Upcoming Events

Half-Day Conference

Creative Cities: Panacea or Placebo for Urban Policy-Making?

Venue: 9am to 1.30pm, Monday 9th March, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin

In recent times there has been a significant increase in the level of interest in the role of creativity and culture as a driving force in urban and regional economic development. This interest, which is increasingly being absorbed into public policy, has ranged from the role of highly-skilled ‘creative’ workers in promoting economic growth to the changing location factors of multi-national companies to the role of culture as a means of regeneration as well as to the increased commodification of historic areas of cities as a means of achieving urban regeneration. In an Irish context, the ‘creative city’ thesis is gathering momentum particularly within city councils, city development boards and other governance networks.

Bearing this in mind, the Forum for Irish Urban Studies (FIUS) and the Irish Social Sciences Platform (ISSP), together with the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) and the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS) and the Departments of Geography at TCD and NUI Maynooth have organised a half-day conference on ‘Creative Cities: Panacea or Placebo for Urban Policy-Making?’

The aims of this conference are:

• to address critically the creative cities concept and its role in urban policymaking

• to provide a forum for debate on issues related to creative cultural policy in urban areas and

• to bring together the various aspects of research on creative cultural cities in Ireland 

Keynote Speaker

Jamie Peck is Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Political Economy and Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia, Canada.  His publications include Work-place (1996), Workfare states (2001), Contesting neoliberalism (2007) (coedited with Leitner and Sheppard), Politics and practice in economic geography (2007) (coedited with Tickell, Barnes and Sheppard), and more than 150 journal articles and book chapters on issues including labor-market policy, neoliberalization, economic regulation and governance, and urban restructuring.  The recipient of Guggehneim and Harkeness fellowships, Peck has held visiting positions at the University of Melbourne, Johns Hopkins University, University of the Witwatersrand, University of Oslo, University of Nottingham, Queen’s University, Belfast.  A Senior Research Associate at the Center for Urban Economic Development, University of Illinois at Chicago, he was previously Professor of Geography & Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Professor of Geography at the University of Manchester. A key topic for discussion and debate in Jamie Peck’s writings and presentations in recent years has been the creative cities thesis (see http://www.geog.ubc.ca/~peck/).

Annual Research Seminar

Details to appear