Creative what?

Creative industries what are they anyway?

I've been in them one way or another since I was born. My mother an artist and art teacher, my father a graphic designer, my brother, aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins all artists, architects, computer designers, engineers, map makers, actors, illustrators, jazz musicians or stain glass window painters.....what chance did I stand? With a strict diet of Ballet, Modern, Jazz and tap from age 4 and paper and scissors (my choice apparently) as toys, and batique and pottery as 'at home activities' what was I supposed to think the world was really like?

So having finally given up on becoming a Ballerina age 15 (it wasn't that I was that bad just got interested in other stuff (read boys) and didn't have the required drive to really go there) I moved onto being an artist, five years of college and Art school, two years of being a very poor, working for free artist (read waitress) and 5-6 years of working with my other half in a new media and internet consultancy I feel I have a perspective on these things.

For the last couple of years through employment choices I have found myself heavily involved in the city-wide (Birmingham UK) drive to develop the Creative industries. But I have a problem. I mean I know what they mean - the DCMS have there definitions and we all go by them. Apparently the creative industries are made up of some 13 sub-sectors including everyone involved from fine artists through to advertisers, to software designers. My concern is that Creative insutries as a 'catch all' includes some very varied occupations. In supporting and nurturing these professions are we lumping them altogether? Is it possible that really their needs might all be quite different?

I don't know the answers to this...yet