Creativity and the Rural Economy

In 2001 the creative industries accounted for £112.5 billion of revenue, employed 1.3 million people, contributed £10.3 billion to the UK balance of trade, made up 5% of our Gross Domestic Product and continue to grow two to three times faster than the rest of the economy.

Yesterday SE published their figures for the last financial year. They showed that the Scottish economy grew by just 0.6%, one third the rate of the rest of the UK and a quarter of the rate of the rest of the world as a whole. With the exception of Japan, Malta, Turkey, Argentina and Mexico we have one of the lowest growth rates in Europe and one of the worst in the developed world.

Let’’s consider what this means. We know that the creative industries are an important sector in the UK economy. They are “those industries which have their origin in individual creativity … and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”.

Of all the patents granted throughout the world for new inventions in the last 50 years, 40% have been to inventors from the UK, and this trend is continuing. Most of the innovation behind the technologies that dominate modern life are Scottish; the telephone, television and fax, and many aspects of the new biotech sciences.

We are the world’s great research and development department; the seat of distinguished universities and depositories of knowledge, the creator of new communications technologies. Therefore it’s strange that in this 3rd industrial revolution, one predicated on knowledge and underpinned by digital technology we are the losers. We have an uncanny knack of failing to convert creativity into cash and instead contrive to keep academia and business apart; academia confined within the stone quadrangles of ancient universities, condemned to an existence where success is too often measured by the quantity of published material rather than by it’s useful contribution to our culture and economy; our businesses meanwhile are coralled in ghettoes called “parks” or within corporate palaces in our central business districts. There’s little encouragement for a business to invest in R&D, or little left to invest after government takes its cut.

One thing’s for sure; we will continue to be the creativity behind the world’s biggest brands unless we find ways to work with academia to ensure we create new kinds of products, services and businesses. And there’s no rule that says we have to work in cities. On both counts I thank Auchencruive for hosting this evening’s Club.

Since government began to quantify the creative industries sector back in 1998, economic strategy has also been one of focussing on urban centres. But, as Robert Burns (our original creative industrialist) continues to show us, creativity also happens outside cities. Digital communication makes a virtue out of Scottish geography and arguably there’s never been a better time to re-examine how we develop our rural economy.

There are already many good reasons to locate creative industries in rural locations:

Better quality of life (access to world-class amenities)

Lower overheads

Excellent infrastructure and communications, including road and air links with major cities

Closeness to world-class centres of reseach: Roslyn, Hannah, SAC and an increasing number of new research facilities

Contrasting environments

Opportunity for new/different models of creative organisations, including new hybrid urban/rural protoypes

We’ve had a studio in central Glasgow for 16 years. It’s great but now we’re creating a reseach centre in deepest Ayrshire. We have a wider range of employees than we originally had, all with different priorities. We need more space, quiet space and flexible space and that’s expensive in Glasgow. It takes less that an hour to commute to from one location to the next and we have access to another international airport and great business facilities Royal Troon and Turnberry that broaden our appeal to overseas clients (and UK ones) … and we’re not alone in our thinking. There are a growing number of creative business here already.

I’d welcome a Scottish revaluation of the creative industries sector that looks are our special institutions, our key creative businesses and our geography. I’d welcome a revaluation that doesn’t just follow the simple London model of clustering businesses in urban areas. And I’d welcome any encouragement for creative businesses to team with acknowledged centres of research.

Given Scotland’s current economic performance and the £8.3m funding left of the original 3 year/£25m funding allocated by SE to the fasting growing sector of the UK economy, we’ve nothing to lose and an awful lot to gain.