The Elephant in the Lecture Theatre: Sharing ecologies, alternative economic spaces and the changing role of higher education in the creative economy

With the Global Financial Crisis behind us, but not sufficiently distant that risk is absent, and with the institutions of economy and society tainted, we are witnessing a huge economic reconfiguration of society. Triggered in part by the financial collapse of 2007/8 but fuelled also by technological developments and process innovations, and political and financial pressures, which prompt us to revisit old ways doing things and to question prevailing paradigms and models. Whilst it is clear that the financial collapse and the various austerity measures that followed it, have acted as a significant external shock as well as a point of clarification in national economies, the rate of innovation and more recent new firm entry could be taken as symptomatic of Schumpeter’s (1943) ‘creative destruction’, whilst on-going system changes represent a deepening of that destruction phase. Like other institutions, universities have been called upon to enact change – financially, operationally, politically – but also have a key role to play in promoting creative destruction and encouraging change elsewhere in society. The complex and unique role that universities play in the economy and in society, especially in cities can be demonstrated through their relationship with the creative industries - a set of high-growth industries, which are in many respects untypical of other parts of the economy but typify the future trajectory of industrial change in the western world and have come to flourish in urban centres.