Coming to Terms with Creative Hubs: A Symposium

This is a joint event in partnership with Creativeworks London and City University London and Higher Education Entrepreneurship Group.

This one day event aims to interrogate the concept of the creative hub and will address a range of critically important issues and themes relating to how we understand them.

It will include four panel discussions that include: practitioners, businesses, work space providers, policy makers and academics who work in this area.

This event promises to be an informative day that will also contribute to a number for research oriented outputs.

Background:

The term ‘hub’ is everywhere. Specifically, ‘creative hubs’ seem to be a global phenomenon. Starting in and around 2003, the growth and proliferation of these types of urban organisational manifestations has been exponential. From San Francisco to London to Moscow to Durban to Hanoi to Shanghai, creative hubs are on the rise.

This being said, the work on creative hubs is surprisingly scarce. Although the term is currently in wide use in policy circles its actual meaning is not always clear. The term has no commonly accepted definition and has been criticised for lacking clarity as well as being ‘all encompassing’. They have been understood as co-working spaces, studios, incubators, accelerators, districts, quarters, zones and/or a mix of all of the above.

This is concerning considering that policymakers, research councils, consultants, and government has been so quick to promote and endorse the effectiveness of creative hubs in catalysing growth and innovation in the local creative economy; as well as being used, in some instances, as an urban regeneration tool.

In light of this, Creativeworks London, in partnership with KnowledgeLondon, City University London and Higher Education Entrepreneurship Group (HEEG), is pleased to announce a one day symposium on creative hubs. Creativeworks London is an AHRC funded project based at Queen Mary University of London. One of its many research aims is to investigate London’s creative economy; highlighting important research insights into how and why London’s creative and cultural sector is as vibrant as it is.

Click here for more information about this event including the agenda and booking details.

The cost to attend this event is £160.00. Delegates from KnowledgeLondon, HEEG or the Creativeworks London network can attend FREE. Any queries please contact Dr. Tarek Virani (t.virani@qmul.ac.uk).