As part of the 26th Pacific Conference of the RSAI, to be held jointly with the 59th Annual Meeting of the WRSA in Waikiki, Hawaii from March 18 to 21, 2020, The Social Sciences Area of the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) is organizing a Special Session on Cultural and Creative Industries in Regional Science. The website for submission is now open (www.wrsaonline.org). Abstracts, as well as full papers (also in draft format), will be considered for inclusion in the Special Session. Full papers benefit from the traditional WRSA 45-minute per paper time slot. The submission deadline is November 15, 2019, for full-length original papers (not previously published). When submitting, remember to add that your paper is intended for the GSSI Special Session on Cultural and Creative Industries in Regional Science and, please, also remember to send a copy to Alessandro Crociata alessandro.crociata@gssi.it and Giulia Urso giulia.urso@gssi.it – Social Sciences, Gran Sasso Science Institute, L’Aquila (Italy)
Description of the Special Session
The potential contribution of Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) to economic growth is a topical issue attracting ever-increasing attention in many different arenas, academics and not. The prevailing policy discourse assumes a strong contribution of CCIs to growth in the whole economy, and that CCIs contribute significantly to youth employment and are more resilient to economic crises. Additionally, by operating at the crossroads between arts, business, and technology, CCIs are assumed to benefit other industries via spill-over effects. In the same way, CCIs create positive externalities on other areas of society, such as education, social inclusion, and community life.
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in culture-led development also in the field of regional science. The basic idea is that culture and creativity are key drivers of urban and regional development. Scholarly discussion is lively and articulated, with an insightful – and still open – debate on both theoretical issues and empirical evidence. This growing literature covers a range of multidimensional issues moving from the basic – yet questioned – assumption that the cultural and creative economy is a major force shaping knowledge-based economies, and that is conducive to sustainable regional development with more jobs created and greater social cohesion.
The aim of the special session is to attract contributions focusing on inclusive and sustainable growth led by CCIs. In that sense, the session welcomes contributions on:
- Improving the understanding of CCIs through developing better and robust national and international level indicators measuring CCIs and their outputs
- Measuring the Cultural and Creative Spillovers and Crossovers
- Investigating the knowledge gaps in skills, education, training, and creativity and how to address these in the future to support the CCIs
- Investigating the impact of national and regional Smart Specialisation Strategies in enhancing the CCIs
- Exploring the barriers to and enablers of employment and growth in the CCIs
- Providing a new and encompassing framework to examine the role of the CCIs in supporting ‘inclusive and sustainable growth’ (intended not only as GDP but also as cultural development)
- Understanding the role of CCIs in fostering the development of small-medium towns and/or peripheral areas
- The geography of CCIs and their spatial pattern of production and consumption
- Providing policy recommendations to support regional, national and international policies in the field of CCIs.
For details, please click here.