ABSTRACT
Soon after the November 2013 launch of the United Nations Creative Economy Report 2013, subtitled Widening Local Development Pathways, Justin O’Connor posted a blog in The Conversation that made significant claims on the publication’s behalf. He thought it would free international cultural policy from the reigning ‘creative industries/creative economy’ approach, whose advocates ‘stand accused of over-emphasizing the commercial aspects of culture, reducing creativity to intellectual property rights, ignoring the growing exploitation of creative labour, and becoming narrowly economistic, reducing cultural value to the bottom line’ (O’Connor 2013). He also thought the report could counter ‘the uncritical adoption of creative industry policy nostrums from the Global North, [that] wrapped in promises of a dynamic new source of economic growth, has become increasingly counter-productive.’
