O’Conall Street

Can Northern Ireland become a creative economy and what is a creative economy anyway?

My boss and Weber Shandwick CEO in the UK and Ireland, Colin Byrne, referred to a great book by John Howkins in a recent blog on Byrne Baby Byrne.  Howkins considers the contribution ‘creative industries’ make to the economy. He defines a creative industry as one which make money from ideas. Other economists are also writing on this subject, most notably Richard Florida whose books include the Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class.

The interesting thing about these thinkers’ approach to creativity is that they define a creative economy is a much broader sense then you would think. Its not just writers, actors and artists. It also includes lawyers, scientists and dare I say it PR consultants. Anyone who (should) thinks for a living. Magnets for ’talented’ people from all over the world, they are places people will move to for work.  The Republic of Ireland has become according to a number of matrix one of the most creative economies on the globe. For centuries a place of artistic creativity it is now also a a major IT and scientific research centre, something that will grow its wealth as well as culture.

Florida identifies three common characteristics of creative economies:

1. Talent - they attract the smartest and most gifted to move their to work;
2. Technology - they have the infrastructure to allow people to work, and;
3. Tolerance - they must be able to accommodate many different types from the IT wizard, the research scientist and the radical artist and make them fell equally at home.

The south has come a long way in the past decade to meet the three T test. The North has the talent and the technology. But will it transform itself into a tolerant place?

I’ll return to this minor obsession of mine later. In the meantime if anyone knows Nora Jones tell her we could set up studio for her here in Belfast!

The Dubs won on Saturday by the way. Dublin - Kerry semifinal. Classic stuff. 

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 6:19 am and is filed under Music, Public Affairs, Science, Sports, Technology, The Media, Weber Shandwick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.