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.