By 2006, the UK creative industry bandwagon was rolling out, and many climbed on it. This was of course welcome, but led to that peculiar euphoria which emerges when a dearth of evidence, and a general substitution of enthusiasm for reason, gives rise to a superabundance of self-appointed experts. The result is a kind of Dawkins punctuated equilibrium moment, when evolution experiments with a wild proliferation of theoretical mutations out of which, hopefully, something useful arises, if only because when so many perish, surely something has to survive.

The Creative Cluster conferences, an exuberant series of events, were a kind of P.T. Barnum enterprise in which all players were brought together under a giant canvas, an audience was summoned at great expense, and everyone performed.

This was my performance. Concentrating as it did on the nitty-bitty problem of defining ‘what exactly is a creative cluster?’, it sank without trace.

But it was fun while it lasted and it was great to be back in Newcastle. Two documents here: the slideshow and the script.