This report maps the presence of creative firms across Britain as a first step towards establishing their impact on regional innovation.
Key findings:
- Although London and a few ‘other creative hubs’ contain the most visible and economically important creative agglomerations, they do not have a monopoly on creativity in Great Britain. There are many other places where the creative industries are present, and might play an economically significant role
- Creative industries tend to cluster in certain places, and benefit from ‘agglomeration’ and ‘urbanisation’ economies when they do.
- Collaboration between different creative sectors suggests policymakers should harness complementarities between sectors instead of treating all creative industries the same.
Our mapping methodology has produced for the first time a rich and multi-layered picture of the geography of creativity in Great Britain.
Although London has a predominant position in most creative sectors, and especially in the most intrinsically creative stages of the value chain, there are other places across Great Britain with strong creative presence. The report uses economic geography techniques to address how spatial dimension affects creative industries role in innovation in growth.
The aim is to improve our understanding of how creative industries contribute to regional innovative performance.
Authors:
L. De Propris, C. Chapain, P. Cooke, S. MacNeill and J. Mateos-Garcia
