Policy or Practice? Deconstructing the Creative Industries

This chapter examines the complex relationship between creative industries policy and creative practice in the UK film industries and the place the Scottish film industry occupies within this relationship. My aims are twofold. The first is to examine how specific conceptualizations of the “creative industries” and “creativity” have functioned as structuring discourses for policy approaches to the creative sector since the mid-1990s. The second is to consider the issues that arise when the rhetoric of creative industries policy meets creative practice within the Scottish film sector, through evidence gained from a number of interviews with practitioners.2 Although my focus here is primarily on the film industries, creative industries policy formation cuts across many areas including substantial aspects of regional economic development and related sectors such as broadcasting and the visual and performing arts. In this chapter, I consider how creative industries policies might be positioned within studies of production cultures and influenced by policy subventions such as tax credits and urban planning. In my analysis, I want to suggest that policy discourses do not simply attempt to coordinate creative processes; they also help to shape, to support, and sometimes to limit ways of thinking about creativity and cultural production.