitled Creative Economy Reset, subtitled “Structuring the Creative and Cultural Industries for a sustainable and Inclusive Future.” The conference was a joint effort by faculty at Nelson Mandela University, the South African Cultural Observatory, and the Republic of South Africa’s Department of Sport, Arts and Culture. 

Other South African Universities co-sponsoring and participating included: Rhodes University, University of Fort Hare, and the University of Kwazulu-Natal.  I have rarely been to a conference of cultural scholars, policymakers, and students that put out a large umbrella. For instance, some cultural economist colleagues I’ve known for years joined the opening panel; Justin O’Connor from University of South Australia, Leandro Valiati of University of Manchester, Stuart Cunningham of Queensland University of Technology, Marisa Henderson, Chief of UNCTAD Creative Economy Programme, and Jen Snowball, of Rhodes University’s South African Cultural Observatory.

We worked for two days in a comfortable auditorium and an equally pleasant space where we were treated to live jazz and young energetic dancers during lunchtime.  With so many accomplished cultural social scientists on the program, we often had to choose among concurrent sessions. On the first morning, after the plenary, the offerings included four simultaneous panels: Resetting Cultural Participation beyond the Pandemic; The Cartography of the new Creative Economy; Innovation, adaptation, entrepreneurship: from theory to lived experience; and Dealing with Disruptions: trends, developments and responses.

On Thursday morning, the second day of the conference, I served on a plenary panel entitled: Innovation, adaptation, entrepreneurship: from theory to lived experience. I presented on my founding of a new weekly newspaper, the Pine Knot (serving Carlton County, Minnesota, and it’s cities in northeast Minnesota) with four colleagues, how we’ve won best weekly newspaper in our state for two years running, and how I have created and curate a gallery in our newspaper offices, offering two month exhibits of area artists’ work and openings that offer them a chance to speak about their work.

Following sessions on this second day focused on challenges. One panel tackled “How can African creatives thrive in the digital era?”  Another, “The growth of the creative economy through the development of creative entrepreneurship.” Later that first afternoon, we came together to hear from a panel on Cultural Participation and Consumption and the Cartography of the New Creative Economy.  This plenary included Professor Pier Luigi Sacco, of Harvard University, on ‘The new global geography of cultural production: Toward a multi-polar order?”

A remarkable feature of this conference was how it engaged cultural policymakers, academics, government agency practitioners, and local artists in its activities. Compared to various cultural economy conferences in which I’ve engaged, this international conference was off the charts in almost every way. In addition to the papers, presentations and music and dance performances, the organizers had invited a dozen artists to share their work in the expansive lobby of the Cultural Center. I ended up buying a painting from one young man. The final evening, we all went to the top art museum in the city for cocktails, conversation, and viewing, a fitting ending to an international gathering that engaged us all and offered us opportunities to learn much from each other.