A Modern Guide to Creative Economies

Elgar Modern Guides

Edited by Roberta Comunian, King’s College London, UK, Alessandra Faggian, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy, Jarna Heinonen, Professor of Entrepreneurship, School of Economics, University of Turku, Finland and Nick Wilson, King’s College London, UK

Bringing together a series of new perspectives and reflections on creative economies, this insightful Modern Guide expands and challenges current knowledge in the field. Interdisciplinary in scope, it features a broad range of contributions from both leading and emerging scholars, which provide innovative, critical research into a wide range of disciplines, including arts and cultural management, cultural policy, cultural sociology, economics, entrepreneurship, management and business studies, geography, humanities, and media studies.

‘For the past two decades, governments, academics, and industry groups have celebrated, measured, and advocated for the creative economy and its accelerated growth. Largely thought of as the production and consumption of creative goods across multiple sectors and geographies, the creative economy is actually much more – it is the sum total of our expressive lives – how we create and share human expression – which is both critical and complex and subject to policy, market forces, networks, professional practice, and community-based values. A Modern Guide to Creative Economies is essential reading for considering and reflecting on how we build healthy, equitable, and sustainable conditions for the creation, celebration, and exchange of human expression. The book, and its collection of brilliant essays, offers fresh insight that will inspire scholars, students, and leaders in arts and culture to ask new and different questions and ultimately to imagine possibilities for not just growing our creative economies, but also for sustaining the humans who are critical for creative expression to thrive.’
– Steven Tepper, University of Arizona, US

‘In an age of knowledge and creativity, we can all need a guide to provide a better understanding of how our times work and the challenges we face. This book does the job. It pushes the boundaries of current knowledge to make us better understand creative economies. It also expands the meaning of creativity in the context of cultural development, care, and social justice.’
– Charlotta Mellander, Jönköping International Business School, Sweden

‘Read, reference and engage with this book. You will be treated to a grand tour d’horizon of the contemporary European project in cultural and creative industries. Broadly multidisciplinary and multimethodological, it is positive critique that essays ways and means to work for more inclusive and sustainable futures in understanding creative economies.’
– Stuart Cunningham, Queensland University of Technology, Australia