Dynamics and differences across creative industries in the UK: exploring the case of Birmingham.

The creative industries (CIs) have been the centre of attention of a wide range of academic research and policy interventions in the UK in the last ten years. The paper aims to critically explore differences emerging across a range of CIs sub-sectors within the DCMS definition and to assess their diversity in reference to performance, business dynamics and support infrastructure. Many authors tend to address the CIs as a coherent sector and although many studies have exposed the dynamics which characterise different sub-sectors they rarely present a systematic overview. The present paper draws on a series of original quantitative and qualitative data collected through an extensive survey of creative industries in Birmingham, UK to identify similarities and differences within the CIs. It considers to what extend it is useful to speak of creative sub-sectors as one or on the contrary more attention should be paid to the different dynamics across them.

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