The ‘Cultural Turn’ in Australian Regional Economic Development Discourse: Neoliberalising Creativity?

93

Geographical Research

•

March 2005

•

43(1):93–102

The ‘Cultural Turn’ in Australian Regional Economic Development Discourse: Neoliberalising Creativity?

CHRIS GIBSON and NATASCHA KLOCKER,

University of New South Wales, Australia

Abstract

Regional economic policy-makers are increasingly interested in the contributionof creativity to the economic performance of regions and, more generally, in itspower to transform the images and identities of places. This has constituted a‘cultural turn’, of sorts, away from an emphasis on macro-scale projects andemployment schemes, towards an interest in the creative industries, entrepre-neurial culture and innovation. This paper discusses how recent discourses of therole of ‘creativity’ in regions have drawn upon, and contributed to, particularforms of

neoliberalisation

. Its focus is the recent application of a statisticalmeasure — Richard Florida’s (2002) ‘creativity index’ — to quantify spatialvariations in creativity between Australia’s regions. Our critique is not of thecreativity index

per se

, but of its role in subsuming creativity within a neoliberalregional economic development discourse. In this discourse, creativity is linkedto the primacy of global markets, and is a factor in place competition, attractingfootloose capital and ‘creative class’ migrants to struggling regions. Creativityis positioned as a central determinant of regional ‘success’ and forms a remedyfor those places, and subjects, that currently ‘lack’ innovation. Our paper cri-tiques these interpretations, and concludes by suggesting that neoliberal dis-courses ignore the varied ways in which ‘alternative creativities’ might underpinother articulations of the future of Australia’s regions.

KEY WORDS

Neoliberalism; creativity; place competition; economic develop-ment; policy; regional Australia

Introduction

In economic geography there has been muchdiscussion of the influence of poststructuralistcritiques of the analysis of ‘the economic’ —the so-called ‘cultural turn’ (see, for example,Lee, 1997; Barnes, 2001). But there has beenanother, mostly unrelated, ‘cultural turn’, trans-forming economic geographical knowledges,

and being applied, in our example, to regionaleconomic development discourses. This second‘cultural turn’ stems less from an epistemologi-cal unsettling of regional development policy,than from a shift in its subject matter — with anincreasing embrace of the idea that creativity,cultural diversity and the cultural industries arevital to regional economies. This embrace of a

94 Geographical Research

© Institute of Australian Geographers 2005

particular version of ‘the cultural’ has initiatednew policy directions and debates and, to someextent, has brought about an overlap of interestbetween regional development promoters andarts policy makers — whose interests were previ-ously considered quite separate (O’Regan, 2001;Gibson L., 2001). This cultural turn has beenfuelled by actual growth in regional culturalindustries (see Gibson, 2002), and by the popu-larity of key books — most notably CharlesLandry’s

The Creative City: A Toolkit for UrbanInnovators

(2001), and Richard Florida’s

TheRise of the Creative Class

(2002). The creativeindustries, ‘creativity’ as human capital, andcultural diversity more generally, have been cen-tral themes. The influence of such books and theresulting discourses of creativity as a regionaleconomic stimulus have filtered through to thenon-metropolitan Australian setting. Severallocal councils, as well as state governmentdepartments, are currently developing policy ini-tiatives aimed at exploiting culture for economicgain and at deploying creativity as a market-based solution to the uneven economic perform-ances of cities and regions.

This paper discusses a particular research andpolicy emphasis that has emerged: specificallythe application of statistical techniques to‘measure’ regional variations in creativity, andsubsequent policy narratives that pressure ‘un-creative’ places to improve their economic per-formance. We begin by fleshing out what wemean by this ‘cultural turn’ in regional develop-ment discourse, and by briefly discussing thework of Richard Florida, an American geogra-pher whose theory of the ‘creative class’ and the‘creative index’ have been highly influential inpolicy circles. We are primarily interested,though, in how creativity has been conceptual-ised and stylised by the propagation of a partic-ular regional development template in theAustralian context — the recent

State of theRegions

report produced by the consultancy firmNational Economics (2002) on behalf of theAustralian Local Government Association.Among other goals, this report was intended toassist local governments in developing cultural

economic planning guidelines. In it, an attemptwas made to apply Florida’s (2002) ‘creativityindex’ to Australian regions.

While creativity is the subject of seemingly‘detached’ spatial analysis in the example wediscuss, the template within which it is absorbedreproduces narratives we have come to associatewith the broader ‘neoliberal project’ in govern-ance. We are less concerned with documentingthe effects of neoliberalism, or critiquing neolib-eralism as a holistic ideology (this much isassumed following the compelling argumentsfound in Dean, 1999, Gough, 2002 and Peck,2004, amongst others). Rather, we seek to revealhow, in this policy moment, cultural discourse ismade neoliberal, that is, how

neoliberalisation

occurs (Peck and Tickell, 2002, 383) asobserved spatial variations of cultural attributesare interpreted through particular ideologicalframes.

Neoliberal thought has altered the practicesof government through the promotion of partic-ular cultural norms and reforms (Dean, 1999).These include social constructions of welfare recip-ients as ‘dependent’; of market rules as important‘natural’ principles guiding individual and col-lective conduct; and of the emphasis placedon altering the culture of poorly-performingindividuals and places in order to conform withthese market rules:

Because change can no longer be a rationallydirected process of social reform, for neolib-eralism it must be conducted according tocultural values, rules and norms. So far theserules and values have best been condensedinto the cultural form of ‘enterprise’ and the‘consumer’. (Dean, 1999, 164)

We argue that, in this more recent ‘turn’ inregional economic development discourse, crea-tivity is a key concept appropriated by govern-ments because of its ability to act as a catalystin the cultural transition of individuals from ‘cit-izens’ into ‘entrepreneurs’ and ‘consumers’, the‘idealised companions’ of the neoliberal state:‘liberated, independent and competitive subjects’(Peck, 2004, 395). Creativity is increasingly

The ‘Cultural Turn’ in Australian Regional Economic Development Discourse 95


popular because it is positioned at the core ofinnovation, invention and enterprise culture, andbecause its industrial outputs — most obviouslythose in the creative industries like film, fashionand music — are trendy consumer objects andare in sectors with substantial workforces, andexport earnings.

In this paper, we are concerned with thedamage that this may inflict upon alternateunderstandings of ‘creativity’, and with thedebilitating discourses that it promotes in rela-tion to poorer regions in Australia. In the policyexample we discuss, these regions are recon-structed as ‘problem’ locations that ‘lack’ crea-tivity, but the actual causes of disparity (unevendistribution of resources, capitalist modes ofproduction, impacts of restructuring, etc.) are notacknowledged. Our paper concludes by suggest-ing that diverse

creativities

might provide auseful counterpoint to this neoliberal creativeeconomy framework by underpinning otherarticulations of the future of Australia’s regions.Such creativities depend on a careful critique of,and commitment to move away from, doctri-naire positions about regional culture, marketforces and place competition.

Creativity in the spotlight: cultural

and

economic policy for regions?

Cultural policy is itself nothing new. Forms of‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, such as art, music andtheatre, have always been a means through whichcertain idealised versions of national identitieswere actively promoted, or indeed contested(Anderson, 1983). In Australia, cultural policyhas been shaped historically by the split natureof governance and of the levels and types ofadministering institutions. Key federally-fundedcultural policy organisations include the Aus-tralia Council (the federal government’s keyarts/cultural policy agency), the AustralianBroadcasting Corporation (ABC), governmentdepartments (of the arts and the informationeconomy), Film Australia, and the AustralianFilm Finance Corporation. For some of theseinstitutions, the maintenance of distinct Austral-ian identities, the celebration of Australian cul-

tural diversity, and support for domestic culturalproducers, have long been key goals. None ofthese institutions was primarily conceived as aregional economic development organisation,although some have developed policies toaddress the spatial imbalance in opportunitiesfor accessing wider (regional) audiences.

More recently, governments at national, stateand local scales have begun interpreting culturein terms of commercial benefits, as well associal priorities. This has stemmed from anembrace of the notion that forms of productionlinked to creativity are vital. In recent timesgovernments have variously cut public fundingfor services and infrastructure in non-metropolitanareas, encouraged places to be more competitivewith each other,

and

have sought alternative— private rather than redistributive — means ofameliorating the negative effects of unevendevelopment. The promotion of creativity, andof the creative industries more specifically, hasbecome an attractive, seemingly uncontroversial,option in this regard. The term ‘creativity’ isgenerally imbued with very positive meanings,with synonyms such as ‘freedom’, ‘innovation’and ‘surprise’, conjuring up images of life andwork beyond boredom, repetition and poverty.Where industries emerge from creativity, suchas music and film and television production,similarly positive images are evoked: of interest-ing and varied work, of fame and notoriety forregional cultures, and of contributions to thevitality and diversity of places.

It is this mix of socio-cultural desires andcharacteristics that underpins the recent theoriesthat promote the creative economy, most notablyin the work of Richard Florida, which hasbecome highly popular among both arts andregional development policy-makers. For Flor-ida (2002), the contemporary economic per-formance of cities and regions is driven by theextent to which they are competitive within anew kind of capitalism, in which the ‘creativeclass’ wields both economic and political power.The ‘creative class’ is made up of those workingin creative industries such as film, fashion andpublishing; they have educational backgrounds



in the arts and design; and are avid consumersof culture: buying ethnic food, popular musicand designer clothing, attending art galleries andfestivals and keeping up with urban trends andfashions.

Florida’s theory of the ‘rise of the creativeclass’ rests on the observation that members ofthis class exercise their spatial and career mobil-ity, to seek out work opportunities in placeswhere creative industries are strong and wherethere is vibrant street life, interesting architec-ture, café culture, ethnic diversity and arts pre-cincts. The policy message is that places oughtto plan aggressively for, and compete to attract,members of this ‘creative class’. To assist in thisprocess, Florida (2002) developed a ‘creativeindex’, a statistical model attempting to quantifythe success of various places, according to thesecriteria. The index aggregates various sub-indices: cultural diversity; gay culture; ‘talent’(measured as human capital represented by thenumber of people holding bachelor degrees);patent registrations; and employment in creativeindustry sectors. It gives each city or region arating or score, allowing us to compare andcontrast more or less creative/successful places.We do not intend to critique the particulars ofFlorida’s ‘creative index’ as a methodology(such critiques have started to emerge else-where; see Malanga, 2004). Nor are we intrinsi-cally opposed to the idea of using a statisticaltechnique to measure spatial variations in crea-tive industry activity (indeed, such approacheshave at times underpinned past work of ourown; see Gibson

et al.

, 2002). Rather, we areconcerned with the problematic policy direc-tions stemming from the ‘creative class’ thesisand index, and with their potential to be destruc-tive when hijacked by a neoliberal agenda thathas already produced uneven and harmfulimpacts on Australia’s regions.

Creativity in Australian regional development discourse

Since the publication of

The Rise of the CreativeClass

in 2002 (and subsequent speaking toursto Australia by Florida), ideas of the creative

economy have permeated the discourses andstrategies of both the Australian arts communityand regional development practitioners. Federalgovernment agencies with regional responsibili-ties, including the Department of Transport andRegional Services, have sought to fund projectswith an eye to fostering local entrepreneurialismand the creative industries; others, such as theDepartment of Communications, InformationTechnology and the Arts, have funded large-scale research projects and developed strategiesfor ‘innovation clusters’ housing new creativeand digital industries. At the state level, the NewSouth Wales Department of State and RegionalDevelopment (SRD) has funded regional festi-vals and initiatives and has drawn on the workof authors and advisors such as Florida and Lan-dry in developing regional creative economypolicies, and both Victorian and Queenslandgovernments have commissioned creative citystrategies.

This conjunction of cultural discourse andeconomic development policy-making is per-haps now most common at the local governmentlevel. Cultural policy has not been a central con-cern of local governments in the past, especiallyin rural Australia (hence the age-old ‘rates,roads and rubbish’ mantra on the role of localcouncils). More recently, though, local govern-ments have taken on responsibility for develop-ing and implementing cultural policy initiatives.This has, in part, emerged from the perceptionthat the ‘closeness’ of local governments to thecommunity allows them to identify and respondto specific cultural needs. As well as this, localgovernments in New South Wales have been for-mally required to comply with a Department ofLocal Government Circular (No. 02/33) whichrequests that they develop cultural planningguidelines. Councils are strongly encouraged toinclude components on the creative industriestherein

.

A comprehensive overview of local reactionsto this circular and to the surrounding discoursesis not yet possible, in part because many localcouncils are only now thinking through the dis-courses of the creative economy in their own



localities, and very few concrete policy outcomeshave as yet emerged. Cultural planning policiesat the local level are likely to reflect the politicalorientation of particular councils, their pre-existingenthusiasm for neoliberal ideas (or for otheragendas, such as celebrating cultural diversity),and for the perceived benefits of promoting cre-ativity and the cultural industries in the placesconcerned. Formal plans to develop culturalindustries have been developed in some metro-politan areas (see Flew

et al.

, 2001), whileselected rural areas, such as Parkes, Tamworthand Orange (NSW) and Gympie (Qld) are seek-ing to remodel or reinvent themselves throughcultural events, festivals and arts strategies.Others are likely to blend creative economydiscourses with already existing strategies tore-orientate agricultural production away fromexport markets and economies of scale, andtowards niche marketing, local diversification,and gastronomic tourism (e.g. Denmark Shire,WA; far north coast NSW; see Curry

et al.

,2001; Gibson, 2002). In some of these cases,cultural policy — once viewed almost exclusivelyas ‘belonging’ with other social justice priorities— is likely to be transformed into

de facto

localeconomic development policy in the absence ofcentral state redistributive programs.

An explicit ‘borrowing’ of Richard Florida’sideas in the context of Australian regional devel-opment discourse, is apparent in the AustralianLocal Government Association’s

State of theRegions

report (2002). This report is actually aseries of consultancy projects undertaken byNational Economics on an annual basis. Eachyear demographic and labour-force data arecompiled for every region in Australia, enablinglocal government managers to monitor theperformance of their locality against others.According to National Economics, it ‘has becomethe benchmark report on regional economicdevelopment, providing a vehicle for research intothe ways regions respond to economic change’(National Economics, 2004, np). In 2002, follow-ing in the footsteps of the popularity of Florida’snew book, National Economics added to itsanalysis a computation of the ‘creativity’ of

each Australian region, in addition to the usualstatistics (age distribution, employment byindustry, etc.):

We have adopted Florida’s techniques toderive the same set of indicators for Austral-ian regions, to facilitate comparison betweenthe two countries and identify correlationsbetween the indicators and high technologyregions. (National Economics, 2002, 1.8–9)

Here, a key text informing local governmentpolicy in Australia directly employed Florida’s‘creativity index’ to create a map of Australianregions (comparable to Florida’s ranking of cit-ies and regions in the United States). The resultsfrom this exercise were intended to assist localcouncils in comparing their area’s performanceagainst others, and to predict ‘the ability ofregions to be successful in the modern glo-balised economy’ (National Economics, 2002, i).The report’s findings thus enable observations tobe made about the capacity of places to competeagainst each other — a widely recognised hall-mark of neoliberal doctrine (Gough, 2002). Theactual results were hardly surprising. Inner areasof the capital cities performed well on the crea-tivity index, and inland divisions fared badly. Ofthe 64 regions analysed across the country, thelowest dozen were all inland agricultural regionsin NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Aus-tralia. ‘Winning’ regions were all in the centralareas of state capital cities — and predominantlyin Sydney and Melbourne. The general patternwas that creativity mirrored other, already exist-ing, indicators of socio-economic status: poorand remote regions, with lower educationalattainment, higher unemployment rates andlarger Aboriginal populations, fared worse thanthose where accumulation is greatest, and wherecompetition for jobs and property have beenmost fierce.

The

State of the Regions

report does acknow-ledge that spatial variations in creativity reflectsocio-economic inequalities (National Econom-ics, 2002, 127). However, the ensuing policyrecommendations stop short of moving awayfrom the promotion of market-based solutions



(a move which many would argue is necessaryto ameliorate disparity). Instead the report pushesfor competitive planning that:

create[s] the preconditions for market condi-tions to work. Planning is . . . required to i)reallocate resources in terms of physical andhuman infrastructure capital to give the lag-ging regions opportunities to move up thecompetitiveness rankings; [and] ii) ensurethat the local and political institutions are inplace . . . so as to ensure that resources trans-ferred to a lagging region are used to createattractive, diverse, open societies which areso important for success in the innovationfocused global economy. (National Econom-ics, 2002, 127)

Though hinting at some measure of redistribu-tion, the report’s recommendations ultimatelycentre on fostering creativity, reiterating the pri-macy of global markets, and the inevitabilityand singularity of the economic development‘game’ that all places must ‘play’ against eachother. Places are encouraged to promote them-selves ‘as locations for direct investment bydomestic and foreign sources’ (p. iii), while thereport instructs local governments to movebeyond their welfare role and form partnershipswith private capital:

local governments will need to recognize thatthis commitment entails major efforts to buildtheir capacity as modern facilitators of sus-tainable regional economic development . . .they need to [be] partners with communityand business interests as well as State andFederal governments. This will include newpublic-private partnerships in infrastructureand community service provision and thebuilding of learning and knowledge basedcommunities. It requires them to move wellbeyond their traditional roles of physical andcommunity infrastructure provision andfinance. (1.7)

Universal equations of ‘success’, and singular‘yardsticks’ against which regions will be meas-ured, are invoked; thus:

the requirements of the globalised economyare that all industries, whether high-tech orlow-tech, must be best practice knowledgebased, have a high capacity for innovation,and be highly entrepreneurial. This is raisingthe bar for all regions. (National Economics,2002, i–ii)

Such generalisations are typical of neoliberalconstructions of ‘the economic’, not just in theirassumption of the importance of the market, butin essentialising it (Dean, 1999, 159), such that‘the globalised economy’ becomes an analysable‘thing’, with inner ‘principles’ or an ‘essence’.

This policy discourse also contributes towhat Haylett (2003) identifies as a damagingconflation of socio-economic inequality and cul-tural attributes. Observable disparities reflect thespatial unevenness of capitalist modes of pro-duction, yet interpretations of this unevennesslink disparities to problematic subject identities.Unsuccessful people are perceived as problem-atic through a binary opposition to the normsset by the successful, creative class, bourgeoissociety. Haylett’s UK example demonstrateshow statistical inequality influences social per-ceptions, such that ‘working-classness is oftenreduced to a condition in need of alleviation’(2003, 56–57). In Australia, these constructionsof class have been used to label both individualsand geographical regions. Thus, according to thecreativity index, whole regions are depicted as‘lagging’ and as ‘lacking’ diversity, innovationor creativity. To paraphrase Haylett (2003, 57),target problems (socio-spatial disparity) easilybecome targeted regions and people — ‘problem’locations that lack creativity and are in need of‘hipsterisation strategies’ (Gibson and Klocker,2004). In the


report, theresults of the creative index benchmarking exer-cise are disheartening for those who are strug-gling the most, that is, those least likely tosucceed in place competition with the keymetropolitan centres heralded as ‘beacons’ of(creative) success. A transformation in subjectidentities is the implicit policy recommendation(and it is a problematic one). Individuals and



local governments are blamed for their low cre-ativity index ranking (i.e. failure), and are urgedto reorient their endeavours towards commodifi-able innovation and to become more educated,tolerant and creative in order to attract more‘creative’ types to their ‘lagging’ places. Thejudging of some regions as more ‘creative’ thanothers in this manner runs the risk of denigratingnot just the political institutions in particularlocations, but also the people who live and workin those places, casting them as lower (creative)class citizens who must individually bear theblame for their region’s lack of performance.

Neoliberal creativity: contradictions and interventions

The recent discourses of the creative economyin regional development, discussed here, offer asingular vision of the future of Australia’sregions linked to new kinds of market dynamics.Like the wider neoliberal discourse, they offeruniversal assessments of the problem (unevendistribution of creativity), and seek proscriptivesolutions. In another parallel to the wider neo-liberal discourse, though, creative economy dis-course is contradictory, becoming more difficultto sustain precisely as it seeks hegemonic status.

For example, creativity can only be har-nessed through cooperation, tolerance of dif-ference, new private-public partnerships, the‘building of learning and knowledge based com-munities’, as well as by the more stringent reg-ulation and policing of intellectual property law.Indeed, Healy (2002, 98) has argued that inno-vation and creativity are not the primary sites atwhich profit accumulates in the so-called ‘new’economy; rather money is now made throughthe increasingly rigid and sophisticated surveil-lance of intellectual property law that pertains tothe commodified outputs of creativity. Gough(2002, 406) has demonstrated that such initiativesand policy fixes actually re-constitute forms ofsocialisation and regulation (‘the coordinationand cooperation of actors other than throughmarkets’) — precisely that which neoliberalismwould denigrate in favour of the supreme primacyof the individual (see also Atkinson, 1999).

Rather than a coherent ‘roll-out’ of a bulldozer-style neoliberal agenda, what is promoted as apolicy solution is a strategic (and problematic)re-orientation of forms of socialisation.

A different intervention in the creative econ-omy discourse concerns a more straightforward,but no less significant, observation about thepotential social impacts of creativity-ledregional development. Florida (and NationalEconomics) argue that ‘openness’ and ‘toler-ance’ are vital to economic performance, butwho are creative places actually open to or tol-erant towards? If poor regions actually ‘succeed’and begin to attract and embrace influxes ofFlorida’s ‘creative professionals’, they riskactively displacing lower-income residents viaprocesses of revitalisation, property marketspeculation and rising rents, necessitatingheightened surveillance and control (a scriptwhich often, if not invariably, follows in-migra-tion of ‘creative’ residents — see Zukin, 1996;MacLeod, 2002; Smith, 2002; Shaw, forthcom-ing). In parts of regional Australia where ‘crea-tivity’ has already had an accelerated impact,‘lifestyle’ migration, the rise of service indus-tries, and commodifications of ‘the rural’ havebeen linked to property market rises and to sub-sequent social displacements and exclusions(see Curry

et al

., 2001; Tonts and Greive, 2002).Furthermore, much of the work generated in thecreative economy is unstable and poorly paid(McRobbie, 2002; Gibson, 2003). We are yet tosee fully the effects of creativity-led policyacross Australian regions but, if comparativeexperiences are relevant, it suggests that singu-lar narratives of the creative economy have apoor capacity to explain or ameliorate the con-tradictory outcomes of their own vision. Floridahimself acknowledges that social displacementis an outcome of ‘creative’ revitalisation, but hedoes not offer a solution. Neither is there anindication, in the


report, ofhow the objective of building creative regionscould be achieved without disadvantaging exist-ing residents. In the neoliberal narrative of thecreative economy, those who fit the preferreddefinition of creativity must be imported to the



region as new migrants — hence strategies toattract the ‘creative class’. Discussions of thepotential for class conflict (and the classistattitudes behind these ideas) remain absent.

Finally, there is the danger of normalising themeanings of ‘creativity’, and de-politicising‘culture’, such that the only relevant forms ofinnovation are those that produce profitableprivate-sector outcomes. ‘Creativity’ is a loadedterm but, in Florida (2002) and in the

State ofthe Regions

report, a limited definition — creativ-ity as entrepreneurial innovation present onlyin some individuals, those engaged in certainindustries — is assumed to be all encompassing.Alternative creativities (graffiti-art, culture-jamming, skateboarding, vandalism, shoplifting,collectivisation . . . ) do not figure in this creativeeconomy script, in part because they are per-ceived as socially disruptive, but also becausethey are less easily transformed into (capitalist)accumulation strategies. Some legitimate, butnon-profitable creativities are downplayed anddevalued in favour of a high-tech/consumptionorientated definition. Such alternative creativi-ties may become essential forms of resistanceagainst these neoliberal agendas and promote,instead, articulations of economic exchangebased on reciprocity, public goods and knowl-edge, and principles of non-exploitation andacceptance of diversity (Community EconomiesCollective, 2001; Gibson, K., 2001; Gibson-Graham, 2003). Alternative creativities have thepotential to underpin counter-neoliberal articula-tions of the future of Australia’s regions, yetthey are unlikely to resonate with this dominant‘creative economy’ policy-agenda.

Conclusion

This paper was not intended as an attempt to de-value the idea of a ‘cultural turn’ in regionaldevelopment policy, but rather the form it seemsto be taking. Creativity remains interesting toacademics and policy-makers precisely becauseit implies a departure from norms, being genu-inely (even radically) new — an antidote to dis-cipline and restriction. There are clearly manybenefits to promoting creativity in a regional

development context: it shifts the focus awayfrom large-scale industrial projects and/orexport-orientated production (that are invariablyecologically unsustainable); and it celebrateselements of social life that bring vitality,vibrancy, surprise and emotional pleasure to agreat many people. It is indeed time that creativ-ity, in its various forms, is taken seriously, cher-ished and rewarded. But despite the manypossibilities that an engagement with creativitymight enable, in the emerging policy discoursewe have sought to critique here, creativity is‘folded back’ within a neoliberal governingproject. Rather than present alternative ways ofimagining regional futures, what seems to behappening is that a singular interpretation ofcreativity is being incorporated into a rather

uncreative

framework, in which private sectorsolutions to regional problems, the ideal of cre-ative, independent, entrepreneurial subjects, andthe primacy of place competition in global mar-kets remain paramount. It demonstrates howneoliberal ideology operates as a normativeframing of economic relations, even co-optingand subsuming ideas that intuitively appear tochallenge its orthodoxy.

Our paper thus outlined an example of how

neoliberalisation

occurs — as opposed to the dis-semination of a ‘thing’ called neoliberalism. Itdiscussed one case where a neoliberal technology— a benchmarking exercise — was brought to bearon Australia’s regions. In our critique, we wishto avoid an unconscious reproduction of the ideathat neoliberalism, like globalisation, is nothingbut a ‘monolithic project emanating from the‘ideological heartlands’ of the United States andthe United Kingdom’ (Larner, 2003), which isinevitably imposed upon local populations in anirreversible fashion. This depiction, thoughemphasising ‘the inescapably political characterof the globalization project and the hegemonicposition of neoliberalism’ (Peck and Tickell,2002: 383), runs the risk of create a depressing,and inaccurate picture of helpless, marginalplaces reluctantly accepting the latest metropol-itan wisdom (and continuing to be burnt by it).Though we are clearly worried about current



policy directions, much of the ‘playing out’ ofthe discourses of creative economy in Australia’sregions is yet to occur: local councils are stillwriting their cultural plans, and much is ‘up inthe air’ with regard to how such discourses willbe received. Some places will probably developtokenistic, rather than comprehensive, culturalplans, as they are forced to comply with thestate government circulars. These may well bethe regions that ‘lag’ on the creative index, andwhich have little realistic hope to reinvent them-selves as ‘innovation hubs’ in the latest fashionindustries (or which might be suspicious of thebenefits of doing so). The ‘creative region’ mayend up being a passing fad. Yet the project ofunsettling the neoliberal in creative economydiscourses still remains important.

Indeed, rather than suggest an abandonmentof creativity altogether, incorporating alternativecreativities into regional economic developmentdiscourse could entail an opening up of newconceptual spaces for policy-makers, that buildon, for instance, the progressive, socialisedelements of policy proscriptions to buildcommunity, provide stable incomes and jobsfor people, form partnerships and becomemore tolerant, but without having to weld theseimpulses to necessarily neoliberal agendas. AsHaylett (2003, 70) has argued:

Contemporary urban-social policy needs thekind of imagination that can understandsomething of the texture of poverty andworking-class lives as ordinary and extraordi-nary ways of being. Without such thinking,working-class people and places can onlyever be ‘less than’ those in whose image theyare reconstructed.

Creativity is not an innate biological presence inonly some individuals, but a potential elementof all our diverse endeavours. We need creativityin policy-making much more than overt policyprescriptions about creativity.

Correspondence

: Dr. Chris Gibson, Geography Program,Faculty of the Built Environment, University of NewSouth Wales, New South Wales 2052, Australia. E-mail:[email protected]

NOTES

1. National Economics is a consultancy firm in the regionaleconomic development policy area. According to itswebsite (National Economics 2004), ‘The NationalInstitute of Economic and Industry Research (NIEIR),trading as National Economics, is an economic research,forecasting and consultancy group, founded in 1984.National Economics’ work is divided into two streams,one financed by subscriptions and products and theother by commissioned consultancy advice, studies andreports’. It is an example of ‘think tank’ consultancyfirms increasingly being called upon to advise govern-ments on economic policy.

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Documents

The ‘Cultural Turn’ in Australian Regional Economic Development Discourse: Neoliberalising Creativity?