Professor Barbara Townley

Institute for Capitalising on Creativity
University of St Andrews
School of Management
The Gateway St Andrews
Scotland
United Kingdom

Professor Barbara Townley directs the Institute for Capitalising on Creativity (ICC) at St. Andrews, and has published widely in the area of the creative industries. Her most recent book on this topic is Managing Creativity: Exploring the Paradox (2010). Her work has appeared in the Oxford Handbook of the Creative Industries, British Journal of Management, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Academy of Management Review. She is a co-investigator on two £4m AHRC grants of relevance to the research: CREATe, a consortium lead by Glasgow University, which is examining intellectual property (IP) issues in relation to the creative industries and, Design in Action, led by Dundee University, which is examining the role of design in developing new products and services.

Her contribution to ‘The Enterprise of Culture’ examines the position that culturally specific, indigenous textiles play in the international fashion industry. The project will use ethnographic methods and is based on intensive interviews with practitioners. The focus is tartan and tweed, both of which play an important role in the creative output and in the cultural heritage and identification of Scotland, but which are on the periphery of the fashion market, both in terms of geography and use in fashion design.