In the last ten years the creative industries have become one of the most fashionable and talked-about components of the global economy.

Are they just froth on the surface of exuberant capitalism, able to be blown away by global recession, or a paradigm for a new networked future in which quality rather than quantity will become the ultimate arbiter of success?

"After the crunch"

Artists, entrepreneurs, commentators, analysts, policy-makers, policy-sceptics, academics, financiers – and citizens – set out their hopes and fears for the future in a book called, "After the crunch".