Digital social media afford unprecedented opportunities for groups of citizens to collaborate locally and internationally in innovative ways in countless domains. This book seeks to evaluate this potential, drawing upon a broad conceptual analysis and a series of co-creative case studies undertaken by a multi-disciplinary research team with community partners in different parts of the UK. Creative citizenship is shown to be a widespread, even global phenomenon, though the term itself is recent in origin. Creative citizens are active across the whole of society, making distinctive contributions ... More

Digital social media afford unprecedented opportunities for groups of citizens to collaborate locally and internationally in innovative ways in countless domains. This book seeks to evaluate this potential, drawing upon a broad conceptual analysis and a series of co-creative case studies undertaken by a multi-disciplinary research team with community partners in different parts of the UK. Creative citizenship is shown to be a widespread, even global phenomenon, though the term itself is recent in origin. Creative citizens are active across the whole of society, making distinctive contributions in politics, education, media, environment, urban development, journalism, planning, business and many other dimensions. In its closing chapter, the book draws together the insights from case studies and a wider reflection upon policy options open to government and others to ‘unbind’ creative citizenship. The authors argue for re-consideration of official statistics to reflect the significant but largely uncounted contribution to the creative economy made by creative citizens. The book then identifies other ways in which the potential of creative citizens can be ‘unbound’, in fields such as community journalism, planning and education.