Revolutions, Crisis, and Resilience

This chapter critically examines the ongoing structural transformations (revolutions) in the global creative and cultural industries (CCIs), with a particular focus on how digital platformisation and emergent production technologies such as 3D printing and print on demand have reshaped value chains, audience relationships, and business models, often under the auspices of democratisation and empowerment. However, the analysis challenges this narrative by highlighting the consolidation of power among a handful of dominant tech corporations and media conglomerates, resulting in pronounced market asymmetries and intensified competition within the attention economy. The COVID-19 pandemic (crisis) is positioned as a catalyst that not only accelerated these underlying trends but also magnified the sector’s structural vulnerabilities, compelling a rapid digital pivot and exposing the limits of established revenue and sustainability models. Drawing on empirical research and case studies, the chapter interrogates the multifaceted impacts of these shifts on creative and cultural organisations (CCOs), emphasising the precariousness of independent creators and microenterprises in a platform-dominated landscape. Despite these challenges, the findings indicate adaptive forms of organisational resilience (resilience), sustained in part by digital innovation, government intervention, and sectorwide collaboration. Ultimately, the chapter argues for a multidimensional understanding of organisational sustainability within the CCIs, encompassing economic, social, and cultural dimensions, to better account for organisational resilience and public value amidst ongoing disruption.