Innovation and the creative industries cluster: A case study of Singapore's creative industries
June Gwee
Centre for Governance and Leadership, Civil Service College, Singapore
PP: 240 - 252
Abstract
To address the constraints of a comparatively small economy amidst globalisation challenges, Singapore embarked on diversification as strategy in the mid-eighties to develop clusters and ensure economic survival.
This paper examines the development of the creative industries cluster of a city state that shifted its economic focus from manufacturing to innovation. Using Singapore as a case study, this paper will describe how the creative industries started in the city, discuss the policy areas critical to the development of the innovation system of this cluster, and propose an approach to how this cluster should be cultivated to create innovation for the country. It will present the challenges that are specific to Singapore and describe the limitations and potentials of the smaller nation's innovation policy and innovation system.
Keywords
creative industries, Singapore, cluster strategy, innovation policy, innovation system, economic development
Article Text
In the 2003 study on Singapore's growth and innovation policies commissioned by New Zealand's Ministry of Economic Development (Evans et al. 2003), the facilitation of clusters was identified as one of Singapore's innovation policies in enhancing the country's innovation framework and one of the sectoral initiatives identified was its creative industries. In most literature, the creative industries has been less discussed compared to the state's other sectoral initiatives such as manufacturing, petrochemical, bioscience and information technology industries. Similarly, reference to innovation policy has also been more frequently associated with technology and R&D activities (Mani 2002), and less with creative activities. This paper will address this gap by linking creativity and innovation through an in-depth look at Singapore's creative industries cluster.
Discussions about creative economy have been commonly linked to culture and cultural policy because the concept of 'creative' is synonymous with 'artistic' and 'culture' in certain places. Singapore's artistic and cultural developments have often been overshadowed by its economic developments. More recently, observers of the city's development (Wright 2009) have noted Singapore's shift from 'cultural desert' to 'cultural oasis'. However, it would be wrong to suggest that the arts did not exist in the city prior to 1985 when its economic strategy shifted. In fact, Singapore in the 1950s, under colonial rule, was home to Chinese and European-trained artists such as Georgette Chen, Liu Kang, Chen Chong Swee, Chen Wen Hsi and Cheong Soo Pieng. They were also known as Nanyang artists where Nanyang art - a style, technique and medium that is a blend of East and West - was one of the earliest modern art movements in Singapore during the 1950s and 1960s. Visual arts and performing arts were equally present in the city. The earliest form of Singapore Arts Festival also began in 1959 as a national festival to celebrate local arts and multi-dimensional cultures in Singapore and the Southeast Asia (Purushothamam 2007). This was followed in 1963 by a regional event, the first Southeast Asia Cultural Festival. However, at that time, the arts were primarily a social voice to facilitate diversity, nation building and multi-racialism. At a secondary level, it was a vehicle to exchange ideas, information and indigenous heritage.
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