On Tuesday the 7th of March 2023, the Industry and Parliament Trust (IPT) hosted a breakfast event for Parliamentarians and industry representatives on ‘Designing a Sustainable Creative Sector’. This discussion was chaired by Pauline Latham OBE MP, Vice-chair of the United Nations Global Goals for Sustainable Development All-Party Parliamentary Group, with guest speakers Stephen Woodford, Chief Executive Officer of the Advertising Association, and Poornika Ananth, Assistant Professor at the University of Bath, School of Management.
The challenges of designing a sustainable creative sector
The question of how creativity and sustainability can be combined has started receiving interest in academic, policy and practitioner circles. Creativity, which involves the generation and development of novel and useful ideas thrives in the face of autonomy and access to resources. Net zero transitions and sustainability requirements can challenge existing creative practices, and require new techniques for generating, evaluating, and implementing ideas, including techniques for working with fewer or unusual resources. Yet, when done well sustainability and creativity can go hand in hand and indeed sustainability requirements can provide unexpected new opportunities for creativity and innovation.
Areas for action
New ways of creating that do not merely restrict actions but also give rise to new opportunities are key for designing a sustainable creative sector. Some of these include:
- New idea development strategies: Strategies like bricolage – making do with what is available – can be critical to developing creative ideas in a sustainable manner. Engaging in bricolage involves careful planning and partnership. It is also important to take the time needed to learn and develop bricolage capabilities. Creators can look at examples within the creative context where bricolage strategies have been employed for a very long time, typically for other reasons. A great example is theatre: cash strapped theatre productions often must make do with what they have; and theatre producers at different levels are building on that ethos to achieve sustainable creativity by reusing, recycling, and sharing.
- Using technology to create sustainably: Progress can also be made around the use of technology in the creative industries. Energy efficient technologies can be used during the creative process (e.g., to collaborate), and in creative outputs (e.g., to replace energy inefficient materials or provide hybrid experiences for audiences). The pandemic in a way helped us become more familiar with some of these technologies. The task here is to take the right lessons from those experiences and adapt them to current circumstances. For example, while it might not be beneficial for creativity to have all collaborative activities online, tasks can be divided up and conducted both online and offline in a manner that balances creativity and sustainability.
- Taking a broader role in sustainability initiatives: Creative sectors and the people working within them have an unusual platform that can put them at the forefront of change. Sectors such as advertising, public relations and design sit at the nexus of multiple organizations and industries that they consult and work with. By developing sustainable practices and advocating for their use, the creative industries have the opportunity to drive the adoption of these practices across different contexts.
- Integrating sustainability into the educational curriculum: Topics around opportunities, challenges, and strategies for creating sustainably need to be integrated into educational curricula and programmes to prepare creators and designers of the future to tackle this challenge. Options could include featuring sustainability as a lecture topic, sharing examples of sustainable organisations and innovations, and crafting assignments where sustainability is a focus. The drive for such change is not top down. This knowledge is something that students today are clamouring for!
Words by Dr Poornika Ananth, Assistant Professor, University of Bath School of Management