Grasping the Creative Agenda

First of all must decide what is the creative agenda? What is to be done?

I believe that the focus of this agenda must be to commercialise Scottish creativity and leverage Scottish creative heritage. By this I mean our heritage of innovation, our unique system of creative education and the understanding, exploitation and communication of the special conditions within the Scottish environment that continues to allow us to be one of the most creative places on earth.

Thanks to technological revolution ‘Creativity’ is now on the ‘to do’ list of almost every other major country. Some of the most unlikely countries: Singapore and Northern Ireland have already made creativity a national priority because they understand that it makes cash and delivers many additional social and cultural benefits. Therefore we must act quickly. We’ve been living off our creative heritage and the ad-hoc contributions of creative people and institutions with no plan and little investment.

I believe that we only grasp the creative agenda through active ownership of that agenda. This means taking the decision to value, and be seen to value, Scottish commercial creativity in all its manifestations: in the sciences, arts and technologies—working across disciplines and concentrating on the connections between these areas of activity which is a Scottish creative characteristic.

It means removing educational, economic and cultural barriers to commercial creativity.

It means actively actively supporting commercial creativity rather than cottage crafts. And it means supporting creativity in order to allow it to fertilise our business sector and the economy rather dismissing for being too risky strange or new.

It means actively supporting creativity far beyond the areas of activity that can be protected by current intellectual property laws (as these offer only limited opportunities—and don’t include many aspects of the service and other industries).

It means actively supporting new ways of working and the development of entirely new types of business predicated on the creation and exploitation of new knowledge, processes, products and services.

My agenda would consist of 3 tactical actions and 3 strategic goals.

Tactical actions include:

Supporting growth of Scottish creative businesses and ensuring that they have a worthwhile future in Scotland.

Supporting leading-edge creative professional practice through industry-led education, life long learning and research.

Supporting the creation of new knowledge and innovative business through industry-led research.

Strategic actions include:

Unlocking the potential of Scotland’s unique creative heritage.

Promoting Scotland as the world’s most creative nation and the world’s Research & Development department.

Planning to allow Scotland to become the thinking behind many of the world’s biggest brands.

(Scotland is about creative thinking and creative doing.)

Tactical actions—further details

Supporting the growth of Scottish creative businesses and ensuring that they have a worthwhile future in Scotland.

– infrastructure & networks
– support for technology
– support for R&D
– educated employees
– support for capitalisation/commercialisation/location

Supporting leading-edge creative professional practice through industry-led education, life long learning and research.

– new educational partnerships (support for businesses as educational resource)
– industry-led research

Supporting the creation of new knowledge and innovative business through industry-led research.

– new industry-led research partnerships
– incentives for businesses to invest in R&D
– support for business to become incubators
– support for commercialisation of industry-led research & pilot projects

Strategic actions—further details

Unlocking the potential of Scotland’s unique creative heritage.

– Communicate, educate and celebrate creative legacy, nationally and internationally—tell new and surprising stories

Promoting Scotland as the world’s most creative nation and the world’s Research & Development department.

– internationally and to all sectors, including cultural and business sectors
– through association with the best people/businesses in the world

Planning to allow Scotland to become the thinking behind many of the world’s biggest brands.

– through actively supporting the creation of new business and cultural relationships

(Scotland is about creative thinking and creative doing.)