INNOVATION IS A QUALITATIVE CATEGORY

As cultural economics adapts economic concepts to their concrete application in the creative and cultural industries, certain gaps in understanding are observed. The discrepancy is also present between academic and real-life contexts. In the case of experimental forms of music in event and festivals, the concept of innovation is often used in the value statements of organisations. However, it seems to differ from the meaning attributed by research. While innovation is mainly understood through the prism of technological and economic factors like price, other branches in literature argue for the quasi-impossibility of defining and assessing innovation through traditional economic tools. To solve this, an argument can be made for qualitative exploration through a value-based approach that delves holistically into the perceptions and experience of concerned actors and encourages a clear establishment of envisioned and realised values. This thesis aims to thus to answer the following research question: How do cultural intermediaries articulate and put innovation into practice in experimental forms of music and events? The role of intermediary - ranging from active audience member to producer and cultural works, such as programmers or marketeers - ensures a reliability towards their perceptions and opinions. While in-depth interviews were conducted on a sample of intermediaries from the local Dutch experimental music scene and data collected, the insights were further studied through a grounded theory approach and a thematic analysis. Relating to the field of experimental music and using the lens of experimentation as a process and apparatus, the findings highlighted that innovation, although still highly contested and regarded as over-used in its deployment for both form and content of music, it constitutes a social construct in which there is room for intermediaries to assign their own meaning and for a new dialectic of innovation. Resistance to such concepts is transformed then a catalyst for the meaning-making. This way, they can strategically orient the obtention of subsidies in a way that fits their interpretation and use of innovation. Nonetheless, intermediaries argue for the necessity of integrated and collective shaping of innovation through knowledge-sharing, co-creation of its conditions and open discussions to address the appearing gap between concrete and conceptual negotiations. We conclude then that, despite alignment with academic observations on definitional lacks, principles of experimentation present in the music ecosystem of our respondent brings a new explorative angle to innovation. Through which cultural and creatives industries can free themselves from neoclassical ideals of progress that sets obstacles for experiential forms of arts where cultural outcomes are unknown, demands uncertain and market success inapt for grasping social and societal dimensions.