Office for Culture, Region Skåne
Research on policies linked to cultural and creative industries: driving forces, processes and interaction
The purpose of the project is to help Regions and other actors in society to better understand and act, based on knowledge of which development policies for cultural and creative industries that have the greatest intended and/or positive impact on the industries and society. The project is based on the Construction of a literature and case overview based on previous research and empirical data, mainly from Sweden and Europe. Through this, the project generates aggregated knowledge of Regional public policies in Sweden and Europe relating to the cultural and creative industries, their development over time, and effects.
Research questions are:
1. How has the development work of Region Skåne related cultural and creative industries developed over time, what goals have been implemented, and what have the effects been of public policies?
2. How do these goals and effects relate to other similar Regional initiatives in Sweden, and to those of a relevant selection of Regions/countries in Europe?
3. What conclusions can be drawn from the answers to questions 1 and 2 about how Region Skåne and other Regions can and should work to stimulate cultural and creative industries in the future?
Regional policies will be understood from a governance perspective, i.e. based on the question of how political organisations can best interact with the surrounding community.
Final report
The project was entitled Research on policies linked to cultural and creative industries: driving forces, processes and interaction. The purpose of the project was to help Regions as well as other actors in society to better understand and act based on which ways of working with development and support for cultural and creative industries (CCI) have the greatest intended and/or positive effect on these industries and their surrounding society. The project was based on the compilation of a literature and case overview based on previous research and empirical data, mainly from Sweden and Europe. The project has generated aggregated knowledge of public policies in Sweden and Europe relating to CCI, their development over time, and their effects. Research questions on which the project was based were:
1. How has the development work of Region Skåne related cultural and creative industries developed over time, what goals have been implemented, and what have the effects been of public policies?
2. How do these goals and effects relate to other regional initiatives in Sweden, and to those of a relevant selection of regions/countries in Europe?
3. What conclusions can be drawn from the answers to questions 1 and 2 about how Region Skåne and other policymakers can and should work to stimulate cultural and creative industries in the future?
Regional policies are understood from a governance perspective in the study, identifying as a central government concern that of how to best interact with the surrounding community in policy design and implementation. The theoretical approach was based on governance research, including studies of how political organisations cooperate with various actors in the surrounding society in the implementation of political decisions and initiatives. Previous research was consulted in a range of areas that touch upon the empirical domain of the study, including research in policy studies, governance, cultural policy research, research on regional development and public administration as well as organisational research.
Collection of empirical data was undertaken mainly from a range of formal document and interviews with officials involved in practical policy work in the period 2000–2020. Document analysis was carried out of an extensive number of reports and texts produced directly or on behalf of political organizations such as the European Union, Sweden’s government and parliament, regions and municipalities. The largest part of studied documents related to policymaking related to CCI, but also to enterprise policy, regional development policy and cultural policy. The aim was to understand the larger political context in which CCI policymaking have emerged, since CCI initiatives have related to both cultural policy and economic policy (including regional development) domains in Sweden.
The study argues that CCI as policy domain emerged due to the development of the economy towards services and increased consumption of immaterial and symbolic (meaningful) goods. This meant that the economic potential that CCI as an industry encompasses was at the centre of attention form policymakers. This is why CCI policies have mostly taken the form of enterprise rather than cultural policy. The ambitions that policymakers in Sweden have had to create an integrated CCI policy, where expertise from both the fields of cultural policy and business policy cooperate, has largely failed to materialise in the last twenty years. The main reason for this is, according to the study, that strong vertical chains of command within the political system make it very difficult to succeed in horizontal cooperation over a longer period of time. This is due in turn, among other things, to the fact that the objectives as well as resources differ from one policy domain to the next. Unlike, for example, Great Britain, where they have had a policy for creative industries and thus only an enterprise policy, Sweden has wanted to integrate the culture and enterprise policy domains in its CCI policy. As a result, CCI policy programmes have tended to be short-term and depend on the political terms of office. Changing governments have resulted in changing policy objectives, making long-term CCI policymaking difficult, although civil servants at national, regional as well as municipal level see such policymaking as important.
The project has resulted in a series of activities where knowledge from the project has been disseminated to professionals in the field as well as to researchers. These activities have been partly separate, but some activities have included both target groups. Scientific publications are reported in the publication list section. Among other things, the researcher has reported results for officials at the culture department of Region Skåne during internal seminars. The researcher has also participated in two knowledge days around the theme of the project arranged in November 2020 and November 2021, both digitally. RJ granted monetary support through grant RMP18-0232:3 for the organising of the first knowledge day that needed to be managed digitally due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Results from the project have also been presented at scientific conferences in the field of cultural policy. These results are also listed in the publication list. RJ contributed financially to open access publication of results from the study by a book in Swedish published by Nordic Academic Press in March 2023 through their grant RMP18-0232:4-T.
1. How has the development work of Region Skåne related cultural and creative industries developed over time, what goals have been implemented, and what have the effects been of public policies?
2. How do these goals and effects relate to other regional initiatives in Sweden, and to those of a relevant selection of regions/countries in Europe?
3. What conclusions can be drawn from the answers to questions 1 and 2 about how Region Skåne and other policymakers can and should work to stimulate cultural and creative industries in the future?
Regional policies are understood from a governance perspective in the study, identifying as a central government concern that of how to best interact with the surrounding community in policy design and implementation. The theoretical approach was based on governance research, including studies of how political organisations cooperate with various actors in the surrounding society in the implementation of political decisions and initiatives. Previous research was consulted in a range of areas that touch upon the empirical domain of the study, including research in policy studies, governance, cultural policy research, research on regional development and public administration as well as organisational research.
Collection of empirical data was undertaken mainly from a range of formal document and interviews with officials involved in practical policy work in the period 2000–2020. Document analysis was carried out of an extensive number of reports and texts produced directly or on behalf of political organizations such as the European Union, Sweden’s government and parliament, regions and municipalities. The largest part of studied documents related to policymaking related to CCI, but also to enterprise policy, regional development policy and cultural policy. The aim was to understand the larger political context in which CCI policymaking have emerged, since CCI initiatives have related to both cultural policy and economic policy (including regional development) domains in Sweden.
The study argues that CCI as policy domain emerged due to the development of the economy towards services and increased consumption of immaterial and symbolic (meaningful) goods. This meant that the economic potential that CCI as an industry encompasses was at the centre of attention form policymakers. This is why CCI policies have mostly taken the form of enterprise rather than cultural policy. The ambitions that policymakers in Sweden have had to create an integrated CCI policy, where expertise from both the fields of cultural policy and business policy cooperate, has largely failed to materialise in the last twenty years. The main reason for this is, according to the study, that strong vertical chains of command within the political system make it very difficult to succeed in horizontal cooperation over a longer period of time. This is due in turn, among other things, to the fact that the objectives as well as resources differ from one policy domain to the next. Unlike, for example, Great Britain, where they have had a policy for creative industries and thus only an enterprise policy, Sweden has wanted to integrate the culture and enterprise policy domains in its CCI policy. As a result, CCI policy programmes have tended to be short-term and depend on the political terms of office. Changing governments have resulted in changing policy objectives, making long-term CCI policymaking difficult, although civil servants at national, regional as well as municipal level see such policymaking as important.
The project has resulted in a series of activities where knowledge from the project has been disseminated to professionals in the field as well as to researchers. These activities have been partly separate, but some activities have included both target groups. Scientific publications are reported in the publication list section. Among other things, the researcher has reported results for officials at the culture department of Region Skåne during internal seminars. The researcher has also participated in two knowledge days around the theme of the project arranged in November 2020 and November 2021, both digitally. RJ granted monetary support through grant RMP18-0232:3 for the organising of the first knowledge day that needed to be managed digitally due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Results from the project have also been presented at scientific conferences in the field of cultural policy. These results are also listed in the publication list. RJ contributed financially to open access publication of results from the study by a book in Swedish published by Nordic Academic Press in March 2023 through their grant RMP18-0232:4-T.