The geographical clustering of creative and cultural industries is a topic that has gone from being relatively obscure to mainstream in the academic literature over the past twenty years. Despite the abundance of literature, there have been few systematic attempts to survey the breadth and depth of the papers that have been published on this topic. 

This literature review is written by the PEC's researchers at the University of Sussex, who lead our work in creative clusters and innovation. We attempt to fill that gap by conducting a systematic literature review, including a much broader range of papers than previously reported. We review 355 papers on the topic of creative clusters and identify historical trends in geography, sector and journal, drawing upon bibliometric analysis. 

We conclude that while the creative cluster literature has to date been very impactful, there are substantial gaps for policy-engaged, robust and comparative analysis that need to be addressed in order to drive the topic forward.

Published 9th September 2020

Photo by Patrick Tomasso