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cultural industries. Museums, galleries, libraries.
Culture is no longer about serving lofty ideals, but a money-making industry. It's about
copyright. If we look at successful examples of creative industries in Russia, this is, for example,
the cartoon Masha and the Bear. Today, its creators make hundreds of millions of dollars selling
cartoon characters, ahead of giants such as Volkswagen.
Or, for example, museums - yes, they do not earn money, but, in particular, the Hermitage
in St. Petersburg is already a city-forming enterprise. For his sake, a large flow of tourists rushes
to the city, which generates its own economy.
Sergei Bodrunov: You rightly noted that creativity is becoming more and more in demand.
Nevertheless, we observe that creative solutions often come to us from other countries. The
development of creative industries there is more intensive. Why? What kind of support measures
does the creative industry need?
Vitaly Kurennoy: We are in a phase when this topic is reaching the state level. Apparently,
recent events have stimulated this process. My colleagues from the Higher School of Economics
have completed a large study of Moscow's creative industries. The numbers are amazing. The
traditional industrial sector in Moscow employs about 600 thousand people, and the creative
sector already employs 500 thousand. We have, partly spontaneously, a number of large creative
clusters in Moscow - Artplay, Winzavod. I think the Moscow government will take a number of
measures to stimulate this sector, because it performs better than the sectors of the traditional
economy. We see the same interest in other regions. Appropriate programs have been adopted
in the Khanty-Mansiysk District and Ugra. At the level of individual cities, there is interest in
the creative industries. Of course, we need a focused government policy and the development
of an institutional set of incentive measures. I am optimistic about our country from the point
of view of its creative potential. We often underestimate him. There are tens or even hundreds
of small enterprises of folk arts and crafts, which are also in the shadows and are not visible to
statistics. This is a souvenir, this is jewelry. By the way, the jewelry sector is one of the fastest
growing sectors of the creative industries.
Sergey Bodrunov: The presence of creative industries is tied to the creative class. What
is needed in Russia for the creative class not only to form, but also to develop?
Vitaly Kurennoy: There is global competition for the creative class. It is described by
sociologists as a special stratum. This class is very easy to climb. But it is attracted to places
where it finds its own kind. Therefore,
an important tool for the development
of the creative economy is the creation
of spaces for the creative class. We are
not talking about creative clusters in the
narrow sense of the word, in a certain
atmosphere in society - an atmosphere
of high tolerance and cultural diversity. If
we see an intolerant, diversity-unfriendly
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