Future Forming: A Rethink on the Creative Economy

Abstract

This paper is about the ‘creative industries’, an unloved and yet fiercely debated concept that originated in the UK, developed in Australia, and has been taken up in China and other emerging markets around the world. Countering the notion that the creative industries are becoming a spent force, we argue that, reimagined on an entirely bigger scale, shifting our focus of enquiry away from industries themselves and back on creativity, on where it comes from, how it connects people and what it is used for, the idea of creative industries – or more accurately the creative economy – enables us to gain new insights into emergent cultural and economic forces that are shaping our future – social, cultural and economic.