The cultural and creative industries

Approaches to the cultural and/or creative industries tend to take two forms. One identifies a set of institutions and practices (a `sector? or an `industry?) that demands our attention in some way, often against a background of their previously marginal position. A second takes a more `constructivist? perspective, highlighting an active process whereby an object is created or assembled by or through policy discourse(s). Looking back over 40 years of policy and academic (and indeed `activist?) writing on this topic it seems clear that these two approaches are not mutually exclusive; they represent different narratives or rhetorical tropes that have been used (often by the same person) in different situations.