image for illustration: Open Government Licence v3.0
Historic England (HE) has published a new report as part of the Heritage Counts series, ‘Cultural Heritage, Creativity and the Creative Economy’ which shows that ‘cultural heritage can positively influence creativity and local economic development’.
Historic England writes:
Cultural heritage enhances creativity and supports the growth of the creative economy. Heritage, whether tangible or intangible, serves as inspiration for new creative works and innovation that can increase entrepreneurship and foster local economic growth… shows how the presence of heritage represents a specific type of economic resource that can stimulate imagination and innovative capacity to produce positive economic outcomes….
Newly published evidence
Research by Silvia Cerisola provides further evidence that cultural heritage can positively influence creativity and local economic development. This study shows that where cultural heritage is abundant, the area performs better economically. For example, by stimulating entrepreneurial ventures and business innovation. The study uses econometric analysis to investigate the interplay between cultural heritage, creativity, and economic development in the NUTS3 regions of England.
What the research found:
- Cultural heritage exerts a direct positive influence on economic development: On average, a marginal increase in the cultural heritage is associated with a real GDP growth of 0.14%
- Areas of higher cultural heritage are also areas which produce a larger number of trademarks, a measure of economic creativity: Areas with a higher density of listed buildings produce on average 0.01 more trademarks per 1000 people
- Regions that are abundantly endowed with both economic and scientific creative talents, or with both economic and artistic creative talents perform better than the others in terms of GDP growth
