With the Conservative Party taking office in Canada, creative industries are impatiently waiting to see how the new government will deal with issues of arts, culture and creativity. During the weeks preceding the federal elections the Toronto Star repeatedly stressed the absence of arts and cultural policy from the election campaigns. (See, for instance, this […]

The Louise T Blouin Foundation has given a $100,000 donation in support of the work of the Cultural Committee of the Bring New Orleans Back (BNOB) Commission, chaired by Cesar Burgos and Wynton Marsalis. The committee today announced the plan for redevelopment and growth of the city’s cultural assets and economy.
The City of New […]

China has started the new year with the Third Annual New Year’s Forum on Chinese Cultural Industries.
Gross output value of the Chinese cultural industries reached about 150 billion US dollars in 2004, and that value may grow to 500 billion dollars in the next five years. No wonder, then, that Chinese vice minister of the […]

Australia’s Working Group of the Prime Minister’s Engineering and Innovation Council (PMEIC) has recently published a report about the role of creativity in the innovation economy. The report starts with the observation that “what the arts, social sciences and humanities call creativity, science and technology calls invention or discovery.” The Working Group argues that the […]

Dec. 16 2005
Press Release - United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNCTAD and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Special Unit for South-South Cooperation are launching today in Shanghai a Partnership for Technical Assistance for Enhancing the Creative Economy in Developing Countries.
The launch coincides with the UN Global South-South Symposium on the Creative Economy, an […]

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics has just released a report on ‘International flows of selected cultural goods and services, 1994-2003‘.
Three countries (the United Kingdom, United States and China) produced 40 percent of the world’s cultural trade products in 2002, while Latin America and Africa together accounted for less than four percent according to the new […]

On 19 December the United Nations hold their second UN Day for south-south cooperation. This year’s theme are the creative industries. The opening segment will be chaired by Ambassador Hjalmar Hannesson, Permanent Representative of Iceland to the United Nations, Vice-President of the High Level Committee on South-South Cooperation (HLC), on behalf of Ambassador Eladio Loizaga, […]

The UAE emirate of Fujairah has anounced plans for a completely new media innovation cluster called ‘Creative City’. According to the TradeArabia News Service
“Creative City will complement existing media clusters in the region, and further facilitate creativity in all fields, for both freelancers as well as companies in a variety of specialties, such as training, […]

Here is a nice commentary on creative industries and the Jamaican economy. Clyde McKenzie starts by illustrating Jamaica’s problem as follows:
“The problem to me is akin to man who has great athletic potential but has an injury to his feet and is waiting on his limbs to heal themselves without his intervention.”
McKenzie’s main concern […]

Another chapter on how China is strolling away from the industrial economy:
Shanghai to invest in creative industries by Zhang Shunyi — THE Shanghai government will invest more in creative industries to reduce reliance on the manufacturing sector.