About the priority theme: Creativity, Innovation and Proximity
During the last few years, numerous reports were produced by key international organizations such as the UN, the OECD, etc., as well as by an increasing number of countries (Great Britain, Italy, New Zealand, Australia, etc.), of regions (Ontario, Euskadi, etc.), or of cities, drawing the attention on the emergence of the creative economy and on its major impact on economic development and growth. These reports place creative activities at the interface of the economy, technology, culture and society, by insisting on their potential of production of growth, of wealth and jobs through the creation, the circulation and the combination of intellectual capital.
The term “creative economy” appeared in 2001 in John Howkins’s book (The Creative Economy) on the relation between creativity and the economy. The increasing importance of the creative economy would be due to the conjunction and to the interpenetration of two main factors: globalization and connectivity, which upset the models of production, the modes of consumption and distribution, and call for an in depth reinterpretation of the links between culture, technology and economy.
The development of a creative economy necessitates a reassessment of the question of innovative territories. Beyond the categories of spatial issues analyzed in depth during the past decades (industrial clusters and other forms of innovative territories) and which generally focused on the examination of the spatial relations between science and industry, the characterization of the creative territories becomes progressively a priority. This subject recently took on a particular importance and a polemical dimension with the notion of ” creative cities ” often associated with the work of Richard Florida, but also worked in depth by an increasing number of analysts (Scott, on 2011; Scott and Garofoli, on 2007; Grabher, on 2001; Pratt, on 2010, etc.).
The “Septièmes Journées de la Proximité” will be dedicated in particular to the in-depth exploration of these themes, with a particular emphasis on the following dimensions
- Proximity and innovative territories: conceptualization, perspectives and recent results
- Innovation, invention and creativity on a local scale.
- The concept of a creative city
- Comparison of creative cities
- Underground, “middleground “, and creative territories
- The creative industries
- Proximity and creative territories: the efforts of measure
- Talents, creative and local class
- The temporary creative clusters (“local buzz and global pipelines”)
- Living labs and other local experiences of co-conception
- Proximity and civic creativity
- The creative territories at the interaction of the cultural and technological activities.
- Creative clusters and suburbs: what kind of balances and complementarities?
- Transports, temporary proximity and creativity
- Rural zones and creativity.
- Proximity, creativity and sustainable development
Recurring themes of the ‘Proximity Days’
Globalization, Employment, Labour, Local Networks, Mobility, Cities, New Technologies, Rural Areas, Governance, Sustainable Development.