Scholarly record

IS THE CULTURAL HERITAGE DRIVING CREATIVE INDUSTRIES GROWTH? THE CITY OF LUBLIN CASE

R. Macik

Abstract

Background: Lublin is the economic and cultural capital of Eastern Poland, from ages being the bridge between western and eastern cultures of historical Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The golden era in the 16th century created even the Lublin Renaissance - an architectural style developed in the Lublin region of Poland. The current strategy of the city is summarised to be the “city of inspiration” – to build future with history and culture in mind. The primary goal of the paper is to explore the growth of the creative sector in the city of Lublin and its functional area in the context of the cultural heritage and current cultural events that are exploiting it. The thesis of the paper is that the cultural heritage oriented strategies are stimulating the growth of the local creative industries. Methods: This preliminary study relies mostly on secondary data, including data from the national register of enterprises in Poland and selected information from interviews with city authorities and entrepreneurs. The analysis uses Location Quotient (LQ) and its changes over time, as a measure of the concentration of creative industries. Results: Since 2009 size of the creative industries sector in Lublin agglomeration grew regarding registered and active enterprises and public institutions (sector growth of 64%, in average about 8% YoY, comparing to 14% total and 1.7% YoY for all sectors). The share of creative industries in a total number of enterprises in Lublin increased from 5.4% in 2009 to 7.4% in 2017. The quantitative and qualitative analysis suggests there are two main drivers of this growth – cultural heritage promotion and exploit, leading to the artistic education of citizens and significant growth of tourists visits, including visits of foreigners – and growing popularity of start-up culture for IT connected creative businesses (beyond the scope of the paper). Both dynamics of changes over time and LQ analysis are suggesting growth of concentration in Lublin such heritage-rich creative sectors like design, architecture and organisation of cultural and artistic events. Conclusions: Paper connects the cultural heritage of the city of Lublin with changes in some sub-sectors of creative industries. Further research – in progress – will provide implications for municipal programs for creative industries sector.

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