After the crisis: creative construction

Here's a very thoughtful, and, in my opinion, useful piece from Carlota Perez with a pretty sound diagnosis of some of the macroeconomic and historic reasons for the current malaise - with a useful set of recommendations:

"Paradoxically, this environmental constraint may yet be the saving factor for inducing massive innovation, sustaining economic growth, while also shifting consumption away from unsustainable lifestyles. There is an enormous wealth creating potential in facilitating a major overhaul of most products and production methods and a redesign of consumption patterns to stress quality, durability, low energy consumption, low or no emissions, recyclability, upgradeability etc. That is the only sustainable way to both give a powerful boost to the US and European economies and to incorporate the hundreds of millions of new consumers that full globalization offers to bring into the market from the rest of the world. The true key to unleash all that transformation is the establishment of very strict environmental regulation accompanied by clear incentives. That may require a broad consensus among global corporations to lobby governments in that direction (that is, if they can overcome the habit of thinking from quarter to quarter in order to please the stock markets). "

Blogging the 2008 crunch

To kick off this blog - a selection of recent news stories:

While the traditional cultural economy feels the squeeze...

Trouble in the art market - FT Alphaville on the collapse at the top end of the market for fine art

Charities hit by double whammy as costs and demands for services increase - from Third Sector

Walt Disney World is crunched...

Google cuts its contractor workforce by 10,000 people...

and technology and social media continues to disrupt and destroy the old ways of doing things...

PC Magazine to produce its final print edition in January

and Felix Salmon wonders how bloggers are ever going to earn any money, especially if they syndicate their content to magazine majors who are themselves running on empty...

we are reminded of a key passage from a 2007 GLA Economics report on London's creative industries:

"London’s creative industries are linked, by location and dependency for custom, to Financial and Business Services, and are additionally strongly dependent on luxury expenditure, making the demand for their products elastic and more than normally
vulnerable to cyclic fluctuation. This in large degree accounts for the 2001-2004 decline in creative industry employment and also to their relatively sharp growth during 1995-2001 and again in 2005." (p.27)

Over the coming few weeks and months, we're going to scrutinise and examine some of the effects of the financial crisis and the recession on the UK's creative and cultural economy, in all its variants - social and commercial, not-for profit and rampantly market-driven - and explore some of the issues.