Cultural clusters as a local economic development strategy in rural, small town areas: the Sarah Baartman District in the Eastern Cape of South Africa

It is increasingly recognized that the cultural and creative industries (CCIs) can play an important role in economic growth and development. Governments around the world, including South Africa, are implementing culture‐led economic growth and development strategies on national and regional scales. CCIs tend to cluster around large cities because of existing hard and soft infrastructure such as networking advantages and access to skilled labour, however, much less is known about the potential of the CCIs to drive rural development. This thesis thus investigates the potential of the CCIs to cluster in small towns and rural areas. Moreover, it examines the relationship between the CCIs and socio‐economic development. The CCIs have been touted as a catalyst for economic growth and development and so have often been used in urban regeneration schemes. The Sarah Baartman District (SBD) of South Africa’s Eastern Cape has identified culture as a potential new economic driver. Establishing a new development path is necessary as the former economic mainstay, agriculture, has declined in the region, creating poverty and unemployment problems. However, the SBD has only small towns which, according to the literature, are not suited to CCI clustering. Despite this, there is evidence of cultural clustering in some of the SBD’s small towns like Nieu Bethesda and Bathurst. This research therefore conducted an audit of the CCIs in the district and used geographic information systems (GIS) to map their locations by UNESCO Framework of Cultural Statistics (FCS) domains in order to determine the extent to which clustering has occurred in a small town setting. The audit identified 1 048 CCIs operating in the district and determined that clustering is possible within some small towns, depending on their demographic, economic, social, geographic and historic characteristics. For small towns where clusters exist or the potential for cluster formation is present, the domains in which the town holds a comparative advantage, based on domain proportions and location quotients, should be pursued for local economic development (LED). In this case, Visual Arts and Crafts and Cultural Heritage were prominent throughout the district while Design and Creative Services and Performance and Celebration had small regional concentrations. Theory suggests that the presence of CCIs is linked to higher levels of economic development as the creative class is more likely to be attracted to more highly developed areas, usually large cities. Furthermore, spillover effects from cultural activity promotes further development under the virtuous cycle. To investigate the relationship between CCI clusters and socio‐economic development, the locational data of municipal level CCI numbers is overlaid with a regional development indicator, a socio‐economic status index, which is based on census data and includes economic and social components. Results show that there is a general positive trend of CCIs locating in larger numbers (clustering) in areas with higher socio‐economic development performances