August in the UK (and I imagine elsewhere) is known as the silly season. So many people are away on holiday. Parliament closes down. Schools are shut. So little happens that newspapers constantly have to concoct absurd stories to fill their pages (even more than usual). Practical jokes are played too.

I received an email yesterday from someone in the British Government asking me to review the draft reports from the CEP working party groups. CEP is the Creative Economy Programme and it is a government-sponsored (ie tax-payer funded) project to 'make the most out of the great creative talents thriving all round the country, and is the first step in the Government's goal of making the UK the world's creative hub.' Truly a worthy objective and in line with many of the Government's policies. The question is how they intend to go about achieving this ojective.

On the assumption that not too many of you will want to plough through these documents I thought you might like a flavour taken from the executive summary of the infrastructure working group.

This document provides an overview of the key themes and recommendations from the Creative Economy Programme Infrastructure Working Group.  It introduces a set of essential and actionable ways forward to maximise the UK’s cultural and creative infrastructure offer as a key driver for creative competitiveness and growth.  These ways forward are encapsulated in the concept of the Creative Grid.  The Creative Grid represents a new way to connect our creative asset base, broker and coordinate new relationships and partnerships, and provide vital market-driven intelligence, in order to give the UK a competitive edge as the knowledge broker of the global creative economy.

The Creative Grid and its component parts provide the strategic framework for each of the other Creative Economy Programme Working Groups, connecting their targeted policy recommendations through the following three main themes:

Global Competitiveness: Our creative critical mass and knowledge advantage is based around the connectivity of concentrations of infrastructure and activity seen most prominently in our Core Cities, London and the South East.  A key challenge is to focus these assets outwards – towards global markets and partners – to ensure the UK is recognised as a global creative leader.

Convergence: It is in the connectivity of these concentrations of infrastructure and activity that ideas are shared, that technology meets content, that culture meets commerce.  A key challenge is to build effective links between different parts of the creative value chain and across traditional sectoral, institutional and locational boundaries.

Stimulation: Progressive creative senses of place are formed, and creative people are stimulated, by connectivity of concentrations of infrastructure and activity.  A key challenge is to position cultural and creative infrastructure at the heart of place and community, which will allow our cities to flourish as creative hubs that work together and with London and the South East for increased UK creative competitiveness.

Well, that clarifies things. I imagine this will set our authors well on the way to lead the world in creativity. Or, given the silly season, is this a practical joke? I was also glad to find out that book publishing is a product business as opposed to a process business (eg architecture) or media (eg newspapers). Hmm.