Towards a creative and cultural industries ecosystem perspective

Virani, Tarek

Abstract

The creative and cultural industries are increasingly being examined and understood through the lens of ecosystems as well as ecologies. Using ecosystems, and ecologies, has come on the back of a recognition that forensic efforts around defining, delineating and demarcating the creative and cultural sector through definitions and taxonomies has not yielded the analytical tools and insight necessary to accurately examine its complex machinations, contexts, characteristics and performance. Through the prism of an ecosystems lens, we are able to have a fuller, deeper and more contextual understanding of how the creative and cultural industries across the world maintain, perpetuate and organise themselves. This chapter outlines important principles for an ecosystems approach as well as introduces the chapters in this volume. It provides a rationale for focusing on and understanding cultural production as a process that is resistant to definitions based on counting outputs, and makes the argument that a focus on ecosystems of cultural production allows us to see and include these other moving parts, stories, people and processes which helps us attend to this complexity by: recognising the interdependencies at play, identifying diverse actors, highlighting non-economic factors and elevating the role of collaboration.

Citation

Virani, T. (2023). Towards a creative and cultural industries ecosystem perspective. In T. Virani (Ed.), Global Creative Ecosystems: A Critical Understanding of Sustainable Creative and Cultural Production. Palgrave Macmillan (part of Springer Nature). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33961-5

• Acceptance Date: Mar 15, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Aug 22, 2023
• Publication Date: Aug 22, 2023
• Deposit Date: Aug 26, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 23, 2025
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (part of Springer Nature)
• Series Title: Dynamics of Virtual Work
• Series ISSN: 2947-9290
• Book Title: Global Creative Ecosystems: A Critical Understanding of Sustainable Creative and Cultural Production
• ISBN: 9783031339608
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33961-5
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11062852