Set up by the Prime Minister in 1997, the Creative Industries Task Force (CITF) has increased awareness of the economic importance of the industries. It provided a forum in which Government Ministers met with leading industry figures to analyse the needs of the creative industries and develop policy across government to ensure their value to the UK economy was sustained and developed. This work is now being carried forward by a Ministerial Creative Industries Strategy Group.
Creative Industries Mapping Documents 2001

The first achievement of the Creative Industries Task Force was the publication in November 1998 of a mapping document, which identified:

• the activities and economic performance of each creative industry,

• their potential for growth,

• the key barrier s to growth.

The new Creative Industries Mapping Document 2001 updates the statistical data on and analysis of the creative industries. Broadly, the news is positive and underlines the importance of these industries to the UK economy. The creative industries in the UK generate revenues of around ?112.5 billion and employ some 1.3 million people. Exports contribute around ?10.3 billion to the balance of trade, and the industries account for over 5% of GDP. In 1997-98, output grew by 16%, compared to under 6% for the economy as a whole.

iCISS is a two-year research project co-financed by the European Social Fund ADAPTprogramme and Manchester Metropolitan University.The Research is being conducted by Manchester Institute for Popular Culture and partners in Milan, Jamtland (Sweden), Helsinki, Berlin, Dublin, Goteborg, Tilburg and Barcelona. The overall intention of the iCISS project was threefold:

.: to conduct a mapping of strategies and initiatives to support and develop the cultural industries at local, national and European levels,

.: to use the process of research to generate contacts and networks at these policy levels,

.: to use the information and understanding generated by the research to inform and actively engage with the policy making process.


The results of iCISS activities presented on the server of Metropolitan University of Manchester Institute for Popular Culture. The iCISS web-site can be divided into six parts. They are:

1. Policy Development
2. Technological Support
3. UK Policy and Initiative Research
4. FOCI
5. Music Industry Research
6. Transnational Network

Sankt-Petersburg will become the first russian city in the european network iCISS. This fact would be good for the direct contacts and experience exchanging between firms, administrative organisations, municipalities, research and educating centres of EU and Russia.

1. ICISS: Policy Development

This page tell us about definition of the cultural industries and an estimate of their role for the economy and society in whole. There is a look at the researches and development strategy of cultural industries in Manchester. The theme developed in connection with research and policy development work with Manchester City Council and partners around the development of a Cultural Production Startegy for the City and the creation of new agency, The Cultural Industries Development Service (CIDS), in the part concerns Manchester Pride Area (Manchester, Salford, Tameside, Trafford). The project aims to the sustainable growth of independent cultural product and city's image as a natural centre of cultural corporations in the Great Britain.

2. ICISS: Technological Support

The page includes:

• Link to the web-site www.nqn.org.uk - Guide to the Northern Quarter with Maps and local information Northern Quarter Association - the Residents and Traders Organisation, Northern Quarter Network Information
• Information about the Northern Quarter Network and the history of the Northern Quarter
• Key issues in Web site usability
• Article "Crafting innovative industry standards in the new digital districts - a review of trends in the USA and Europe". There are now a long list of localities claiming or seeking a place at the 'digital' or 'tech city' table, and supporting Net/Web business is seen as a key lever. That localities which wish to attract or sustain the Net/Web industry will be judged by their ability to adopt these standards, and by how inventively they enhance and re-work them. This paper tell us what methods and mind-sets are being used to achieve this objective.

3. ICISS: UK Policy and Initiative Research

The page includes the report "Local cultural industries support services in the UK: towards the model of best practice". This report is based on mixed-method research into local cultural industries support services in the UK. It builds on the report, by recognising the pervasiveness, indeed increasing significance, of place-specific policies delivered by place-specific agencies in a broader context where many policies are delivered at a macro (regional, national, European, even global) scale. Case studies of local cultural industries clusters/quarters, business support projects, training programmes and sub-sectoral initiatives, are introduced to develop models of best practice for comprehensive, co-ordinated, corporate local cultural industries support services.
Policy-makers react to and seek to influence trans-national, increasingly 'globalised' systems of production and consumption by adopting national or supra-national policies such as those implemented by national governments or the European Commission (EC). Yet simultaneously, processes of international social and economic restructuring have led to and been led by processes of local embedding where locality - 'place'- matters. City districts, cities, regions persist and are growing in importance as nodes in global networks. Local policies are thus necessary to assert local identities and promote sustainable local communities, but it is important that they are delivered to engage with trans-local and international processes since it is in relation to these global networks that places find their identities, prosper or decay.
In this way, the 'local' and the 'global' are reciprocal and mutually constitutive. Flexible and sensitive local policies are thus essential if competing local networks are to maintain a robustness which is sufficient to carry the increasingly demanding flows of global networks and general practices.
This is especially important for local cultural industries policies since the structures and emphases of this sector are dependent on strong local networks/clusters and distinctive local identities as a basis for expression - the establishment of meaning - in global, (often electronic) networks. This report should therefore be read in relation to reports from other areas of the ICISS project if a local cultural industries sector operates in a national, European and global context, then so does the local cultural industries policy. In this sense, whilst determined largely by features attributable to the specificities of place, cultural industries policy in, say, Berlin, remains subject to EC policy frameworks, electronic networks, an international marketplace and global competition, in much the same way as in, say, Manchester. It is the ways cities and regions react to global flows and local factors, the ways they compete and join together, that defines and is defined by their local cultural industries policy. This process - the way local policies relationally develop to meet specific (sub)sectoral needs through trans-local networks - defines the structure of the ICISS project and this report.

4. ICISS: FOCI

FOCI www.mmu.ac.uk/h-ss/mipc/foci is a network of experienced professionals concerned to inform and influence the current debates around the creative industries - now given momentum by the high profile accorded the sector by the government. FOCI brings together a wide body of experience around local and regional policy; economic and social development; urban regeneration; academic research; cultural strategy; education and training; and industry-based initiatives - accumulated over the last 15 years of Creative Industry policy making.
Also, on this web-page one can read the national conference report about the role of cultural industries in the local and global development. The conference had been lead partly by the government, in 1999.

5. ICISS: Music Industry Research -this part is still under construction

6. ICISS: Transnational Network

The part consists of individual city reports: Berlin, Milan, Tilburg and Jamtland, and nine case studies: Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, Goteborg, Helsinki, Jamtland, Manchester, Milan and Tilburg.