WITH the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000 by the United Nations General Assembly, global attention has been increasingly focused on the design of comprehensive strategies in which to achieve economic development that is truly sustainable and that contributes directly to the eradication of the scourge of poverty. These changes have come alongside changes in how we perceive the role of culture in development. Indeed, culture is now widely perceived to be an inalienable part of sustainable development.

This changed perception constitutes a veritable paradigm shift in which cultural diversity and cultural industries have become linked as key elements in new development strategies. This linkage comes about because the assets for developing the cultural industries are to be found within the infinitely rich – and bottomless – pool of cultural resources. Cultural resources are unlimited and exist in all communities, without exception. Therefore, as the asset base on which to build new industries, and to tackle issues of development in all communities, including the poorest, the cultural industries have immense possibilities.

Cultural industries, also known as creative or copyright industries, include a wide array of economic activities, ranging from crafts through music and film to publishing and the flourishing multimedia industry. What cultural industries have in common is that they all use creativity, skill and intellectual property to create products and services with social and cultural meaning.

Cultural industries have gained growing importance as an economic force over the last 20 years – a trend that is closely linked to the rise of the information society and the growing consumption of cultural goods and services. The challenge for governments is how to use creativity and cultural industries as a comprehensive strategy for poverty reduction and as an engine for local economic development.

In recent years, cultural industries have become one of the fastest growing economic sectors in industrialized economies in Europe and North America. Recently, the more developed economies of the Asia-Pacific region are beginning to recognize the potential of cultural industries as a powerful driver for both economic and social growth. This new perception is reflected in such statements as those found in Hong Kong’s Baseline Study on Creative Industries, published in 2003. ‘The conception of creative industries is a variegated notion for describing a rising economic sector, the dynamics of industrial collaboration as well as the changing landscape of the employment market. The rise of the creative sector concurrently underscores the deep-seated transformation of the economic domain from a manufacturing-based economy to a consumption-based economy, by which culture is rediscovered as one of the most important resources for economic development.’

This is a brave vision, but when we examine reality, we find that although the countries of Asia have a vast wealth of cultural assets, both physical and intangible, and the populations of the region are rich in cultural knowledge and traditional skills, the world map of cultural industries shows a rapidly widening knowledge and information gap between developing and industrialized countries, between West and East, between North and South. Similarly, the international debate on cultural industries, creative urban development, and the information and knowledge-based economy is overwhelmingly dominated by the experience, resources and economic realities of the North.

In many countries of the region, cultural industries are not yet recognized as an economic sector in their own right. This lack of formal recognition and an inability to promote the sector’s interests within existing planning and policy frameworks hampers the development of cultural industries as a truly significant economic force in the Asia-Pacific region.

 

The relative invisibility of the cultural industries sector is reflected in the widespread absence of effective and large-scale programming for culture as part of an integrated strategy to achieve overall development goals. There is also a relative lack of baseline data on the cultural industries in the Asia-Pacific region. The absence of a conceptual framework and the lack of data make it difficult for policy-makers to make evidence-based decisions on how to invest to support the expansion of the cultural industries sector, or to know if their policy decisions and investments are having the desired results. Therefore, the economic potential of the region’s cultural industries is not currently being realized.

In such an environment, the cultural industries sector does not easily grow but tends to remain an isolated cultural or educational concern that cannot contribute much to the overall development process. The lack of policy-level support that hampers the development of cultural industries is rooted in the perception that these enterprises have a limited economic potential. In fact, the cultural industries are trapped in attitudes that have grown out of now-extinct patronage systems for cultural production, wherein economic competitiveness was not a consideration. Indeed, many would-be-entrepreneurs in creative enterprises cry out of government subsidies to help them survive, not realizing that the patronage system has given way to market forces.

 

While the lack of funding is certainly a major problem for small-scale cultural industries in almost all developing countries, it is not the cause of the problems these industries are facing but rather a symptom. The real problem is much more fundamental, and has to do with the way these industries are perceived by those in decision-making positions who fail to give cultural industries the attention they deserve in national planning and development strategies.

This lack of attention by policy-makers is extremely short-sighted if the development goal of poverty eradication is to be taken seriously. Contrary to more traditional industrial development, cultural industries offer a particular opportunity for local socio-economic development due to their often small size and close links to the community.

Cultural industries have particular traits that make them especially suitable for development strategies targeting poverty reduction. These traits include (a) the potential to penetrate hereto unresponsive sectors of the economy and therefore local development; (b) the fact that cultural industries cross-cut traditional sectors and policy-making areas; and (c) the complexities of value assessment of cultural property and the extension of intellectual property protection.

Indeed, when we look at the data on cultural industries which has been systematically collected from the Asian region, we see that even without structured policy support the sector is a rapidly growing economic factor, typically outstripping other sectors by 3-4%.

 

Accompanying this economic growth, we also find accompanying political and social transformations. This phenomenon has been well described by Justin O’Conner: ‘The growth in cultural consumption mean(s) not just increased purchase of cultural goods but new uses of these goods in the construction of individual and social identity. These new forms of consumption – fast moving, highly segmented, increasingly cultural – have placed the cultural component of many consumer goods at the forefront of their economic value.

‘These are large scale transformations... [and] the emergence of the cultural industries [s] part of this shift, a response to it, an active negotiation. In terms of the local level we could call it "cultural renegotiation as business".’

The ramifications of these transformations are not only significant for our economies, but also affect the way we conceive society and governance, and in the way we structure our communities.

Richard Florida, in his important 2002 work, The Rise of the Creative Class, indentified three key conditions that must be satisfied if the potential of creativity is to be harnessed and developed into productive cultural industries. The key conditions are: ‘a high level of efficiency in the provision of infrastructure such as communications and social and protection services… a plentitude of social and cultural amenities that affect the quality of the urban environment… and an institutional milieu that protects individual rights and is tolerant towards diversity.’

As this analysis indicates, one of the main challenges for governments wanting to develop their cultural industry potential is the need to link the national policy to the global perspective. As Justin O’Conner has observed: ‘…the cultural sector is an articulation of the global and the local. It is also an articulation of the large and the small. The cultural industries are predominantly made up of small businesses.’

 

Culture industries are businesses, and businesses are subject to market forces. Because market economics holds increasingly more sway in various spheres of contemporary society – not least in the planning modules used by government and international agencies alike – the adaptation of economic models to explain cultural productivity has become a matter of both political necessity and practical concern.

In discussing the economic potential of cultural resources , the valuation of a society’s accumulated cultural assets which we call ‘heritage’ becomes a matter of some importance. Cultural heritage resources are valued in not one, but a number of different ways – according to their economic value, aesthetic value, cultural value, political value and educational value. While these values are important and may be utilized as forms of individual capital, their real value is as a pool of common capital, available to be utilized for the public good. This is the common thread that links all valuations of cultural heritage assets. However, despite the high value that is intuitively assigned to heritage assets, traditional economic models fail in important ways to capture this value. This is because the traditional models have been designed to express all values in terms of prices, which are established in markets in accordance with supply and demand. On the other hand, analytical models from cultural fields, while offering a variety of ways to conceptualize the social value of heritage, are often unrelated to economic discourse.

 

However, this disjunction need not be. At the level of practical implementation, successful cultural industry promotion involves attention to both economic and social development goals. A case in point is the ‘One Village One Product’ movement which was originally started in Oita Prefecture in Japan and which has been very successfully adapted by the Thai government in its ‘One Tambon One Product’ (OTOP) campaign. The experience of the tourism industry provides another model where the exploitation of cultural assets generates a whole range of income-generating activities at community level leading directly to social as well as economic development.

The private sector has emerged as an important stakeholder in developing the cultural industries, with the representation of local interests critical for sustainable results. Certain key concerns characterize the private sector’s interest in culture. One of these is the premium placed on creativity and innovation. Another is the demand that cultural assets be managed, not just in a sustainable manner but also incorporating their reproductive growth potential. What emerges is a unified vision, integrating tangible and intangible heritage resources as building blocks for development.

Again, Justin O’Conner’s words are apt: ‘New cultural entrepreneurs operate as loose, fluid, highly creative clusters operating outside or on the edge of the public funding structures. These clusters are articulated to locally situated global businesses (the large broadcasting or film companies, for example), to global corporate distribution networks (such as music recording), and to the more open markets made possible by the Internet and e-commerce.’

Are we in the midst of a global paradigm shift which makes cultural creativity the new building block of the world’s socio-economic structure? It seems perhaps so. Let me again quota Richard Florida, who in turn cites Paul Romer: ‘The creative economy …has grown powerful and pervasive because it is supported by a formidable infrastructure. Paul Romer has argued that "the most important ideas of all are meta-ideas," which are "ideas about how to support the production and transmission of other ideas." The creative economy is undergirded by a new set of institutions that have emerged to do just that.’

 

While the rapidly increasing demand for cultural goods and services is the main economic justification for applying a comprehensive policy and planning framework to this sector, there are powerful social and political arguments to be made as well. Beyond economics, cultural industries produce cultural and social meanings and thus have the potential to induce wider social and human development, both in industrialized and developing societies. Cultural diversity is the source of creativity and innovation, not only within the arts but for society at large. Creativity is one of the key forces structuring development. The promotion of cultural industries is the way to release the economic potential of creativity for sustainable and equitable human development.