On 1st June 2023, City-REDI held a hybrid seminar with Nick Henry from Coventry University about Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Place-Based Development.
For some decades the harnessing of culture and creativity has been cast as a local and regional development option – such as through regeneration, quarters, classes and clusters. In, around and beyond these development terminologies has been an expanding corpus of cultural and creative freelancers whose growth and range have outpaced wider industrial and sectoral demographics.
Amongst many things, the recent pandemic foregrounded the essential nature of culture and creativity to community resilience as, at one and the same time, creative freelancers experienced new levels of economic precarity as they fell through pandemic-inspired policy support responses. Recast through a place-based perspective, the seminar will outline the numerous, multiple contributions and value of creative freelancers to the economic, social and cultural lives of sustainable places.
How could policy respond to reflect their currently underinvested role in place economies?