Cultural dynamics, scenes and urban fabric

PROGRAMM :
https://scaena.hypotheses.org/5820

June 22-23, 2023 Angers (FRANCE)

The first Beyond Creative Cities (BCC) meeting in 2021 was an opportunity to analyse the forms, benefits and limits of urban fabric based on the concept of the creative city. What did we learn from it? The focus on issues of attractiveness, branding and clustering of creative activities has to some extent overshadowed the complexity of the links between the creative capacity of individuals, urban development and the production of innovations. It has also minimised the stakes of these transformations in the face of the “great transitions” that are taking place today. This is why the second BCC meeting proposes to refocus on the complexity of the interrelationships between creative and cultural activities, and territorial dynamics. It also questions the role that these activities can have in the transformation of the creative city model towards an urban fabric that resonates with the ecological, social and economic issues raised by metropolisation process. This meeting will also be an opportunity to test the relevance of the “scene” concept for an analysis and better understanding of the interactions between artistic presence and urban transformation, based on the outputs of the SCAENA research programme funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR, France).

Four approaches will be explored by the contributions that are submitted:

Beyond the agglomeration effects, the “spill over” effects?

Any activity that is situated in a location influences its territory and is influenced by it. This is particularly true for cultural and artistic activities, whose overspill effects are singular. We owe it to economic geography in particular to have shed light on the complex relationships that are established between the anchoring of activities and the capacity for innovation in a given territory. From this perspective, the territory is often seen as a simple platform, endowed with specific amenities that make it more or less innovative, attractive or resilient, thus producing a simplistic reading of territorial ecosystems. This simplification, however effective it may be, is particularly problematic when we look more specifically at cultural and artistic activities. If the now classic figures of the cultural district, the creative cluster or the artistic district, have been able to embody various cultural, industrial or urban planning policies, do they exhaust the analysis of the multiple embeddings that articulate a situated cultural and artistic offering and the territories within which it develops? Beyond the mere effects of agglomeration, do not the social imprint, the cultural vitality, the urban ambiences constitute as many symptomatic and yet little explored “overspills” of the crossroads between urban and cultural dynamics?

Beyond performance, the “sensory fabric of the city”?

Over the last thirty years, the metropolisation of urbanised territories has been accompanied by a quest for territorial performance – attested to bylabels, growth policies, and multiple rankings that the academic literature has largely been able to relay (debates on the attraction of the creative classes and the attractiveness of cities, the touristification and event- based nature of urban spaces, the neo-liberalisation of urban policies, etc.) – at the risk of forgetting the sensory dimension of the urban fabric. These dynamics of acceleration overshadow as much as they stifle the strong resonances that are nevertheless at work between cultural and creative activities, artists and those who inhabit the territories. What role do creative activities play in the sensory experience of urban spaces? Conversely, how does the social life of a neighbourhood, its urban configuration and its atmosphere affect the modes of artistic production and consumption and, more globally, the creative processes?

Beyond storytelling, “urban authenticity”?

In many ways, the making of the creative city has been accompanied by an intense storytelling activity, emanating both from the actors involved
in local artistic communities and from the public authorities, with a view to fostering support from the population as well as that from the actors involved in the urban project. At the same time, it was also a question of producing a city narrative, a media discourse attractive to the outside world – to tourists, the creative classes, businesses and other media – at the risk of sometimes conveying only stereotyped representations of the territories. Beyond their narrative scope, how do these fictions deviate from what some would call the “authenticity” of the territories concerned? How do they play a performative role such that the territory adapts to the narrative? How do artistic communities position themselves in the construction of these narratives? How does making the artistic presence part of the heritage, and/or aestheticising public space, alter or galvanise the tone of places? Finally, can we highlight the life cycles of artistic scenes and evaluate their impact on the narration of territories?

Beyond a territorial platform, a “territorial-scene”?

Overspill, sensory fabric and authenticity invite us to reinvest the idea of the creative city by developing a singular attention to the idiosyncratic character of the relations between modes of production, consumption and narration of situated artistic and cultural activities and the territorial dynamics in which they are embedded. How can cities built on the model of the creative city evolve to accompany the transitions, notably ecological and economic, that the health, climate and geopolitical crises have made more necessary than ever? How can we transform an attractive city based on totemic investments (flagships) into a desirable and hospitable city which multiplies the axes of resonance between its different components? What models of urban governance can we imagine for these transitions? How can cultural and creative activities accompany the “de-metropolisation” of territories? Does the concept of the scene allow us to embrace these dynamics in the same movement, in order to restore to territory its full depth in social science research? The question of methodologies can be explored here in order to identify more preciselyand in an articulated way the social, geographic, economic and sensory characteristics of the so-called creative territories.

PROGRAMME :
https://scaena.hypotheses.org/5820

Scientific Comitee

Charles Ambrosino (Université Grenoble Alpes), Pauline Boivineau (Université Catholique de l’Ouest), Etienne Capron (Université d’Angers), Laurent Devisme (ENSA Nantes), Sandrine Emin (Université d’Angers), Emmanuelle Gangloff (ENSA Nantes), Gérôme Guibert (Université Paris 3), Rainer Kazig (ENSA Grenoble), Isabelle Leroux (Université d’Angers), Basile Michel (Cergy Paris Université), Hélène Morteau (Université Grenoble Alpes), Dominique Sagot-Duvauroux (Université d’Angers), Raphaël Suire (Nantes Université), Jean-Paul Thibaud (ENSA Grenoble).