Harnessing Creativity to Boost Developing Economies
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RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 26 (IPS) - The Brazilian minister of culture, renowned singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil, has a new passion: the creative industries, which he believes can play a key role in boosting the economies of developing countries.
His enthusiasm for the economic potential of cultural and other intellectual property products is reflected in his determination for Brazil to serve as the headquarters for an International Centre for the Creative Industries (ICCI), to be established by the United Nations in 2006. The function, goals and sources of funding of the future centre were discussed at an Apr. 18-20 forum hosted by Gil in Salvador, capital of the northern Brazilian state of Bahia, and attended by over 200 participants representing 18 countries, international organisations, cultural institutions and private companies. In Brazil, the creative industries account for just one percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), according to a study conducted in 1998. Gil said the goal is to boost that share to seven percent, which has already been achieved at the local level in Rio de Janeiro. Nevertheless, according to Paulo Miguez, secretary of cultural policies at the Ministry of Culture, the 1998 figure is not only out of date, but also underestimates the economic significance of the sector because it excludes the television, computer software, advertising and crafts industries. He added that new, more comprehensive studies are currently underway. The U.N. estimates that the creative industries -- which encompass a wide range of activities, from the movie and music industries to fashion and computer software -- represent seven percent of global GDP, the equivalent of 1.3 billion dollars this year. It is also a sector that is growing at a faster rate than the world economy in general. In the United States, Miguez noted, the intellectual property sector accounts for eight percent of GDP and generates employment for 12 percent of the country's labour force. The industrialised countries currently dominate the creative economy. The four leaders in the sector -- the United States, Japan, Germany and Britain -- control over half of the international trade in cultural products. The ICCI will particularly benefit the developing world, by providing information on this relatively unknown sector and promoting public policies, training and the exchange of experiences, as well as identifying and organising markets. In the developing nations, ”there is a great deal of creativity with the potential to be converted into economic assets,” said Gil. The Salvador Charter, adopted by the participants in the recent forum, states that the focus of the ICCI should be ”South-South cooperation and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).” The eight MDGs were adopted by the international community in 2000 and include the aim of drastically reducing poverty and inequality by the year 2015. The creation of the new centre, however, will require further discussion. For this purpose, a working committee has been set up and will meet for the first time this October in New York, under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It is especially crucial to provide those working in the creative industries with training in administration, commented John Ballyn, a consultant with the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Ballyn shared his own experience in Zambia, where his agency offered a number of courses to local artists, including one on marketing. One of the main difficulties was establishing prices for goods and services, he said. It is also essential to train government authorities, since the majority of them still do not understand what the creative economy is, stressed John Howkins, chairman of the Creative Group of Britain, a pioneering nation in the promotion of this sector. Although there are varying opinions as to the sectors encompassed by the creative industries, it is generally accepted that they include all activities where creativity and culture play a major role in the production of goods and provision of services. These include fashion design, graphic design, various Internet activities, and the arts and entertainment in general. Because they do not necessarily involve industrial processes, some prefer to refer to these sectors collectively as the ”creative economy”. They are more closely tied to copyright than to patents, noted Gil. Formerly confined to the sphere of cultural heritage, these are products and services that have come to occupy a significant space in the world trade system, intellectual property rules and corporate social responsibility. Investing in this area is a challenge, because it involves considerable economic risks, as well as social and cultural issues like diversity, tradition, freedom of expression and local identities. At the forum in Salvador, it was stressed that neither the free market nor the state alone can provide for the necessary investment, which is why a partnership between the private and public sectors is essential. The idea for creating a centre to promote the cultural industries first took hold at the 11th U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) held last June in the southern Brazilian city of Sao Paulo. This is a sector that offers a great many advantages, Miguez noted. In Brazil, for example, some 160 new jobs can be created with an investment of one million reals (370,000 dollars), and technological advances neither eliminate workers nor demand higher studies. Moreover, these are industries that do not pollute the environment, he added. Brazil is already a major exporter of music and TV soap operas, but these achievements have been made through the efforts of the producers themselves, without government support, Gil acknowledged. These goods cannot be treated as mere merchandise, he added, given their symbolic value in terms of the preservation and international dissemination of Brazilian culture. While the concept of the creative economy has yet to be developed in Brazil, the field is already being explored through a number of individual initiatives. One example is the non-governmental organisation Fazer Brasil (literally, ”to make Brazil”), which works towards opening up markets for Brazilian-designed and built furniture and other goods, but with an underlying social objective. One of the group's success stories was an exhibition in Paris this past January of chairs designed by André Cruz, ”upholstered” with banana fibres and produced by the residents of Miracatú, an impoverished community near Sao Paulo. These are exclusive pieces created in limited numbers, but they also serve the purpose of publicising the work of their producers and thus attracting new clients, said Walkiria de Oliveira, one of the coordinators of Fazer Brasil. The organisation is now preparing for a show in the U.S. city of San Francisco, which will feature furniture and other goods designed by well-known Brazilian artists. The basic idea, de Oliveira told IPS, is for the artists to leave behind the concept of one-of-a-kind works and allow for roughly 50 reproductions of each piece to be created, with the participation of skilled carpenters. ”This is more than crafts -- we are exporting art,” in addition to generating employment for poor communities in Brazil, she said. |
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