The Death of Creativity

At the risk of perpetuating that old cliché about necessity being the mother of invention, or worse yet, simply being naive, we'll play the devil's advocate and make the claim that formalised attempts to harness the power of the 'creative industries' is one sure way to kill creativity.

With the collapse of everything else in Ireland, the creative industries emerged as the flavour of the month, the buzz word answer to the country's malaise. Of course, the debate about economically harnessing creativity in Ireland is anything but new. One of the first big studies of the issue – the Scandanavian Report – was commissioned by the visionary William H Walsh back in the 50s and lead to the creation of Kilkenny Design.

Oddly enough, one of the very first projects we ever worked on in Ireland was the mammoth 250 page Report on the Creative Industries that was produced back in 1999. Since then we also designed another weighty tome on the future of the creative industries in the west of Ireland for the Western Development Commission. But this represents merely the tip of the report iceberg on the subject of creativity in Ireland.

Ironically, many of the structures and initiatives called for in all those reams of paper, were either tossed on the recessionary rubbish heap or left to wither and die on the vine, at the same time that the politicians holding the purse strings started lauding creativity as the cure for the country's ills. And herein lies the problem – creativity is badly understood by a public sector under pressure to show quick, quantifiable returns.

Is There an Answer?

Why creativity seems to thrive better in some locations than others is of course an extremely complex question to answer. But one fundamental reason jumps to the top of the list – cost of living. Take the example of Berlin, now considered the creative capital of Europe, although the gap between hype and reality may be quite significant indeed.