The geography of creativity

Although there is an increasing recognition of the positive role that creative industries play in innovation and growth, there is little evidence on the spatial dimension of this impact. An ongoing NESTA project employs economic geography techniques to address this gap, with the aim of improving our understanding of the mechanisms through which creative industries contribute to regional innovative performance, and to inform the development of policies to support these linkages. This interim report presents the results of the first stage of this research. The authors map the presence of creative firms across Britain as a first step towards establishing their impact on regional innovation at a second stage of the project. The mapping effort is informed by the influential concept of ‘industrial clusters’