The MyCreativity Reader is a collection of critical research into the creative industries. The material develops out of the MyCreativity Convention on Int. Creative Industries Research held in Amsterdam, November 2006. This two-day conference sought to bring the trends and tendencies around the creative industries into critical question. The “creative industries” concept was initiated by the UK Blair government in 1997 to revitalise de-industrialised urban zones. Gathering momentum after being celebrated in Richard Florida’s best-seller The Creative Class (2002), the concept mobilised around the world as the zeitgeist of creative entrepreneurs and policy-makers. Despite the euphoria surrounding the creative industries, there has been very little critical research that pays attention to local and national and variations, working conditions, the impact of restrictive intellectual property regimes and questions of economic sustainability.

Art is big business, with some artists able to command huge sums of money for their works, while the vast majority are ignored or dismissed by critics. This book shows that these marginalised artists, the ‘dark matter’ of the art world, are essential to the survival of the mainstream and that they frequently organize in opposition to it…

Éste es un libro sobre el trabajo en cultura: «ámbito de producción» progresivamente organizado según modelos de trabajo de carácter empresarial que genéricamente toman como principal elemento la figura del emprendedor. Administraciones públicas y discursos neoliberales han animado, efectivamente, una sutil transformación del concepto de cultura, cada vez más explotada como recurso económico, que favorecida como derecho social democrático. Símbolo y motor de este cambio han sido la infinidad de programas y entidades de reciente creación que han favorecido la multiplicación de una vasta constelación de microempresas, muchas veces constituidas a partir de los restos (cada vez más obsoletos en las nuevas condiciones) de las antiguas asociaciones y colectivos sin ánimo de lucro…

Creativity is astir: reborn, re-conjured, re-branded, resurgent. The old myths of creation and creators – the hallowed labors and privileged agencies of demiurges and prime movers, of Biblical world-makers and self-fashioning artist-geniuses – are back underway, producing effects, circulating appeals. Much as the Catholic Church dresses the old creationism in the new gowns of ‘intelligent design’, the Creative Industries sound the clarion call to the Cultural Entrepreneurs. In the hype of the ‘creative class’ and the high flights of the digital bohemians, the renaissance of ‘the creatives’ is visibly enacted. The essays collected in this book analyze this complex resurgence of creation myths and formulate a contemporary critique of creativity.