Shaping Cities: How micro-organisations contribute to the ongoing development of creative districts across space

The overarching aim of this thesis is to understand how micro-organisations (less than 10 staff, Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy 2023), contribute to the ongoing development of bottom-up creative districts across space, using the lens of trans local scenes. Creative districts are spatial agglomerations of similar organisations which offer production and consumption opportunities related to the creative industries (i.e. record stores, music venues, art galleries, maker studios) (Santagata 2002; Mizzau and Montanari 2018). Current literature on the development of these districts focuses on the factors which lead to the initial development of these areas. There is a gap, however, for understanding how over time, creative districts across much of the western world have converged into the uniform model that we associate with them today; populated by micro-organisations with industrial ‘DIY’ aesthetics and practices which focus on supporting independent, emerging and local activity. This research aim has been investigated with a qualitative methodology of 44 in-depth, semi- structured interviews with individuals running micro-organisations. These interviews were supplemented with participant observation undertaken in 27 micro-organisations, and qualitative content analysis of a select sample of the Instagram posts from 17 micro-organisations. Research was undertaken in four case study creative districts: the Baltic Triangle in Liverpool; the Northern Quarter in Manchester; Digbeth in Birmingham; and Shoreditch in London. The three empirical chapters of this thesis address three research questions. The first empirical chapter answers the question “what roles do micro-organisations enact in creative district scenes?”. This chapter develops and unpacks a typology of the cultural, financial and social support roles through which micro-organisations integrate themselves into their respective scenes. The second empirical chapter addresses the research question: “how do micro-organisations interact with each other across space?”. This chapter provides empirical examples of the physical and virtual mechanisms used by micro-organisations to enable trans-local flows; as well as the implications these have for the continued development of creative districts. The third empirical chapter examines the question “how can micro-organisations in creative districts be supported through the challenges they currently face?”. Informed by findings on the impacts of the pandemic, gaps in government support and the use of informal support mechanisms, this chapter outlines three policy recommendations surrounding tax reform, local government relationships and improving grant guidance. These empirical findings contribute to the literature on scenes, trans-local scenes, economic geography, creative district development, micro-businesses and the creative industries.