Gambettola - Italy

Mar Del Plata - Argentina

Contact us:
crede@stir.ac.uk

Hosting and establishment of the Festivals is the first stage in the development of an innovative perspective on territorial economic policy; its focus is the impact of creativity, imagination and critical thinking on enterprise and entrepreneurship, hence on local economic development. Until recent years, a strong bias in economic analysis and practice concentrated attention on production technologies that have tended to disregard highly creative activities, such as music, visual arts, writing and film making. In contrast, the Festivals consider such artistic activities as having important impacts on the economy. In part, this is because creative activities are a source of market success, thus wealth. In part, it is because our current global economy has a tendency to leave the vast majority of people constrained and indeed powerless, yet artistic activities that stimulate people's imagination, creativity and critical thinking offer the inter-twined prospects of emancipation and new economic opportunities. In short, they can release vast and thus far untapped potential for enterprise and entrepreneurship. To explore this potential the Festivals are rooted in a series of seminars and discussions involving leading academics and practitioners, and these activities are linked into a set of performances and exhibitions - sculpture, photography, dance, poetry, theatre, music, film... - that are explicitly focused on the relation between creativity and economic development.