Using Special Economic Zones to Grow the Creative and Cultural Industries of Gauteng

I am thrilled to finally get to read Mosa Mokuena’s dissertation for her MSc Finance (Economic Policy) done at the University of London.

The study’s findings revealed that the sector is important economically and socially but is marred by a number of challenges that could be resolved through one intervention – that is intentionally clustering CCI businesses within a special economic zone (SEZ) and incorporating innovation (Mosa Mokuena).

I first met Mosa when working at Constitution Hill as the Transwerke Studios Creative Hub Manager. I had so many ideas that I really wanted to implement and document, but first I had to write numerous proposals outlining the nature of creative hubs, explain my concept of a barter system for rent, and pitch how a creative hub must be developed and nurtured. Mosa, at the time, was the Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at the Gauteng Growth and Development Agency (GGDA). My reports would go to her. Initially it felt like my reports were going to the ‘black hole’ of bureaucratic government used to tick a KPI (key performance index) box but never read or critically looked at. To my surprise, Mosa read these reports and contacted me asking questions, giving suggestions and sincerely interested in my ideas and approach. This was huge motivation and gave me great hope when surrounded by a variety of internal challenges within the position. The greatest challenge of all being the lack of interest in the innovative approaches and experiments that I was trying to implement. Trying new things can lead to failure but it can also lead to new models and approaches that can become case studies for others to utilise.

The barter system I tried to implement was discontinued shortly after my departure and wasn’t fully explored. The hub manager who replaced me believed creatives should be treated like typical business owners, offering generic rental options. To me, this misses a significant opportunity to build a community and document the unique contributions of creatives, which are often overlooked. The case study below provides more details.

Mosa was one of the few people within management of GGDA that read these reports and engaged me on the concepts and approaches. She has now completed her masters looking at the role of innovation and special economic zones (SEZ) in developing the CCIs in Gauteng. I do not think the creation of a SEZ for CCIs will work if this is expecting creatives and their micro businesses to move to an allocated area as has been done with other SEZ in Gauteng; however if research is done on where creatives are working and a SEZ is created within that geographic area then there may be potential for this concept. From my research, I believe the Inner City of Johannesburg could be enabled and developed to support and grow creative enterprises, however the approach to this SEZ would need to cater to the nature of the CCIs and take great care in working within methodologies that speak to the distributed network of the creative economy (more on this coming soon). For more information on SEZ in South Africa – https://www.thedtic.gov.za/sectors-and-services-2/industrial-development/special-economic-zones/

More research on the creative economy of Gauteng (and South Africa) from a variety of perspectives and with a variety of solutions is what we need! The creative economy must be spoken about in board rooms of policy makers, leaders and economic strategists who are not only within the CCIs. We need to stop speaking to ourselves and start explaining the nature of industry to others so when strategising its growth, they do so without loosing the essence of what we are and the value we hold economically, socially and culturally.

Policy developers, implementers, evaluators, CCI businesses, organisations supporting the sector and funders can benefit from these findings (Mosa Mokuena).

Have a read through Mosa’s solutions and ideas – what do you think?