Changing Tune in Woodstock Creative industries and local urban development in Cape Town , South Africa

Featuring monikers such as ‘Creative Denver’ or ‘Smart Shanghai’, city planning strategies geared towards conjuring the next creative city have become a common feature of urban development policies throughout the world. With Charles Landry’s (2000) and Richard Florida’s oeuvre (2002; 2005) widely debated by leading planners and politicians, the promise of competitive advantage and economic growth through the development of one’s local creative economy has spread like wildfire. Though Florida’s creative class nexus exceeds the creative industries by including, for instance, financial and legal services, creative city and creative class narratives are joined at the hip in formulating the ‘creative imperative’ (Spillmann & van Osten 2002) which has come to dominate the international urban policy transfer market (Evans 2009). Furthermore, this development reflects a wider global socioeconomic shift towards the knowledge economy and the neoliberal commodification of culture in late capitalism (Gibson & Klocker 2005; Hartley 2005; Harvey 2001). From Bollyto Nollywood (Nigeria’s low-budget but highoutput film industry) evermore emerging markets and developing countries are trying to enter the global economic circuits by means of promoting their domestic creative economy. Moreover, as costs of labour rise in developed countries, sectors like the film industry are finding new spaces in satellite production centres abroad (Scott & Pope 2007). The South African film industry – especially Cape Town with its internationally renowned versatile outdoor locations – has benefited from these runaway productions in recent years. However, critics are regarding this practice as evidence of the hegemonic power of contemporary global capitalism and proclaim the emergence of a New International Division of Cultural Labour (Miller et al. 2005). Though promoted by international development organisations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) with their already second joint report (2008, 2010), the rise of the creative economy in the Global South and its manifold effects are yet to be researched sufficiently in Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement Vol 5 (2012): 16–34 © UTSePress and the author

Featuring monikers such as 'Creative Denver' or 'Smart Shanghai', city planning strategies geared towards conjuring the next creative city have become a common feature of urban development policies throughout the world.With Charles Landry's (2000) and Richard Florida's oeuvre (2002;2005) widely debated by leading planners and politicians, the promise of competitive advantage and economic growth through the development of one's local creative economy has spread like wildfire.Though Florida's creative class nexus exceeds the creative industries by including, for instance, financial and legal services, creative city and creative class narratives are joined at the hip in formulating the 'creative imperative' (Spillmann & van Osten 2002) which has come to dominate the international urban policy transfer market (Evans 2009).Furthermore, this development reflects a wider global socioeconomic shift towards the knowledge economy and the neoliberal commodification of culture in late capitalism (Gibson & Klocker 2005;Hartley 2005;Harvey 2001).
From Bolly-to Nollywood (Nigeria's low-budget but highoutput film industry) evermore emerging markets and developing countries are trying to enter the global economic circuits by means of promoting their domestic creative economy.Moreover, as costs of labour rise in developed countries, sectors like the film industry are finding new spaces in satellite production centres abroad (Scott & Pope 2007).The South African film industry -especially Cape Town with its internationally renowned versatile outdoor locations -has benefited from these runaway productions in recent years.
However, critics are regarding this practice as evidence of the hegemonic power of contemporary global capitalism and proclaim the emergence of a New International Division of Cultural Labour (Miller et al. 2005).
Though promoted by international development organisations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) with their already second joint report (2008,2010), the rise of the creative economy in the Global South and its manifold effects are yet to be researched sufficiently in order to critically assess and challenge its actual ability to serve as a 'feasible development option' (UNCTAD, UNDP 2010).Amongst the first to address this research gap were Barrowclough and Kozul-Wright (2008), but they failed to pay sufficient attention to the spatial impact of the growing creative industries in the Global South and their role in the economic, social, physical and symbolic transformation of neighbourhoods and localities.Recent works, however, have questioned the transferability of Western creative city policies and critically examined the after-effects of translating the creative city script rooted in European and North American planning ideals into divergent contexts using examples from places such as Singapore (Chang & Lee 2003), Toronto (Catungal, Leslie & Hii 2009) and Darwin (Luckman, Gibson & Lea 2009).
A groundbreaking book, Spaces of vernacular creativity: Rethinking the cultural economy (Edensor et al. 2010) critically interrogates the dominant creative city features as primarily urban, 'high' cultured and middle class, refuting the popular belief of the creative city as a universal panacea.The articles in the book provide an exciting array of alternative stories, adding substantially to previous efforts of recounting creative 'tales from the margins' (Gibson 2010), for example by focusing on creative small cities (Waitt & Gibson 2009), addressing the role of physical remoteness and proximity in the identity construction of local cultural industries (Gibson, Luckman & Willoughby-Smith 2010) and highlighting the importance of 'alternative creativities' for envisioning urban futures as counterbalances to dominant neoliberal discourses (Gibson & Klocker 2005) .
Unfortunately none of these publications feature much that is from an African perspective.Hence, this article sets out to explore the nature of urban regeneration in the Global South and the ways in which such regeneration efforts have been linked to the growth and increasing public recognition of the creative industries.
In particular, it suggests that any benefits from the influx of 'culturepreneurs' (Lange 2005) need to be measured against their impact on pre-existing social, cultural, economic and spatial structures.Sometimes a new lick of paint on a formerly derelict factory is too readily accepted as general evidence of positive urban change.This response fails to consider the more contentious cross-currents deriving from the often antagonistic relationships between 'high' and 'low' art, the city core and suburban spaces, as well as newcomers and old, established communities.

POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA
The first political reference to the creative and cultural industries in South Africa was made in a national report headed 'Creative South Africa: A strategy for realising the potential of the cultural industries' (Department for Culture, Media and Sport 1998).This is remarkable inasmuch as the new South African democracy was then still in its infancy, with the first Mandela government facing the challenge of quickly delivering on its promises of sound financial restructuring, housing provision and expeditious social reconciliation.As the unemployment rate was high and particularly devastating amongst the previously disadvantaged communities -a situation persistent to this day -the department was mainly focusing on job creation and skills development through its Cultural Industries Growth Strategy.Lacking in political commitment and suffering from an overburdened portfolio, the department only followed up the strategy erratically.
Therefore, the 2011 State of the Nation address came as a surprise as the President stated: 'Linked to tourism, we will continue to develop the cultural industries sector, which contributes about R2 billion to the Gross Domestic Product.We have also seen the value of events such as the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, which contributed more than R475 million to the economy of Cape Town and created 2 000 jobs in 2010' (Zuma 2011).The speech certainly reveals a rather constricted view of the creative economy, regarding it mainly as a vehicle for propelling the country's tourism industry, a sector endowed with great aspirations for job creation, especially for low-skilled workers, and for subsequent poverty alleviation through the highly contested but politically prevalent belief in economic trickle-down effects.As Eisinger (2000) shows, focusing on pleasing a 'visitor class' can seriously inhibit the pursuit of an inclusive civic agenda and in the case of South Africa specifically threatens to contradict the national commitment towards the social imperatives of a developmental state.Despite providing evidence for the belief of creative industry experts that local politicians have yet to understand the creative economy and tend to merely reduce it to aspects of commercial arts and entertainment or 'bread and circus politics' (Eisinger 2000), the presidential reference nonetheless suggests that the growing South African creative economy is enjoying increasing popularity within the local political realm.As the quote shows, Cape Town is playing a leading role in putting the creative economy on the government's map -but why?
On the one hand, Cape Town's history as a bustling trading post and the successive processes of 'creolization' (Cronin 2006) can be seen as an ideal breeding ground for its vibrant contemporary urban culture.On the other hand, the legacy of apartheid weighs heavily against this romantic perception.
With its ideology of separate development and the corresponding legislative acts, namely the Population Registration Act of 1950 and the Group Areas Act three years later, the apartheid government managed to turn Cape Town from one of the least segregated cities into the country's most divided urban environment (Western 1997).Quickly revealing itself as an intrinsically spatial regime (Christopher 2000), the apartheid government re-created the city to serve its ideological purpose, separating people categorised as 'Black' from people politically tagged as 'Coloured' or 'Indian' and driving all three groups out of the city centre, controlling public space and consequently keeping the different cultures from interacting (Houssay-Holzschuch & Teppo 2009).Of the four population groups described in the Population Registration Act ('White', 'African', 'Coloured' and 'Indian'; see Christopher 2000), the 'White' population was promoted as the dominant group, entitled to all privileges including visits to theatres, music halls, museums and other cultural amenities.(While aware of the contested political origin of these racial categories, they will feature in this article, as they are still commonly used in public documentation and contemporary research (Houssay-Holzschuch & Teppo 2009).)Access to these facilities was restricted for the 'Coloured' group, whereas for the 'Black' population access was prohibited altogether (Bickford-Smith, van Heyningen & Worden 1999;Western 1997).At the same time, sectors such as performing and visual arts and music, which today are commonly framed as subsectors of the creative economy, back then fostered popular conscientisation and resistance against apartheid across racial lines (Cleveland 2008;Minty 2006).As these forms of subversive artistic and cultural expression were The end of Apartheid saw the return of many cultural and creative practitioners from exile as the bans were lifted, accompanied by a parallel influx of visitors and international capital investment.Interestingly, the influx of these practitioners to Cape Town seems not least related to touristic activities, functioning as the initial port of call: … because the nature of the city and where it's located, with its beauty it has attracted a lot of Western creative industry types that have come here for holidays but also for various events and projects … (Interview with representative of Cape Town Partnership, LW 2009).
However, the spurt in the city's creative industries is not only due to increasing international recognition but also The political value attached to these cross-cutting sectors is highlighted by the successful high-profile bid by Cape Town to become the world's Design Capital in 2014.Displaying its cultural heritage, mixed with contemporary African design, the bid is also thought to address the legacy of the 2010 FIFA World Cup through comparable efforts of festivalisation, running the risk of facing a similar array of difficulties as that tournament, as discussed by Haferburg (2011).
Lacking a city-wide survey, the highest concentration of creative industries can be assumed to be in the inner-city area, the so-called 'City Bowl'.The reasons for this are its centrality and the majority presence of important creative and cultural public institutions such as the opera, numerous theatres and the national against more recent developments and observations.The interview partners were recruited via the snowball method, with gatekeepers of the different stakeholder groups acting as initial multipliers.One of the main limitations of this method is certainly the existence of disguised power plays, with gatekeepers consciously excluding certain interview partners with dissenting views.However, to alleviate this bias, all interview partners were asked for further contacts, contributing to a wider spectrum of discerning positions.
In terms of the interview process, professional participants were asked to give detailed accounts of their involvement in and interfaces with Cape Town's, and more specifically Woodstock's, creative economy, as well as development trajectories and future visions.Residents were specifically asked to reflect upon their personal history of settlement in Woodstock, their perception of and engagement with the local neighbourhood, and specific creative industry-led redevelopments in their vicinity.

TUNING INTO WOODSTOCK -URBAN TRANSFORMATION AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
Woodstock, located eastward of Cape Town's CBD and north of the former District Six, is the city's oldest suburb (see Figure 1).
Originally an agricultural settlement, the area was renamed Woodstock in 1882 and quickly developed into an industrial hub, specialising in glass, leather and later textile manufacturing and food processing.From the 1920s till after World War II, the industrialisation process took its largest toll on the area, as Woodstock's beach had to make way for the extension of the harbour and new railway lines that still present a solid barrier between Woodstock and its seafront.Affecting the neighbourhood most thereafter were the declaration of District Six as a 'White'   referred to as the synonym for the 'other' side of Woodstock, often serving as immediate justification for spatial fortification.
As the extensive local research of Lemanski (2004Lemanski ( , 2007) ) has shown, these popular narratives of crime and grime have led to a nationwide increase in private security, which in turn contributes to growing danger in the remaining public space 'by abandoning it to those excluded from the privatized world ' (2004, p. 107).The result is a sociospatial polarisation that separates 'insiders (those with access to desirable spaces) from outsiders (on the margin, looking in)' and essentially perpetuates the social divisions that were inherent during the apartheid state (Lemanski 2004;Saff 2001, p. 102).
In spite of gradual changes, the majority of the creative spaces in Woodstock are still located in enclosed block developments, where physical access is controlled and private security firms are operating, clearly demarcating the frontier between the desirable, protected creative enclave and the surrounding area as a dangerous 'outside'.This critique does not imply that crime in the area has been eradicated, which is unfortunately not the case, nor does it want to easily dismiss the real threat crime poses to the lives of many South Africans on a daily basis.Rather it seeks to highlight the negative effects deriving from this perpetuation of spatial dualism through the homogenising and essentialist processes of othering (Spivak 1985).
Though critical researchers such as Peck (2005)  of what and who should comprise the "neighbourhood" itself' (Fleming 2011, p. 19) The question of 'Whose neighbourhood?' relates directly to the issue of the right to cultural representation in Woodstock and the displacing effects of creative economic place-making.Through the relocation of three of the country's most prestigious galleries to the area in 2008 and the subsequent opening of more gallery spaces across lower Woodstock, the suburb was quickly marketed as a fresh and exciting location for South Africa's most renowned and best selling artists and their collectors.
However, the main target group for most of the creative products and content produced and sold in Woodstock's new art and design shops remains formally educated middle to high income consumers, which evidently does not reflect the local population's main socioeconomic profile.Yet, as gentrification has the potential to narrow Woodstock's presently broad socioeconomic spectrum and further evict alternative meanings and actors, this must be taken into critical account (Catungal, Leslie & Hii 2009).
Resonating with Chang and Lee's (2003) findings on the tension between 'global' and 'local' artistic representation and practice in Singapore, there is some evidence that European cultural registers are often still seen as dominant in the aesthetics of creative production, raising questions about persistent colonial and racialised urban social relationships: So you'll find that the big industries in terms of design, communication, film are largely driven by white middle-class moneyed background that tend to have had a lot of experience of Europe … A lot of the high-end crafters are white, the ones that are selling it and make large amounts of money with certain types of craft often served by black crafters who help to prop it up and give it its manpower.You don't find much coloured craft in that picture for example because it is not considered craft, it's not African, it's not curio (Interview with representative of Cape Town Partnership, LW 2009).
In this light, the 'like-mindedness' of fellow creatives often praised during interviews appears rather tainted, particularly concerning the exclusion of aesthetics and practices related to 'Coloured' culture which has a long local tradition of vernacular creativity in the area, closely connected to Cape Town's annual Coon Carnival, and works as a major point of reference for 'Coloured' identity negotiation (Visser 2005).The social segregation and spatial dualism can again be exemplified using the Old Biscuit Mill and its busy, popular Saturday 'Neighbourgoods [sic!] market'.Asked for the relationship between this 'theatre retail space' and the local community, one of the Old Biscuit Mill's first tenants recounts: I do not think this space is specifically targeted towards the community and the [Saturday] market for instance is not really frequented by people from the community.They might be selling wares here but I don't think they are particularly attracted to it.It's more the cool Capetonian factor that you see here.But I do think some of the shops people would work in but there is no specific attraction for the Muslim community here, not that I am aware of (Interview with publisher/ graphic designer, LW 2009).
This statement reveals a dichotomy, clearly placing the 'cool' inside the well-demarcated and fortified boundaries of the creative centre and rendering anything beyond its gates 'uncool'.The surrounding neighbourhood is homogeneously declared 'Muslim' and addressed as 'they', pronouncing the notion of otherness and the existence of specific cultural registers perceived as 'different' from the interviewee's stance.This alleged difference is furthermore endowed with the need for different symbolic representations, which, however, cannot be provided within the perimeter of this creative space.The interviewee's rationale endorses the argument that the products on display as well as the practices performed respond to cultural representations which in her perception are specifically 'Western' and do not speak to her imagined other, the local 'Muslim' community.The interviewee also references the Old Biscuit Mill as a possible place of employment for Woodstock's residents.This assumption, however, needs to be further scrutinised against the backdrop of the local population's formal education level.
On the one hand, some traditional local businesses such as framers, upholsterers, delicatessen owners and seamstresses have benefited as suppliers to the creative industries, as has the construction sector.On the other hand, though, there is very little direct opportunity for unskilled personnel within the creative businesses themselves, aside from the usual jobs of cleaning and security which offer limited perspectives for skill development and upward professional mobility.Most of the middle to higher income job profiles require professional training and often a college or university degree.With more than 65 per cent of Woodstock's population only having completed a maximum of 12 years of schooling and only 10 per cent holding any qualification higher than a Bachelor's degree (City of Cape Town Census 2001), the often small-scale creative enterprises with a high demand for tertiary-educated and specialised freelance personnel have little capacity to employ let alone train the local workforce.This situation resonates strongly with the assertion of Catungal and Leslie (2009, p. 701) in the context of Toronto that 'poorer racialised communities in the city are generally not the recipients of the windfalls of the creative city'.
Not surprisingly, the account of spatial exclusion as well as economic and cultural segregation is echoed from 'across the street' by a resident of 30 years and owner of a small one-bedroom house in nearby Greatmore Street, when asked about the Old Biscuit Mill and its Saturday market: Oh down there.It is mostly the rich white people going there … I don't know what's so wonderful there, everything is so expensive … it is all visitors and tourists that are going there.I have never ever heard anybody that I know in this whole community say that they will go there … I wouldn't want to go there because everything is so dear … (Interview with resident of Greatmore Street, LW 2009).
Where above the sociocultural separation was described using the binary of 'cool'/'uncool', the resident phrases her sense of alienation based on an economic/racial binary.Though the resident has personally experienced apartheid's racial discrimination due to her categorisation as 'Coloured' and still paints a vivid picture of her daily struggle during those years, she explicitly expresses her strong conviction of racial equality as a cornerstone of post-apartheid society.Her account strongly resonates with a broader argument in contemporary South African urban studies, which criticises the continuation of apartheid's racial/urban divide as it is perpetuated through socioeconomic polarisation stemming from increased market deregulation (Marks & Bezzolli 2001).Furthermore, the critique of the Biscuit Mill's attraction for 'visitors' (local population from affluent parts of town) and 'tourists' (international visitors to the city) can be related to Eisinger's (2000, p. 331) conclusion that building a city for visitors promises only limited pay-offs for the local population.
On the one hand, the growing attraction of Woodstock as a creative hub has generated broad attention for the neighbourhood and has drawn in a new array of people -visitors who often become new residents who would have previously never ventured into this part of town due to its deprived and crime-ridden image.
Moreover, it has generated economic opportunities for some local businesses and residents as suppliers to the creative process and a low-skilled workforce that is, however, rarely involved in the creative production of the creative industries' commodities.So, on one level, the rise of the creative economy can be said to have produced a positive momentum with new opportunities for social interactions transgressing racial and class boundaries.However, these important opportunities are often kept at bay by, or even lost to, the drastic and varied workings of gentrification.Often unwillingly but nonetheless knowingly, the creative industries are adding to increasing property prices as the creative entrepreneurs and artists are earmarked by the real estate sector as rentgenerating and value-adding tenants, both commercially and residentially.Though there is no reliable data on the number of people negatively affected by the evolving gentrification process, the demise of low-income rental housing followed by growing insecurity of tenure and threat of eviction for the residents described in Fleming's (2011) work is painting a grim picture for the future of Woodstock's urban poor.
In contrast to other post-industrial gentrification scenarios in the Western world, where the pioneer artists are often displaced by more well-to-do peers from the design, advertising and new media segment in a second invasion cycle (Catungal, Leslie & Hii 2009, p. 1108), this could not be verified in the case of Woodstock.In order to address this aspiration, it is imperative to open up the 'geography of creativity' (Edensor et al. 2010, p. 12) by breaking up the perpetuated spatial binaries that regard anything outside the designated places of formal creative production as bereft of creativity.This is mutually dependent on a shift in public perception and policy formulation that does not favour value (that is, economic revenue) over values and actively appreciates the more mundane spaces of everyday cultural practice and vernacular creativity.
Having said that, this is already fundamental to the daily mode of operation of some of Woodstock's creative industry outlets; for example, street art and graffiti collectives have left their visual mark on an increasing proportion of Woodstock's building stock, often in collaboration with local school classes and youth programs.Though contributing to the formation of more commonly accessible forms of artistic and cultural expression and often explicitly dealing with topics of social justice and inequality, many of the artists are aware of the Janus face of their wellmeaning interventions, including the problem of being henchmen to the contested property sector by making certain street corners 'look and feel' nicer in 'shin[ing] a light "on the abject beauty and places people are afraid to go"' (McLean 2010, p. 213).This ambiguity exemplifies that any culture-led intervention -be it public or private, individual or collective -which embarks on the task of engaging the 'community' is in fact always treading the fine line between local politics, competing social imaginaries and neighbourhood-level hierarchies.The ability to be conscious of and manoeuvre these social rapids ultimately decides the fate of any such undertaking.Similar to Hudson's (1995) encounters in Derwentside, success is generally with those organisations and outreach projects that display an awareness and appreciation of Woodstock's local history and respond to the population's social needs and cultural demands as they define them.This generally goes along with lowering the spatial threshold by using mundane spaces such as public parks, libraries and community halls as locations for participation and engagement.But even those creative industry spaces that have been working in the area for more than 10 years are still confronted with neighbourhood members' inhibition to visit them.In utilising everyday places, the various stakeholders have established a 'neutral' meeting ground which does not impose any specific cultural register but rather creates an environment for 'possibility space'.These spaces offer the chance to build social relationships through 'deep, unexpected, or provisional encounters' (Bromberg 2010, p. 214).Though Bromberg specifically sees these spaces developing under a noneconomic rationale, in light of the need for livelihood creation and provision for Woodstock's still numerous low-income residents, it is, in my opinion, vital to further explore the engagement of creative industries with their surrounding neighbourhood under the auspices of social economy principles.

OUTRO
This article has attempted to grasp the ambiguous spatiality of the South African creative economy in considering its interplay with the entangled urbanities of metropolitan Cape Town.Highly visible in and around the urban core, almost fully disguised in their informality but far from nonexistent on the vast township periphery, the creative industries have been reshaping this postapartheid city.
The focus of the article has been on the inner-city fringe area of Woodstock which has seen the unremitting arrival of creatives from various sectors, giving rise to issues common to the process of gentrification, sociospatial polarisation and unequal cultural representation.However, it has been shown that some creative industry outlets have been able to find low-threshold ways of engaging communities through actively acknowledging their distinct local history and diverse sociocultural make-up.This does not mean that all creative industries in Woodstock have to fully shift their focus and take over responsibility for the government's duty of providing equal opportunities.However, in the post-apartheid context of spatially expressed social inequality, it is counterproductive to leave urban renewal solely to the effects of market forces, and the ambiguous situation in Woodstock is a result of such public disregard.Considering the normative project of inclusive city creation, it is vital to promote social responsiveness in a wider spectrum of local creative industries by raising awareness of the cultural, economic and social needs of their surrounding neighbourhood.

Furthermore
, in the South African context, questions around the new appropriation of post-apartheid space cannot be investigated without a critical consideration of persistent racial and economic inequalities as a source of social tensions.The article draws on a detailed and ongoing examination of Woodstock, a former industrial hub lying just east of Cape Town's city centre, which is currently experiencing rapid change due to the arrival of creative entrepreneurs and property developers.It makes use of local observations and semi-structured interviews with a wide array of stakeholders in Woodstock such as local and provincial government representatives, city planners, publicprivate-partnership exponents, property developers, creative industry stakeholders, cultural and creative industry sector body directors as well as local residents.Yet, before the local case study of Woodstock can be presented in more detail, it is vital to set the broader stage by briefly looking at the creative economy's development in contemporary South Africa in general and Cape Town in particular.
officially banned and criminalised by the apartheid government, they eluded the broad-based commodification intrinsic to today's creative and cultural economy: It was actually the fight against Apartheid that gave cultural expression its spark.The reason why art forms existed was to speak up against apartheid … When we now look in economic terms to how you convert artistic and cultural expression into products that serve a market or into services that form a market, then we are new in the game (Interview with Provincial Government official, LW 2009).
to the organisation of emergent local creative specialists in a number of local sector bodies such as the Performing and Visual Arts Networks, The Cape Town Fashion Council and the Cape Music Industry Commission, spear-headed by the well-known 'Creative Cape Town' initiative, which was formed in 2007 as a sub-chapter of Cape Town Partnership, a publicprivate-partnership organisation focusing on the improvement, security and marketing of the inner-city.Due to this distinct institutional embeddedness within an inner-city improvement organisation, the initiative's spatial development projects, such as the installation of an innovation district named 'The Fringe' or events such as 'Creative Week Cape Town', remain confined to the mandatory boundaries of the inner-city core.This tends to reproduce the dichotomy between downtown as 'spiritual home of the creative process' (Hracs 2010, p. 87) and the suburbs as banal and anything but creative.As Hracs (2010) and Bain (2010) show in their respective studies of suburban vernacular creativity in Toronto, this pretence is misleading and built upon the simplistic equation of bohemian lifestyle meaning downtown living.In its networking projects, however, 'Creative Cape Town' transgresses these tight spatial boundaries in order to provide a city-wide platform for communicating, supporting and facilitating the development of the creative and knowledge economy.A quantitative mapping survey identifies over 1000 creative industry businesses in the inner-city and its fringe areas, including parts of Woodstock (Creative Cape Town 2009).In terms of defining the creative industries, local and provincial initiatives and programs unanimously draw on a popular British global export.Originating in Britain's national Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and arriving in Cape Town through government officials and cultural policy-makers' previous education and work in the UK during and after the years of 'Cool Britannia' (Interview with representatives of provincial and local government 2009, 2011), the definition for the creative industries identifies 13 sectors as well as several cross-cutting sectors such as design, heritage and cultural tourism (DCMS 1998; Department of Labour South Africa 2008).
art museums.By and large, the current situation still follows the well-trodden path of apartheid's spatial legacy, with the main cultural institutions situated in those areas previously classified as 'White', such as the City Bowl and the southern suburbs, which are still home to the most affluent neighbourhoods of the city.There have been efforts by the City Council's Department of Arts and Culture to establish a gallery, museums and a music centre in formerly disadvantaged and peripheral areas such as Bellville, Parow and the township of Gugulethu.Though making a difference in fostering and displaying local creative talent, these efforts have not led to the creation of any prominent creative industry hubs outside the urban core.Contrary to the aforementioned top-down political interventions, the influx of the creative industries to Woodstock has not been stirred by the roll-out of large-scale, urban culturalled regeneration and events programs but by a variety of entangled private development impulses.Consequently, tuning into Woodstock implies three main steps: first, to unpack the ways and means through which creative industries found their interest in and way to the area; second, to assess the ambiguous effects of such cultural-led development on a neighbourhood in a city of the Global South; and third, to listen closely for nuances that could provide a lead to finding the right frequency for meaningfully engaging creative industries and local neighbourhood development.RESEARCH METHODOLOGY My local research in Woodstock forms part of a broader research project looking at issues around the appropriation of the 'creative city' paradigm in Cape Town and its consequences for urban governance and spaces of vernacular creativity.Within the wider research framework, to date 45 interviews have been conducted over a period of eight months, split between two four-month-long stays in the field.The article draws largely on interviews conducted during the first stay in 2009, which are, however, juxtaposed

Figure
Figure 1: The City of Cape Town

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Figure 2: Property advertisement (2004) replicating the globally more common cultural association with the name Woodstock

Figure 3 :
Figure 3: The Old Biscuit Mill before its renovation (2004) and today (2011) have already warned of simply assuming causality between the growth of local creative economies and positive social cohesion, as this correlation is often purely suggestive, this warning must be extended to similar assumptions on spatial cohesion.The valuable work of Fleming (2011) provides further evidence, as it traces gentrification and its negative effects on the community in Woodstock through the lens of low-income rental housing provision.Due to the stark property price increases, not least owing to the public promotion of Woodstock as 'Cape Town's art district' (Malcomess 2008), Fleming found that the already marginalised rental housing stock for the low-income population had further decreased, with properties being sold off for redevelopment.Subsequently, several families were served eviction orders, leading to their unwanted relocation to the peripheral Temporary Relocation Area (TRA), Symphony Way, a remote tin-house settlement built by the local government 30 km away from the city centre.Symphony Way TRA was installed prior to the FIFA World Cup and has sparked social and political controversy ever since.Relocated residents face substandard living conditions and high crime and are in danger of losing their scarce livelihood due to the long and expensive commute to their places of work (Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers 2011).Serious consequences for the old, established community are imminent while spatial dualism based on socioeconomic (im)potency is replicated: 'Evictions, demolitions, and new buildings remove their [residents,] friends, family, social support structures, and overall sense of belonging; the fortified and exclusionary high-rises and economically inaccessible storefronts visually and physically splinter the neighbourhood into sections usable only to those who can afford it, and govern the idea Though single cases may exist and the situation may change in the future, the creative enterprises and artists who move into the area are generally better endowed with financial resources than the majority of Woodstock's old, established working-class population, not least due to their social network capital stemming from professional training in public or private fine art schools, design centres or film academies.The ambiguity of creative industries' place-making elaborated above gives a warning notice of urban change that is likely to spatially and culturally exclude, as well as socially and economically marginalise, large parts of the local population by labelling them as 'non-creative' outsiders who are unable or even unwilling to share in the dominantly Western creative vision.This, however, is only one side of the story (albeit a dominant one) encountered during my research in Woodstock; I also came across certain alternative and more inclusive ways of engaging the local population, as discussed below.FINDING THE RIGHT FREQUENCY -POTENTIAL FOR WOODSTOCK AND ITS CREATIVE INDUSTRIES The creative industries' potential for contributing to neighbourhood development becomes visible when zooming in at the micro level, looking at interventions and initiatives from individual businesses and organisations.A number of creative enterprises working in Woodstock can be related to what Amin (2009) discusses as the 'social economy'.He defines this as a third sector, 'engaged in both trading and non-trading activities, but characterized by community-based or social ownership and a clear commitment to principles of self-help, mutual obligation and social relevance' (drawing on Pearce 2009, p. 6).Although still a much debated and fuzzy concept, it serves as a springboard to characterise the hybrid form of some of Woodstock's creative industry outlets which are trying to show social responsiveness and make a difference for the local population.What follows is a brief discussion of ways of rethinking creative industry development and social engagement in Woodstock.