The space, sociality and art worlds of creative clusters : two case studies in Shanghai

The notion of creative cluster has been imported to China and endorsed in the official cultural policies in the recent years. Despite the overwhelming practice of creative clusters designation in China, especially capital cities, relatively little has been known about how it works in China and in what ways it produces creativity. Based on a comparative study of two creative clusters in Shanghai, Tianzifang and M50, using Henry Lefebvre's theoretical framework on the production of space as the main thread, complimented by other theories including Pierre Bourdieu on capital, habitus and field, and Becker on art worlds, this thesis investigated the production process of creative clusters in China context, the various management models of creative clusters and their effects on the creativity production, and the reasons for different performance of creativity in the two clusters. This thesis suggested that the production of creative clusters in China not only involving the production of physical space, but also the mental and social space. Creative clusters in China were acted on by policy, represented the party ideology and became the representation of political performance of local authority. Meanwhile, new social space for artists has been formed in the clusters. Concerning the various strategies of production, each cluster presented a different performance on delivering perceived creativity. TZF has adopted a government dominated model, and has developed tourism as well. This has been successful in fostering commercial environment by allowing the cultural and commercial functions to co-exist easily, but also has led to the capitalization of space and there seemed to be less evidence of creativity. M50 has to date been commercially managed with an enterprise model. It has been successful in cultivating the creative milieu through managing the ratio of different creative organizations in the cluster and has shown more ability in producing creativity.