What is it about?
This article highlights how an individual's agency can bring about a lot of positive change in a creative hub. The research hones in on how the successful business of one resident artist entrepreneur in a rural creative hub can positively affect the whole hub, and other artists renting a studio in it. The focus of the analysis gives a voice to a dance entrepreneur's entrepreneurial activities, and how he takes a whole hub online and opens it to the world - during one of the darkest confined times in our recent lives, lockdown phases induced by COVID-19. Digital ways of creating community, places of interaction, is highlighted and explained. The article introduces the concept of entrepreneurial placemaking for the first time.
Featured Image
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The research points out how careful managment of social relations and creative use of materials, space and technology can be combined to create a unique and great experience for service users. The elements of planning, facilitation and creative re-imagining are illustrated through a dance entrepreneur's successful business activities in a rural hub. This success has implications for policy makers for rural areas, Parish and District Councillors, and those owning or managing hubs and creative hubs: to manage tenant interactions, have regular meetings, develop ongoing relations with all tenants individually where possible, support regular events in the creative hub. These facilitations are important for maintaining good tenant/resident artist relationships beneficial for their and the hub business development.
Perspectives
I hope this article makes clear how valuable ethnographic research is, and how important the management of social relations is for online interactions. What might seem easy and straightforward, indeed, needed careful management and planning and organising to bring about a varied, dense, and rich experience. For me, as the researcher who collected the data, it was important to sense and feel the online experiences of the artists and the dance participants. Being part of the online dance sessions opened up so many perspectives on what was happening in the online interactions, explicitly and non-verbally. Doing the research was fun and exciting, as due to lockdown nothing else was possible and I had to focus on making the very best of the possibilities phone, email, social media and zoom offered.
Dr Inge Hill IJBR Editorial Review Board
The Open University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Rural arts entrepreneurs’ placemaking – how ‘entrepreneurial placemaking’ explains rural creative hub evolution during COVID-19 lockdown, Local Economy The Journal of the Local Economy Policy Unit, March 2022, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/02690942221083838.
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Resources
How did you get up and running? Taking a Bourdieuan perspective towards a framework for negotiating strategic fit
Another article on using 'entrepreneurial capitals' to create a business advantage
Rural creative industries - an untapped potential for UK economic recovery
To mark the UNCTAD year of creative industries 2021 and highlight the role of rural creative industries
Spotlight on UK artisan entrepreneurs' situated collaborations: through the lens of entrepreneurial capitals and their conversion"
Research on creative professionals / artisan entrepreneurs in a UK creative hub.
Mapping and examining the determinants of England's rural creative microclusters
A report analysing location of creative industry firms in rural location, using website data.
More targeted support could unleash the potential of rural creative enterprises
Blog accompanying the release of a research report and short interview with Inge Hill. It is well documented that creative businesses are clustered in urban areas. To date there has been little focus on how and whether creative industries cluster in rural areas. New research published today by the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE) and Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre (PEC) finds that microclusters are spread widely across England, with around a third of all rural creative firms operating within a cluster. This finding suggests there is a benefit to creative businesses clustering in rural settings, which has important policy implications, particularly within the context of the Levelling Up agenda. That rural creative firms are found to cluster suggests ‘external economies of scale’; they become more productive through being co-located. This follows a comparable pattern in urban areas, which suggests policy intervention could further support this clustering activity.
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