The brief for this report was to examine the role and contribution of the hubs to the creative economy and policies/government support for the development of hubs illustrated with examples mainly from the UK and Europe.
The approach adopted followed from the brief. The first section of the report situates the role of hubs to the rise of the creative economy. Attention is drawn to the particularity of the creative economy and how it is different from ‘culture’ and the ‘economy’. Some key characteristics of the creative economy are described.
The second section reviews what - in a European sense – hubs are, how they are defined and what function they perform. Hubs are highlighted as the foundation blocks for capacity building in the creative economy
The third section tackles the policy question. The issue of policy transfer is linked to that of knowledge transfer, something that is context dependent, and in which the ‘object’ transferred itself undergoes transformation: thus producing creativity or innovation. Learning from the experience of Europe, the report stresses the need to develop strategies of local capacity building with creative communities to establish both resources, and weaknesses, as opposed to top-down imposition of a generic form and format of a creative hub. The report suggests that a hubs strategy should be a process of knowledge acquisition and capability building.
This report represents the first part of a heuristic process. Workshops and interviews with hub managers enabled the testing the framework and learning more about local challenges to hub formation.