PACIFICSTREAM

I originally set up this group as a spontaneous reaction to something I saw on a brochure for a Creative Industries conference.  But what it has made me realise - and this has partly been driven by your responses - is that I do want to challenge the concept that referring to the arts and creative ventures as industries is at all useful in the 21st century.

The arts and creative activity do have an important contribution to make to the way society, including business and industry, are going. But we will not make that contribution by merely referring to ourselves as creative industries and following them blindly into a cul-de-sac of their making.

We have always had ways of working, ways of creating, ways of being that are very different to industry (see what happened to Damien Hirst when he decided to become an industry rather than an artist) - ways which I believe are of value and import not only to the creative economy but to the wider economic landscape that we are grappling with at the present time.

Instead of embracing the old formulaic approaches to society’s economic and social welfare and well-being, surely this is the moment for the arts and creative sectors to take up the role that they have played so well in the past - of being the grit in the oyster shell, the provoker of new ideas, the catalyst for change.

I want us to be leading business into new ways of thinking, new ways of working and new ways of being. I am hoping to take this thinking forward in as many positive ways as I can and would love you to join me in developing this thinking.

Chrissie Tiller