On 21 July Hong Kong will issue a set of stamps in honour of the city’s creative industries. The four stamps have been designed by Arde Lam and focus on different creative activities.
Stamps worth $1.40 are dedicated to advertising, architecture and design. Stamps that cost $2.40 show digital entertainment, publishing, software and computing. If you […]

Earlier this year the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs asked KL to explore what kind of difficulties creative entrepreneurs run into when starting up their firms. Apart from studying a number of creative industries initiatives in different Dutch cities, KL also looked abroad to the UK, Finland, Belgium and Australia. Creative investor NESTA (UK) caught […]

Long-term inmates at HMP Gartree, Leicestershire (UK), are offered a chance to design their own prison this summer. Architect Will Alsop will organise a series of workshops with the aim of visualising a “creative prison”. The creative prison should emphasise rehabilitation rather than punishment.
To Alsop, the concept of a creative city as a place “where […]

Canada has introduced a bill to amend the Canadian Copyright Act. According to the Department of Industry
the legislation is intended to implement the provisions of the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Treaties, clarify liability for Internet service providers, facilitate the use of new technologies for educational and research purposes, and harmonize the treatment of […]

It seems this time it’s serious. Nigeria’s Copyright Commission (NCC)recently launched a zero-tolerance action plan against piracy (STRAP). NCC’s director-general, Mr. Adebambo Adewopo argued that due to ten years of legal incapacity to enforce copyright law, piracy has grown into a professional industry in Nigeria. The NCC claims that piracy has an adverse effect on […]

James Purnell, Britain’s new Minister for Creative Industries, has launched a major debate on how Britain can further strengthen the creative industries. In a key note speech in London, Purnell argued that it’s now time to put the creative industries back at the top of the economic agenda:
The creative industries dropped out of our core […]

According to Sir Peter Hall’s Cities in Civilization (1998) creative cities have always existed. Cities have always been places that can trigger creativity among its residing communities. As a metaphor, however, the creative city first started to gain momentum in the 1990s. Today, many policy makers and scholars all over the world talk about creative […]

Already in the first half of the twentieth century the term ‘cultural industry’ was coined. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, two scholars from the so-called Frankfurt School, heavily criticised the rise of a standardised mass culture, which in their eyes played down all oppositional expressions, styles and cultural practices. Today, the cultural or creative industries […]

Nederland Kennisland|Knowledgeland ThinkTank (KL) is an independent Dutch think tank based in Amsterdam. Founded in 1999, KL’s mission is to help establish The Netherlands as one of the key regions in the international knowledge economy, preferably in a way that creates both economic and social value. The activities of KL are threefold:
1. Together with public […]