Out now: MyCreativity reader

Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter (eds.), MyCreativity Reader: A Critique of Creative Industries, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2007.
ISBN: 987-90-78146-04-9
Order a copy of the book by sending a message to marijevaneck (at) networkcultures (dot) org.
Download a low-res pdf here.

about the book: The MyCreativity Reader is a collection of critical research into the creative industries. The material develops out of the MyCreativity Convention on International Creative Industries Research held in Amsterdam, November 2006. This two-day conference sought to bring the trends and tendencies around the creative industries into critical question.

The ‘creative industries’ concept was initiated by the UK Blair government in 1997 to revitalise de-industrialised urban zones. Gathering momentum after being celebrated in Richard Florida’s best-seller The Creative Class (2002), the concept mobilised around the world as the zeitgeist of creative entrepreneurs and policy-makers.

Despite the euphoria surrounding the creative industries, there has been very little critical research that pays attention to local and national and variations, working conditions, the impact of restrictive intellectual property regimes and questions of economic sustainability. The reader presents academic research alongside activist reports that aim to dismantle the buzz-machine.


MyCreativity Reader Contents

Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter
Proposals for Creative Research: Introduction to the MyCreativity Reader

1. Andrew Ross
Nice Work if You Can Get It: The Mercurial Career of Creative Industries Policy

2. Toby Miller
Can Natural Luddites Make Things Explode or Travel Faster?

3. Marion von Osten
Unpredictable Outcomes: A Reflection After Some Years of Debates on Creativity and Creative Industries

4. David Hesmondhalgh
Creative Labour as a Basis for a Critique of Creative Industries Policy

5. Matteo Pasquinelli
ICW – Immaterial Civil War: Prototypes of Conflict within Cognitive Capitalism

6. Geert Lovink and Christoph Spehr
Out-Cooperating the Empire?

7. Michael Keane
Re-imagining Chinese Creativity: The Rise of a Super-Sign

8. Aphra Kerr
From Boston to Berlin: Creativity and Digital Media Industries in the Celtic Tiger

9. Max Nathan
Wrong in the Right Way? Creative Class Theory and City Economic Performance in the UK

10. Monika Mokre and Elisabeth Mayerhofer
The Creative Industries in Austria: The Glories of the Past vs. the Uncertainties of the Present

11. Annelys de Vet
Creativity is Not About Industry

12. BAVO (Gideon Boie and Matthias Pauwels)
The Murder of Creativity in Rotterdam: From Total Creative Environments to Gentripunctural Injections

13. Merijn Oudenampsen
Back to the Future of the Creative City: An Archaeological Approach to Amsterdam’s Creative Redevelopment

14. Brian Holmes
Disconnecting the Dots of the Research Triangle: Corporatisation, Flexibilisation and Militarisation in the Creative Industries

15. Joost Smiers
What if We Would Not Have Copyright? New Business Models for Cultural Entrepreneurs

16. Danny Butt
Craft, Context and Method: The Creative Industries and Alternative Models

17. Annelys de Vet
Strange

18. Alex Foti
The Pink Rebellion of Copenhagen: Danish Youth Revolt and the Radicalisation of the European Creative Underclass

19. Geert Lovink and Andrew Ross
Organic Intellectual Work: Interview with Andrew Ross

Appendices

Program of MyCreativity conference

Summary of the ‘Arts & Creative Industries’ Debate: My-Creativity Mailinglist, December 2006

Wikipedia entry of Creative Industries

Sebastian Olma
On the Creativity of the Creative Industries: Some Reflections

Contributors’ biographies

Share