This is a preliminary draft of the paper that will be presented at the International Conference on Organizational Learning,

Knowledge and Capabilities (OLKC), in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 26-28 April 2009.

PLACES, SPACES AND THE DYNAMICS OF CREATIVITY*

Patrick Cohendeta, David Grandadama, Laurent Simonb
a
b

HEC Montral, Canada / BETA, Universit de Strasbourg, France

HEC Montral, Canada

Abstract
Creativity is a major driving force in modern economies, on a global scale, but also on a local
scale. In other words, cities may benefit from a highly creative environment in order to foster
their development. The aim of this contribution is to depict and examine the dynamics of
situated creativity by presenting an anatomy of the creative city based on three different
layers, namely the underground, the middleground and the upperground. In order to illustrate
this point of view, the culture cluster in the creative city of Montreal is analyzed.
Keywords:
Creativity, cities, communities, cluster

Corresponding Author: Patrick Cohendet, HEC Montral, Service de lEnseignement des

Affaires Internationales, 3000 Chemin de la Cte-Sainte-Catherine, Montral (Qubec)
Canada H3T 2A7, Phone: + 1 514 340 6909, Fax: + 1 514 340 6987, Email:
[email protected]

1. INTRODUCTION
Throughout history, cultural activity has often been concentrated in specific areas, therefore
providing a particularly creative environment for artists. This phenomenon has led to the
multiplication of creative centers worldwide. From a local point of view, however, not all
territories have equally benefited from a rising creative atmosphere. Indeed, some cities have
gained a growing advantage over other less creative places, as people will tend to cluster in
the urban milieus that offer the best opportunities.
Several reasons may explain these agglomeration phenomena in specific cities or territories
(as shown in the work of Marshall, 1890; Jacobs, 1969; or Porter, 2000). In his well-known
essay, Florida (2002) argues that investment in cultural related facilities and other related
amenities may provide a fertile ground for a creative class of workers to imagine new
products or processes that will ultimately bring economic growth and wealth. Although this
theory has received a significant amount of criticisms, it has opened a large agenda for studies
in situated creativity (for some examples, see Turok, 2004; or Scott, 2006 among others).
Drawing on this stream of research and in order to fully grasp the underlying creative process
inside these creative milieus, we propose to focus on what the creative individuals and
organizations really do rather than on who they are, which is, in our view, the main
shortcoming with the most popular approaches. Our aim is therefore to depict and analyze the
actual dynamics that may lead to the emergence of highly creative ideas and forms in creative
cities.
This perspective requires us to consider the creativity dynamics as a collective process.
Indeed, no matter how talented individuals may be, we argue that creativity can only be fully
expressed in the joint efforts of different social forms that cooperate in a dense network of
collaboration. This collective effort can almost never be achieved virtually (as underlined for
example by Grabher, 2001; Amin and Cohendet, 2005; Bathelt, 2005; or Maskell et al., 2006,
among many others). In fact, in order for new creative ideas to emerge, individuals,
communities and firms must interact frequently with one another through ongoing face-toface exchanges, by regularly getting together in the different cultural and artistic spaces
offered to them by the environment in which they are embedded (as depicted by Storper and
Venables, 2004). For this reason, the creative process is mostly situated and is strongly
dependent on the local services and conveniences that each entity will have access to.
In the following, we first present our theoretical framework. We then illustrate our point of
view drawing on the case of Montreal and its culture cluster, which is recognized as one of
the most creative and diversified area in North America.

2. CREATIVITY DYNAMICS WITHIN THE CREATIVE CITY

In order for creative ideas to become marketable goods and services, it is necessary to equip
them with the mechanisms, tools and devices that are needed to reveal, enhance, nurture,
interpret and enact their true value (as shown in Hartley, 2005). As a result, the actors of
creativity in a specific city are not only backed by the formal world of science, but also rely
on the efforts of an informal world, deeply rooted in the local milieu (as described by
Markusen, 2006). This suggests that agents do not compete one against the other. Instead,

they voluntarily cooperate with one another in closely knitted clusters, and share their
knowledge so as to increase their competitiveness (as shown by Maskell, 2001 among others).
In other words, creative forces will become viable only if they are supported by the complex
coupling of heterogeneous entities working together in different layers of a commonly shared
geographical platform.
These different entities include the individual actors in the underground on one hand, from
who the creative impulse originates, and firms from the upperground on the other, that
provide an institutional background for the integration of these new combinations on the
market. The underground brings together the creative, artistic, and cultural activities that are
not immediately linked to the commercial and industrial world. Thus, underground culture
lies outside the corporate logic of standardization. This function is usually assumed by the
upperground. The latter contributes to the creative process by its capacity to finance and unite
the different expressions together, by its capacity to integrate dispersed types of knowledge,
and by its capacity to test new forms of creativity on the market.
Because the underground and the upperground function on entirely different modes, they only
rarely interact together. For this reason, we add, in this contribution, a commonly neglected
dimension to the traditional perspective. Indeed, we suggest that both the underground and the
upperground are linked by communities from the middleground, who act as intermediate
structures allowing for the creative ideas to transit from an informal micro-level to a formal
macro-level, through the accumulation, the combination, the enrichment and the renewal of
distributed bits of knowledge (as portrayed by Lave and Wenger, 1990; Brown and Duguid,
1991; or Amin and Roberts, 2008).
These communities of the middleground play a central role in the situated creativity
dynamics, by achieving a process of progressive codification of knowledge, starting from a
phase where the actors do not know the characteristics of the novelty, do not know each other,
and do not possess the capabilities to communicate, to reach a phase where the novelty is
equipped with sufficient shared understanding and codes to become economically viable (as
depicted by Cowan et al., 2000). In this view, the functioning of these communities is critical
in the sense that they precisely provide the creative city with the local apparatus necessary for
new creative ideas to progressively emerge and reach the market for creative goods and
services, by allowing them to transit from the underground to the upperground.
According to this perspective, the middleground is able to promote creativity in diverse
activities by integrating individuals from distinct backgrounds. It therefore opens both to
exploration and exploitation mechanisms. Firstly, this system allows members to avoid lockin, by ensuring a close connection to diverse styles and traditions. Secondly, by favoring the
creation of a common identity, these collective forms limit the risks related to novelty and
secure the foundations on which each individual expresses his creativity. As a result, the
different communities benefit from the external creativity whenever norms are not fixed, and
benefit from the internal creativity whenever such codes and rules need reinforcement. Again,
for this phenomenon to happen, the middleground must be deeply entrenched in a specific
place, which is in itself a great source of inspiration for its members.
It turns out that each entity forming the anatomy of the creative city plays a specific role in
the creative process and therefore fulfills the task other components cannot achieve. If
talented individuals of the underground are very active in the beginning of the creative
process, they must rely on the communities of the middleground in order to popularize their

creative efforts. In this sense, these communities are essential in the elaboration of a common
grammar on which creative ideas are developed. As new expressions are progressively
reinforced, firms of the upperground replace the two preceding entities. These formal
organizations must rely on the work of the communities, as it is impossible for them to
allocate the sufficient amount of time and money necessary for creative material to blossom
on the market. This suggests that these three social forms are complementary, and, as a result,
can only succeed in promoting creativity if they all act together.

3. CREATIVE CLUSTERS IN MONTREAL

Montreal is considered one of the most creative cities in the world, offering a particularly
resourceful environment for individuals willing to change the rules of traditional art (as
shown by Stolarick and Florida, 2006 in their analysis). As a French-speaking city in an
English-speaking country, Montreal benefits from its North American anchorage, but also
from its strong European heritage. This has widely contributed to endow the city with its own
culture and traditions, which has proven to be a main asset for the establishment of creative
activities in multiple markets. In other words, the city provides an ideal background for the
production, the distribution and the consumption of many creative goods and services in a
broad range of sectors that can be experimented locally before being exported to the rest of
the planet. This favorable setting has led to the establishment of a variety of clusters
throughout the city.
We study more specifically the culture cluster within the Montreal metropolitan area, which is
the main cultural center in the Quebec province and is the second most important cultural
cluster in Canada after Toronto in terms of its creative workforce. Montreal however remains
the first Canadian labor supplier in the field of performing arts, film production, book editing
and sound recording. As such, the case of Montreal demonstrates a typical example
illustrating the role played by the middleground to foster the creative process, by linking the
underground to the upperground. For all these reasons, it seemed particularly relevant to focus
on this city and on the culture cluster throughout this analysis.

3.1. Background
The cluster strategy was introduced in the Quebec province (and therefore in Montreal) in
1991, based on the idea that, in a competitive world, success could only be reached by
combining efforts on a long term basis, rather than competing individually on the short term.
This decision led to the creation of the metropolitan community of Montreal in 2003, which
helped set up fifteen clusters representing several sectors, all grouped into four major
categories (the competitive clusters, the visibility clusters, the emerging technology clusters,
and the manufacturing clusters). Among the fifteen clusters, four of them are fully structured,
among which the aerospace cluster, the life sciences cluster, the information technologies
cluster, and finally the culture cluster.
Created in 2005, the culture cluster (which is part of the visibility clusters) was originally
established in order to organize the production and distribution of cultural goods and services
in Montreal, as well as to provide Montreal with an international recognition in this domain.
This cluster is decomposed into six sub-clusters that contribute in different ways to the
cultural life inside the city:

Movies, audiovisual and multimedia

Visual arts, design and architecture
Music and popular shows
Performing arts and circus
Books and literature
Heritage and museology
One of the major aspects of the cultural sector is that it not only influences and bridges most
of the other economic sectors, it also plays an important part in the social development of
local inhabitants. As a result, this sector is often regarded as contributing to enhance local
creativity, by revitalizing the territory, by developing the populations social capital, and by
improving individual and collective well-being.
With slightly more than one hundred thousand workers in 2006, the culture cluster represents
approximately five percent of the total workforce in the Montreal metropolitan area. In fact,
between 2001 and 2006, if some sub-clusters have grown in size (among which the visual
arts, design and architecture sub-cluster, the music and popular shows sub-cluster, and the
performing arts and circus sub-cluster), others have deflated (among which the movies,
audiovisual and multimedia sub-cluster, the books and literature sub-cluster, and the heritage
and museology sub-cluster). Overall, however, the number of artists has increased during this
period, suggesting a relative dynamism of the cultural scene in Montreal.
Table 1: Culture cluster workforce in the metropolitan region of Montreal
NAICS

Sector
All sectors

2001
1765760

2006
1972455

Variation
11.7%

Culture sector
(In % of total labor)

97755
(5.54)

100385
(5.09)

2.7%

Movies, audiovisual and multimedia

15250

13315

-12.7%

5121
3346

Motion picture and video industries

Manufacturing and reproducing magnetic and optical media
Visual arts, design and architecture

14025
1225

12830
485

-8.5%
-60.4%

21100

23725

12.4%

5413
5414
5418

Architectural, engineering and related services

Specialized design services
Advertising and related services
Music and popular shows

2455
6895
11750

2850
8675
12200

16.1%
25.8%
3.8%

11590

12360

6.6%

5122
5151
5152
7113
7114

Sound recording industries

Radio and television broadcasting
Pay and specialty television
Promoters (presenters) of performing arts, sports and similar events
Agents and managers for artists, athletes, entertainers and other public figures
Performing arts and circus

865
5630
2515
2065
515

1045
7620
390
2725
580

20.8%
35.3%
-84.5%
32.0%
12.6%

10390

13380

28.8%

7111
7115

Performing arts companies

Independent artists, writers and performers
Books and literature

4140
6250

5605
7775

35.4%
24.4%

37360

35605

-4.7%

3231
4512
5111
5191

Printing and related support activities

Book, periodical and music stores
Newspaper, periodical, book and directory publishers
Other information services
Heritage and museology

17870
3410
10955
5125

16395
3810
10940
4460

-8.3%
11.7%
-0.1%
-13.0%

2065

2000

-3.1%

2065

2000

-3.1%

7121

Heritage institutions

Source: Statistic Canada, Canada Census 2001 and 2006.

Note: This table was obtained using the 2002 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). In order
to be as precise as possible, the architectural, engineering and related services category (NAICS 5413), which
comprises many activities that do not belong to the culture sector, was replaced by the occupation categories
C051 and C052.

3.2. Cultural places and spaces

Montreal offers many opportunities for artists and creators to produce and diffuse their work
on a local, but also on a global level, whether it is by way of an informal network of
connections, or through the more institutionalized pipelines offered by the local places in
which these artists are embedded. In fact, it is essential that the different individuals be
localized geographically in order to allow the underground to progressively reach the
upperground. This however could not be possible without the efforts of a myriad of
middleground communities driving the process of creation.
These communities often rely on undetectable means of communication, which is why its
members gather in specific spaces, such as bars, clubs, museums, art galleries, or performance
halls, where new ideas and forms are discussed, commented, analyzed, and validated (or not).
In other words, these spaces are where the trends and styles are defined and eventually turn
into a buzz. For this reason, word-of-mouth plays a major role in these creative spaces, as it
greatly favors the dissemination of new artifacts.
Table 2: Cultural spaces in Montreal (in 2006)
Sector

Number

Ratio Montreal/Quebec province

Movie theaters
Visual arts, design and architecture

23

18.1

Artist centers
Music and popular shows

28

44.4

TV stations
Radio stations
Performing and visual arts

4
25

14.8
16.3

Performance halls
Books and literature

157

28

Libraries
Bookstores
Heritage and museology

11
130

8.8
33.8

63
58
101

14.6
n/a
n/a

Movies, audiovisual and multimedia

Museums
Heritage organizations
Archive centers and services

Source: Institut de la Statistique du Qubec, 2008

Montreal offers a wide variety of spaces, both private and public, for artists to implement
and/or put forward their work. These creative spaces are highly concentrated within the city
(often at a walking distance from each other), which significantly facilitates the interaction
among artists from the same but also from very different backgrounds. For example, it is
fairly common for individuals from the visual arts industry to collaborate with individuals in
the music industry, whether it is for a single performance or simply for an album cover or
poster. In fact, Montreal is acknowledged for its blending of different art forms, similarly to
what is observed among its multicultural population. It is also important to note that the city
has received an international recognition for its combination of art and technology, although

we do not deal with this aspect in this contribution given that we focus exclusively on the
culture cluster.
Table 3: Main festivals in Montreal
Sector

Main festivals

Movies, audiovisual and multimedia

Festival des Films du Monde de Montral (FFM)

Festival du Nouveau Cinma de Montral (FNC)
Les Rendez-vous du Cinma Qubcois
Festival International du Film sur l'Art
Festival du Film Fantastique Fantasia
Festival Sefarad de Montral Festival du Film Isralien de Montral
Rencontres Internationales Cinma et Sport de Montral (La Lucarne)
FESTIVALISSIMO Festival Culturel Ibro-Latino-Amricain de Montral
Vues dAfrique
Festival Magnifico
Image & Nation
Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montral
Festival du Film Juif de Montral
Festival de Films pour Enfants de Montral
Festival du Film d'Aventure de Montral (FIFAM)
Festival International Montral en Arts (FIMA)
Festival Mode et Design de Montral
Festival dArchitecture et Forum des Architectes
Festival International de Jazz de Montral (FIJM)
FrancoFolies de Montral
Pop Montral
Coup de Coeur Francophone
Heavy MTL
Mutek Festival de Musique Electronique
Festival Osheaga
Festival International Nuits d'Afrique de Montral
Festival Sefarad de Montral
Les Ftes Croles Internationales de Montral
Festival International Montral/Nouvelles musiques
Tam-tams du Mont Royal
Festival MEG Montral
Festival International de Merengue de Montral
Festival de Musique de Chambre de Montral
Les Symphonies Portuaires
Elektra Festival
Festival TransAmriques de Montral
Encore Festival de Danse International
Festival St-Ambroise Fringe de Montral
Festival de Thtre Amateur de l'Ile de Montral
Festival Mondial du Cirque
Festival Juste pour Rire
Salon du Livre de Montral
Salon du Livre Anarchiste
Festival International de Littrature (FIL)
Festival Interculturel du Conte du Qubec
Mtropolis Bleu
Journes des Muses Montralais

Visual arts, design and architecture

Music and popular shows

Performing arts and circus

Books and literature

Heritage and museology

Creative spaces are often formal meeting points, but they can also be organized artificially, as
this would be the case whenever a specific event takes place in the city. As a matter of fact,
Montreal is well-known for its numerous festivals, which all offer an ideal platform for artists
to present their own work and interact with members of their own community. In many
situations, these festivals reward the most promising artists through an elaborate prize system,
which undoubtedly contributes to establish ones reputation in his milieu. These festivals are
not only destined to one specific sector, however, as they provide an opportunity for artists to
also meet with other creative individuals, communities and firms, interested in their activities.
In this sense, the festivals provide a temporary space for creative individuals to cluster in one
specific place and to eventually receive a wider recognition on the local and global scene.

3.3. Culture and creative communities: some examples

Throughout the years, many projects have emerged in the different cultural sectors. In this
section we present some of these projects by insisting on the active role played by the
middleground communities. The information collected was compiled mostly using the
websites of each one of these communities.
Among the different projects that have emerged from the underground, Kino1, in the
cinematographic field and more specifically in the short film industry, offers a good example
of the implementation of a renewed creative form. Founded in 1999, this creative collective is
now an international network of experimentation, which has contributed to more than two
hundred short films. This project, initiated by television and movie employees as well as by
students in the movie sector, was initially created as an association of young directors, in
which the latter could present their work and discuss it with others during regular meetings.
The representations progressively opened up to the public and rapidly became very popular
on the Montreal local artistic scene. The Kino collective soon proposed monthly events as
well as what is called Kino-Kabarets, a sort of game, in which participants are asked to
produce a short film in less than forty eight hours that is then presented during public shows
or festivals. This formula has since been replicated in several places around the world,
offering Kino an ever-growing audience. The Kino movement now includes more than fifty
sections worldwide dispersed in fourteen countries, which are often included in the most
prestigious international movie festivals, such as the Berlin film festival or the Venice film
festival, among others. As a result, this collective, deeply embedded in the middleground, has
been able to progressively promote underground culture to the upperground.
In the visual arts sector, several initiatives have emerged in Montreal in order to disseminate
the work of local illustrators, painters, and crafters from the underground. Installed in old
cigarette machines gathered in various bars and clubs throughout Montreal, among which the
famous Casa del Popolo, the Distriboto2 system offers the possibility for artists to install and
sell a miniature sample of their work, without having to be exposed in galleries or museums,
receiving $1.75 for each item sold. Launched in 2001, the project has since united more than
three hundred artists that have sold over twenty thousand items. In a similar way, the Saint
Henri Walking Distance Distro is a free delivery service that collects zines and CDs made by
artists living in the Saint Henri neighborhood and delivers them by foot to local subscribers.
The artists are then paid through monthly fundraising events highlighting the Saint Henri
talents. In both these cases, the artists from the underground are given the opportunity to not
only diffuse their own work, but also, and probably most importantly, to see the work of
others. This has helped create an important local community of the middleground, therefore
creating a platform for the different individuals to interact together and exchange their ideas
on a regular basis.
Montreals musical scene is also very dynamic, with the efforts of several independent labels,
such as Alien 8 Recordings3, Constellation Records4, or Bangor Records5, among others, that
1

http://www.kino00.com/
http://www.distroboto.archivemontreal.org/
3
http://www.alien8recordings.com/
4
http://www.cstrecords.com/
2

actively participate in the production, promotion and distribution of a wide variety of local
performers from the underground. These labels have established their reputation by an intense
collaboration with local venues, such as the Sala Rossa or the Divan Orange, offering the
possibility for many small bands to perform. The multiplication of such venues in the MileEnd quarters in particular, situated in the Plateau neighborhood, has contributed to develop a
broad network of artists and fans that frequently get together, thus creating an important
middleground community in support of the local scene. These locally sustained collaborative
projects have enabled some artists to distribute their works internationally. In spite of this, a
majority of them still sell most of their records within Montreal, therefore nourishing the local
creative environment.
In the performing arts sector, the circus arts, with the famous Cirque du Soleil6 as its main
representative, play a major role in Montreal, and have progressively helped the city become a
world leader in this domain. In 1997, Cirque du Soleil officially grouped its activities in the
Saint-Michel neighborhood, following the implementation of an urban development program,
which also included the creation of the Ecole nationale de cirque de Montreal and the Tohu, a
performance hall, destined to offer an institutional setting for new emerging circuses, as well
as for young artists graduating from the nearby school, to present their creations. This project
has played an active part in codifying the different rules associated to modern circus and has
offered an ideal platform for several other circuses, such as 7 Fingers7 or Cirque Eloize8, to
come forward and reach a worldwide market, by attracting several underground artists
towards the communities of the middleground. In this sense, the upperground, incarnated by
Cirque du Soleil, has nourished the middleground, and has given the opportunity for renewed
creative ideas and conceptions to emerge.
The book and literature sector, finally, enables many emerging writers to disseminate their
work, in the same way as this is achieved in the visual arts or in the music sector. Indeed,
along with the usual streams of diffusion from the upperground, such as the Renaud Bray
stores that frequently promote local writers, the city comprises many independent bookstores
and/or libraries, which serve as channels of diffusion for many underground authors. The
Bibliograph/e project, for example, which is a library of more than five hundred zines and
artist books, helps create a link between the bookmakers and the public. This library, which is
situated as part of Caf Toc Toc in the Mile End neighborhood frequently organizes
workshops on storytelling and drawing, and has hosted many public readings for the local
community. In turn, these workshops have led to the creation of a book, grouping some of the
drawings made during one of these workshops, which is now sold for fundraising. This
initiative allows the hosts to create and maintain the library, but also provides a certain
amount of visibility for the public.
All these projects share in common a collective desire to put forth the local culture, which is
represented by a myriad of connected artists. In other words, in all these cases, the
collaborative efforts provided by the communities of the middleground contribute to support
the local culture and offer the foundations on which different artists can navigate between the
underground and the upperground, whether it is through a top-down or through a bottom-up
mechanism. For these reasons, the local middleground should be viewed as a major actor in
5

http://www.bangorrecords.com/
http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/
7
http:// www.les7doigtsdelamain.com/
8
http://www.cirque-eloize.com/
6

the dynamics of the creative process in Montreal, and has widely contributed to build up the
culture cluster. What appears to be even more important in all the examples above is the fact
that the middleground proposes an implicit assessment and validation mechanism, which
allows emerging artists to disseminate their work, interact and eventually collaborate with one
another. In this sense, the middleground communities not only preserve the development of
local culture, they also nourish both the underground and the upperground with new creative
ideas.

4. SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION

We have attempted to show, in this contribution, that creative activity is immediately related
to a specific geographical milieu. This argument has entailed us to analyze and dissect the
specific anatomy of the creative city. Accordingly, in our view, three distinct entities are
involved in bringing the creative ideas to the market, therefore allowing new knowledge to
transit from the informal micro-level to the formal macro-level: the underground, the
middleground and finally the upperground. These different layers of creative cities each play
a different role according to the stage of development of the creative process. In this context,
however, the middleground communities play an essential part, as critical intermediate
structures linking the underground on one side to the upperground on the other, therefore
constantly navigating between the informal and the formal world. As such, there still is a
great need for empirical work in this area in order to fully appreciate the power of these
creative communities.
The culture cluster in Montreal portrays ideally the coevolutive relationships between the
upperground and the underground: how the underground, situated in the city, materializes
through the development of opportunities provided by creative spaces, and how the
upperground fertilizes and feeds the underground through the emergence of communities and
via the organization of localized events and competitions. In fact, the culture cluster in
Montreal perfectly reveals the importance and significance of the middleground in this subtle
creative ecosystem, as it plays a major role in balancing and intermediating situated
exploration with potentially global exploitation.
Our view is that this anatomy of the creative city leads to a better appreciation of the relevant
policies to stimulate and favor the quality of the creative forces in this specific milieu. Of
course, classical policy measures, such as attracting leading firms to play the role of anchor
firms (reinforcing the upperground) or attracting talent of the creative class (reinforcing the
underground), are positive ways to increase the creative potential of the city. However, the
anatomy has revealed the key importance of the intermediate level, the middleground, which
articulates the upperground and underground. In this perspective, creative cities must
implement major policies for the establishment of creative spaces and the promotion of
special events, in order to enable the creative communities, from the same cluster as well as
from different clusters, to fully express themselves and exchange their ideas on a regular
basis. We have not specifically dealt with the public policy aspect in this contribution, but we
do have hope that these issues may find answers in future research on creative cities.

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