people at the graduate school of creative arts and media

 

tara byrne: dit, school of art design + printing, research scholar

 

 

 

biographical details

 

Tara Byrne is an arts consultant and researcher based in Dublin. She is currently pursuing a PHD in ‘Creative Cities’ theories concerning the growth and transformation of cities, specifically researching the relationship between the Creative City paradigm and Cultural Policy. She is on the advisory committee of ‘Brand Dublin: Dublin’s Identity Project’ with Dublin City Council, and has just completed work as the Irish representative of the EU working group on ‘Maximising the Potential of the Cultural and Creative Industries’ (Priority 4, Culture Plan 2008 – 2010). In 2010, she was visual arts coordinator of the ‘Creative Policies for Creative Cities Project’ in Dun Laoghaire and International Innovation Expert for the ECCE Innovation project, as part of Dublin City Council’s CreativeD initiative. Before that, she was Director of the National Sculpture Factory (2002-08), and Artists’ Support Executive in the Arts Council (1996 – 2002), where she was responsible for setting up new interdisciplinary support systems for artists, as well as developing artists’ support policies and contributing to national and EU culture think-tanks, leading to policies as they related to the individual artist (in particular Ireland’s contribution to the Copyright and Related Rights Act).

She has worked with and commissioned artists and curators, including Inigo Manglano Ovalle, Bik van der Pol, Annie Fletcher, Charles Esche, Sarah Browne, Maria Eichhorn, Shane Cullen, Andrew Stones, Jordan Baseman, Sarah Pierce, Art/not art, Surasi Kusolwong, Catherine David, Sarat Maharaj and Phil Collins. Previously she has worked in Alternative Entertainments, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the National College of Art and Design. She completed a BA in History of Art and English Literature at Trinity College, Dublin in 1991 and a Higher Diploma in Arts Administration from UCD in 1993. She is a former board member of CIRCA, the Visual Arts Journal in Ireland and a member of IKT Curators' Forum.

 

Publications:

desIRE; designing houses for contemporary Ireland, The National Sculpture Factory/Gandon Editions, 2008.
Cork Caucus; on art possibility and democracy, The National Sculpture Factory/ Revolver, 2006.
Croon; an interdisciplinary project by Daphne Wright and Johnny Hanrahan, 2005, Meridian/ National Sculpture Factory.
The Creative Imperative; a report on support for the individual artist in Ireland, Anthony Everitt in association with Tara Byrne, The Arts Council of Ireland, 2000.
Artists’ Supports Policy Framework; reforms and changes to Arts Council awards, 2001

 

 

research interests

THE CREATIVE CITY AND CULTURAL POLICY

The creative city paradigm is a pervasive urban strategy and discourse operating in European, US and Asian contexts, concerned with creating ‘successful’ and competitive cities, addressing themes of ‘work’, ‘place’ and ‘creativity’. Although creativity is primarily conceived of as a managerial strategy within the paradigm, its claims relating to the role of culture in providing key attractions and amenities in cities has imbued the creative city with an apparently progressive and benign cultural profile, as well as bolstering advocacy by cultural policy makers. This profile, coupled with the creative city’s influential discourses (employing themes such as post-industrialism, the knowledge economy, the creative economy, urban boosterism and creativity and innovation), aligns the paradigm with the political, social and intellectual context and interests of culture at an administrative or policy level. This research proposes that the ‘creative city’ paradigm and its related discourses operate as ‘implicit’ modes and forms of cultural policy and furthermore, that it is increasingly displacing ‘explicit’, or nominal forms of cultural policy discourse. The research seeks to test this hypothesis and to establish to what extent creative city discourse has influenced cultural policy and to what extent the creative city paradigm might represent an alignment with or challenging of explicit cultural policy. The study will further investigate the nature of the relationship of cultural policy-makers to creative city discourse and in particular, whether the impact of creative city discourse might create the potential for a renewal of cultural policy.

Key words: Creative City, Cultural Policy, Implicit/explicit Cultural Policy, Creative Economy, Creativity and Innovation.

 

 

 

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