Giorgio Fazio (p), Rodrigo Cavalcanti Michel, Alejandro Ramirez-Guerra

Isidoro Mazza

Across the globe, the creative industries have become one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. In the UK, they have outpaced the rest of the economy in terms of GVA and employment growth. Despite being key to the success of the sector, very little is known about public and private spending into research and innovation in the sector.

In this study we start filling the gap in the evidence base by looking at the knowledge networks generated by public funding by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) for creative research and innovation projects.

First, we identify creative research and innovation projects using the universe of UK Research and Innovation funded projects. We exploit textual analysis techniques to identify creative projects based on the creative intensity emerging from the description of the project. We also identify the collaborating organisations in the project and their Standard Industry Classification codes by “fuzzy merging” the UKRI data with the public record in the Companies House data. This allows us to identify creative research and innovation collaborations. Second, we use standard and spatial social network analysis methods to characterise such collaborations. The national and intra-regional analysis highlights the differences in density and structure across regions and identify how connections are generated within and across regions. Finally, the Spatial Social Network Analysis allows us to assess the role of distance in knowledge networks.

Ivana Rasic (p)

Giorgio Fazio

The main objective of the paper is to describe and explain current spatial patterns of creative and cultural industries (CCI) in Croatia. The first objective is to discern whether patterns in concentration and relative specialization of CCIs in 21 Croatian counties exist by constructing location quotient and concentration measures. Dataset comprises firms observed in 2022 with focus on firms in CCIs in Croatia in 2022. The data are obtained from official firm level database the Financial Agency (FINA) and includes employment data and selected financial indicators of the company. The second objective of the paper is to determine factors which are related to specialization of CCIs across Croatian counties. Therefore the cluster analysis has been applied to define groups of counties with similar features in selected categories - specialization in CCIs, specialization in primary, secondary and tertiary sector, level of GDP per capita and quality of human capital. The main contribution of this paper is that provides robust evidence that CCIs are related to more developed regions with larger urban centres, more developed services sector, tourism and higher quality of human capital. The analysis indicates a strong asymmetric spatial distribution of CCIs between economically developed areas with larger cities, with developed tourism and better-quality human capital and those less developed, rural and periphery regions.

Note: This work was made as part of the project "Challenges Facing Local and Regional Development in Croatia" at the Institute of Economics, Zagreb and funded/co- funded within the National Recovery and Resilience Plan 2021-2026 - NextGenerationEU

Helena Walther (p), Beate Kegler

Ivana Rasic

Rural societies worldwide face multiple transformations. Culture, understood as the corporate identity of communities, has always been developed locally by its individuals and first served to rhythmize work processes in the former self-organised agricultural societies, inspired by the impulses of those who dared to look beyond their own rural world, brought together by networkers and passed on through intergenerational learning-by-doing. Volunteering was a fundamental aspect and fostering togetherness by participating in cultural processes belonged to the daily life of villagers. The ongoing demographic processes, globalisation, (over-)tourism and all other forms of transformation processes in non-urban areas endangered the vitality of such communities. Impulse givers and networkers left or grew old, the young people lack time to engage for culture after long commuting distances or challenging working conditions. Culture as the framework for democratic exchange processes, platform for cultural education and experimental field needs to find other formats to be kept alive. Profound strategies of cultural policy beyond the urban are strongly needed. But what kind of Cultural Policy is required? What priorities, strategies and forms of implementation are useful to re-vitalise villages and help to re-built resilient communities? What role could artists and the cultural and creative sector play and what do they need to overcome the challenges? The ongoing research on the topic is based on ethnographic methods like expanded field research, qualitative empiric social research with a wide range of interviews as well as artistic and experimental research and practise-based evaluation of cultural projects beyond the urban. The gender dimension is one topical issue in the many different transformation processes, especially related to the culture and creative sector of rural areas. Our research highlights the relevance of the topic and further research. Concepts like "Doing Gender" will be used and explained to support the argumentation. The information had been gathered through literature review and interviews with local experts from six different rural areas throughout Europe. The research takes place in the context of the project IN SITU - an EU HORIZON project (insituculture.eu) that investigates cultural policy, the innovative power of CCI's and their positive influence on rural development. Together as a research team we want to address the situation of CCIs in non-urban areas to combine our expertise on cultural policy, intersectionality and gender.

Wioletta Kilar (p)

Helena Walther

Socio-economic development is linked to the progressive processes of globalisation, in which a fundamental role is played by transnational corporations, which strongly influence the global economic, social and cultural space through various systems of spatial and production networks. Among the world's leading corporations, corporations of the IT sector play a significant role, with their branches located in various areas convenient from the corporation's point of view.
The aim of this paper will be to show the areas of concentration of branches of IT corporations located in Poland, their differentiation and economic potential. I will aim to indicate their role on the scale of entire corporations.
The global space creates highly differentiated conditions for the location of branches of modern companies associated with the information phase of social development. This means the operation of polarisation processes that lead to spatial differentiation in the number of branches of corporations, as well as their economic potential and the resulting indicators. According to the research carried out, Poland is the most attractive country in Central Europe for the location of branches of IT corporations from all over the world, but, as the research indicates, branches of corporations with different business profiles that originate from the United States predominate. The best conditions for locating these innovative enterprises, especially those dealing with research and development, but also widely understood services, are created in the country's largest cities, including above all Kraków, Wrocław and Gdańsk. Warsaw is an attractive location especially for service branches. The economic potential of branches of IT corporations located in Poland varies greatly

Elisabetta Ottoz (p), Lisa Sella, Francesca Rota

Wioletta Kilar

In the last decades, several scholars and policymakers have focused on the opportunities and risks of the night economy. A vibrant night scene is vital to the urban economy, stimulating commercial activities, jobs, and investments. Moreover, it has proved to be a powerful lever of tourism, attractiveness, and regeneration. Nevertheless, the night economy is also a complex, contradictory phenomenon. Night-time recreational activities tend, in fact, to cluster in specific areas within the urban fabric, the so-called Movida neighborhoods, determining tensions with residents. These neighborhoods are thus extensively studied because of their contribution to the creative economy and the conflicts accompanying them in terms of alcohol abuse, foulness, vandalism, criminality, noise violations, and disturbance of public peace. Institutional, social, and cultural contributions represent the majority of the literature on the night economy. In contrast, little attention is paid to its quantification in terms of local units, employees, and turnover and the dynamic analysis of its effects on the sectoral diversification of the local economy. The paper aims to fill this gap assuming the city of Turin and its Movida quartiers (Italy) as case study. Using data from Istat database ASIA at years 2018 and 2021 the paper runs and economic analysis of how the night economy of Turin changed composition and dimension in the pre- and post-covid period, classifying the local units according to both the type of service they provide and their opening time.

Isidoro Mazza (p), Elisa Fusco, Paolo Di Caro

Elisabetta Ottoz

The study of the extent and impact of network interactions in the art market has gained importance among researchers and practitioners. This can be justified, firstly, by the growing availability of granular dataset covering different years and providing micro information on art dealers, artists and artworks, and, secondly, by the progressive application of network-based statistical techniques for investigating economic the influence of networks on shaping cultural and creative markets. Investigating network formation, characteristics (i.e. edges, nodes, etc.) and network linkages (i.e. nodal statistics, centrality measures, etc.) among art dealers like art galleries is worth investigating given the potential consequences on art prices. Equally important is the knowledge about the role of networks to sustain the survival of art galleries in the market, and the possible impact of network interactions on the allocation and the success of the artists in the contemporary art market.
There is a lack of knowledge on how art galleries develop network interactions across the space, and the possible impact on the performance of artists and the survival of galleries. Geographical factors, such as agglomeration economies and location-specific aspects, can help to explain the presence of locally concentrated networks. A good candidate to study the local and global connections of emerging art galleries working in the contemporary art market is New York City (NYC), where there is a high concentration of artist.


The objective of this study is twofold. First, to present a unique, novel dataset providing information on 47 emerging art galleries located in Manhattan (NYC), and founded over the period 2010-2015, and 437 artists in the contemporary art market. The selection of art galleries is motivated by the importance of Manhattan in the domestic and international art market and the high density of art galleries: NYC emerged as a world art city since the 19th century, by benefiting from worldwide transport connectivity and communication networks, and it has the largest number of galleries of any metropolitan area in the US. Moreover, the large numbers of galleries, many of which have existed for decades, make NYC an ideal setting for quantitative analysis of the retail art market.
Second, to develop an exploratory network analysis mapping the network interactions among the galleries in our dataset. We document specific artist- and gallery-patterns and well-defined linkages among galleries based on the exchange of artists through joint exhibitions. We finally set out the next steps of the research project.