It was great having the opportunity to give a paper at the Cultural Economics Conference in Kyoto last month. Stimulating to hear speaker after speaker emphasising the value of culture and cultural capital.
Of particular interest were papers on the way Libraries can adapt to the world of E readers and become the Third Place in towns and the hug for development.
Other papers showed how valuable having a highly experienced, intellegent and senior administrator in Local Government positions makes such a difference to the nurturing of creative towns and cities. The suggestion backed up with research was that it is often one or two people, sometimes the Mayor, Deputy Mayor or a senior local government official that stimulates creativity in a society. They need others including artists to provide the sparks, but they only light up when the administator of local government official lights the match and/ or brings others together to stimulate the sector to be creative and thus create creative cities or towns.