Assembling the 'creative economy' : epistemic communities, policy transfer and the geography of expertise

The linking of I creativity' with the economic in policy discourses marks a relatively recent attempt to rethink the constituent elements of a competitive economy and, by extension, the nature of adequate policy interventions upon it. While it is widely recognised that notions of expertise playa pivotal role in who does this kind of rethinking, comparatively little attention has been paid to how such expertise is produced and situated in relation to the policy process. This thesis explores the geography of this expertise, focusing especially on how it is situated in transnational epistemic communities, and its relationship with the geography of the policy process across transnational space. The emergence of creativity is explored through a policy concept that centres this capacity: the creative industries. This policy strand is tracked through its emergence in the UK and transfer to other countries, focusing especially on New Zealand. There are three key findings. First, it is argued that policy is coconstituted with expertise. When the creative industries policy concept first emerged in the UK in 1998 through the production of the Creative Industries Mapping Document (DCMS, 1998), a variety of actors working in areas understood to be cognate with the concept recast themselves as creative industries experts and sought to use this emergent capacity to shape ongoing creative industries policy development. Second, policy transfer is a process of translation that changes the form of a policy. The transfer of the creative industries policy concept to New Zealand occurred through circuits of embodied and codified knowledge that linked policy-making sites in either country, but their policydevelopment has followed different paths and produced different policy programmes, resulting in transnational policy formation rather than simply formation in one place followed by transfer to another. And third, this transnational policy formation is occurring alongside the emergence of a transnational epistemic community of creative industries policy experts, a process analogous to that described in the first finding, supported by a transnational infrastructure of conferences, research institutes, policy networks and written texts. This epistemic community is a key source of expertise in the making of the I creative economy