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The article explores the role of art festivals as platforms for knowledge and network development in the creative industries and creative policy intervention using the case of a small street art festival ( Fuse Festival in Medway, UK). The analysis provides a broader perspective on the current research and debate on the impact and role played by arts festivals in local economic and cultural development—which usually concentrate on either their socioeconomic impact on local communities—to focus instead of their role in building knowledge communities and communities of practice. The results highlight the key role played by the festival in supporting and commissioning artistic work. The results also expose the temporary and explorative nature of many artistic practices and the role of interaction with audiences and other creative producers. Following a network perspective, the findings highlight the role of temporary clusters not only in shaping career opportunities for artists but also in drawing new pathways for local economic development for contexts undergoing regeneration.

This article engages with the current research and debate about the creative city and the importance of cultural infrastructure in contemporary cities. It argues that much of the focus has been around the investment of cities in specific regeneration projects or flagship developments rather than addressing the nature of the infrastructure, networks and agents engaging in the city's cultural development. The complexity theory and its associated principles can provide a new understanding of the connection between the urban space and the systems of local cultural production and consumption. Drawing on interviews with creative practitioners in the North East region of England, the paper argues that the cultural development of a city is a complex adaptive system. This finding has implications for both policy-makers and academic research. It emphasises the importance of micro interactions and networks between creative practitioners, the publicly supported cultural sector and the cultural infrastructure of the city.

Introduction to a new academic and policy field / Roberta Comunian and Abigail Gilmore -- From campus to creative quarter : constructing industry identities in creative places / Daniel Ashton -- Intermediaries and the knowledge exchange process : the case of the creative industries and higher education / Tarek E. Virani and Andy C. Pratt -- Heading towards a sustainable collaboration on the Arts Campus "deSingel" in the city of Antwerp, Belgium / Annick Schramme -- What difference does it make? : assessing the effects of arts-based training on career pathways / Alexandre Frenette and Steven Tepper -- Talent on the move : creative human capital migration patterns in UK / Roberta Comunian, Alessandra Faggian and Sarah Jewell -- Human capital career creativities for creative industries work : lessons underpinned by Bourdieu / Dawn Bennett and Pamela Burnard -- Support or competition? : assessing the role of HEIs in professional networks and local creative communities : the case of glassmaking in Sunderland / Lauren England and Roberta Comunian -- Staying and making it in regional creative cities : visual arts graduates and infrastructures for professional development / Abigail Gilmore, David Gledhill and Ivan Rajkovic -- Beyond the art school : pedagogic networks in the visual arts and their engagement with the city of Leipzig / Silvie Jacobi -- Cultural policy, creative economy and arts higher education in Renaissance Singapore / Venka Purushothaman -- Tensions in university-community engagement : creative economy, urban regeneration and social justice / Paul Benneworth -- The creative turn in Australian higher education / Scott Brook -- University as Übungsraum : notes on the creative transformation of higher education / Sebastian Olma -- Higher education and the creative economy : closing remarks and future research and policy agendas / Roberta Comunian and Abigail Gilmore

Throughout the last two decades, cultural quarters have been used by many local councils across the UK as attempts to redevelop and revitalize declining urban centres. Cities have spent millions of pounds developing cultural quarter policies, justified by the prevailing rhetoric of culture revitalizing the local economy and the creation of a "cultural milieu" that stimulates creative industry activity. However, in many cases in the UK, visitor numbers remain lower than expected, and in some cases, flagship projects have been sold off or closed down. High rents force out small and freelance creative industry actors, and (non-commercial) artistic interventions are strictly policed. Forming part of the wider debate on the political circumscription of the creativity paradigm, this paper argues that cultural quarters have been viewed within a predominately economistic, dichotomous and simplistic framework. This paper argues that there is a need for a more practiced-based, subjective account of cultural quarters that goes beyond such a traditional framework to include more deleterious practices such as community impoverishment, precariousness and short-termism.