The purpose of the article is to present the key demographic characteristics of the creative labour force in Slovenia and bring attention to some opportunities for a more effective activation of the ...creative potential. We analysed data from the Statistical Register of Employment. The results indicate that creative workers in Slovenia are not only heterogeneous from the aspect of the employment structure, but that they also differ significantly in terms of gender, age, education, and ethnicity. Even though Slovenia can be compared to the most developed countries in the scope of the creative labour force, it will have to work on stimulating additional development potentials to make it to the top of the list. We conclude that, in the future, a more prominent role should be given to the female creative labour force, young bohemians, and foreign creative people.
The book offers an interdisciplinary overview of the film and place relationship from an intercultural perspective. It explores the complex domain of place and space in cinema and the film industry's ...role in establishing cultural connections and economic cooperation between India and Europe. With contributions from leading international scholars, various case studies scrutinise European and Indian contexts, exploring both the established and emerging locations. The book extends the dominantly Britain-oriented focus on India’s cinema presence in Europe to European countries such as Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Slovenia, Finland, and Sweden, where the Indian film industry progressively expands its presence. The chapters of this book look at Indian film production in Europe as a cultural bridge between India and Europe, fostering mutual understanding of the culture and society of the two regions. This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to researchers in film studies, cultural anthropology, cultural geography, tourism, economics, sociology, and cultural studies. It will also be interest to practitioners working in local authorities, destination management, tourism, and creative business, all of whom see the value of film production in attracting visitors, investment, and creating new networks with local economic actors. The book offers much-needed data and tools to translate their professional goals and potentials into effective regional strategies and activities.
This paper addresses the key question as to what matters more in understanding the residential location of the creative class in Slovenia: the city-region or the urban-rural framework? Our analysis ...shows that differences in residential concentrations of the creative class vary more within city-regions (on an urban-rural framework) than between city-regions. Moreover, the creative class is moving out of densely populated urban areas to more sparsely populated suburban / rural areas within all city-regions. There also are significant differences between more developed western Slovenia (denser settlement structures) and less developed eastern Slovenia (sparser settlement structures). We conclude that new models of living promote dispersion.
The socioeconomic performance of industrial small and medium-sized towns (SMSTs) in comparison to that of non-industrial SMSTs, is subject to evaluation in this paper, to see if the presence of ...industry has adverse effects on socioeconomic factors. We studied 32 variables accounting for dimensions of socioeconomic performance in Slovenian SMSTs and conducted various statistical tests. We found only minor differences between the two groups, pertaining mainly to some elements of economic structure and demography, and some mixed relations of industrial employment and socioeconomic performance. The results demonstrate that industrial SMSTs should not be labelled automatically as ‘disadvantaged’. We discuss why our results differ from general research expectations in the literature: in the local context, we outline the “egalitarian syndrome” and policies of polycentric spatial development; in the global context, we discuss the “failed tertiarisation effect” and the differences between post-socialist and “Western” countries. We conclude by proposing that research should be re-oriented towards the more place-sensitive issues of industrial towns across Europe.
This article examines the contemporary industrial semiotic landscape in the town of Velenje, Slovenia, to determine the (positive or negative) collective imaginaries and discourses about industry in ...the local community. To this end, the semiotic landscape is mapped for signs and symbols of past and present industry, 33 randomly selected short interviews are conducted to understand the residents’ attitudes towards industrial symbols and industrial development in general, and a content analysis of official strategic documents is conducted to determine how industry is represented by officials and whether there are efforts to reimage the town. We found that the industrial past and present are well represented by industrial symbols and are a matter of pride and collective identity for the residents. However, the industrial tradition is hardly represented in official documents: Influenced by the prevailing post-industrial discourses, local authorities have begun to construct new territorial identities in order to increase the town’s attractiveness and economic growth. Currently, both ideas seem to coexist in Velenje. We argue that industrial symbols can become a reference point to create an alternative perception of a modern consumer society based on past industrial values, such as collective well-being, solidarity, and equality.
The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical and conceptual introduction for the Special Issue on the role of green creative environments in sustainable urban and regional development. The idea ...is based on the assumption that concepts of creativity mostly address economic issues and to a lesser extent social issues, while green concepts predominantly deal with environmental aspects. Therefore, we lack a deeper insight into the interrelations between creative and green environments in urban and regional development. This special issue addresses this research gap through investigating 1) the residential preferences of the creative class in city-regional, urban and rural settings, 2) participatory urbanism as a tool for creative interventions in urban planning, and 3) the importance of green amenities as spatial attraction factors for small creative actors. We argue that green creative environments can contribute to sustainable urban and regional development.
The article aims to examine the dynamics of the spatial distribution of cultural workers at various spatial scales in Slovenia. The dispersion of cultural workers is studied using a quantitative ...analysis of their place of residence and work. The results show the level of cultural agglomeration at the regional scale corresponds proportionally to the level of regional development, while there is greater concentration at the local level in more urban settlements. Surprisingly, there has been a spatial expansion and dispersion of cultural workers in recent years. In addition to the economy and real-estate prices, reasons for this may include the income inequality of cultural workers, the non-urban character of the Slovenian way of life and the specific spatial structure with good accessibility and mostly smaller settlement types.
The article deals with the transport accessibility of regional centres in Slovenia, which was determined with the analytical model of transport accessibility. In this case the accessibility was ...defined as the travel time which the inhabitants of Slovene settlements spend driving their cars to the nearest regional centre. The results show areas of various levels of accessibility and the regionalization process of Slovenia according to the criterion of transport accessibility. With the help of statistical correlation analysis we also determined the measure of correlation of the accessibility factor to regional centres with the laying out of major transport routes and the diversity of the surface.
The article focuses on the geographical imagination of landscapes, depicted in the photographs. The research stems from the assumption that photographs play an important role in shaping and ...preserving individual and collective imagination of a landscape and that geography as a science is closely connected to visual representations of the world. The empirical part of the research entails selecting and defining/coding the photographs from the book Slovenian Landscapes by Dušan Ogrin and their analysis through statistical methods. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate what kind of image of the landscape this book creates. The goal is to design/formulate a methodology for photograph interpretation, especially to select the indicators and their categories as well as the criteria for a quantitative photograph evaluation. Using these methods, the appearance of the landscapes is analysed according to the individual indicators, placing special emphasis on surface form as the most important landscape element.
This article aims to study and clearly define the terms public good, common-pool resources, and the commons. Using path dependency analysis, interviews, and workshops among the general public and ...experts, we highlight the perception of public goods and the commons in Slovenia as a transitional society. The analysis reveals that the general public’s understanding of these terms is still strongly influenced by communist socialist-era emphasis on social justice, equality, and access to goods for everyone, which can be at odds with the right to private property. Inadequate governance of goods that are considered public goods, but are in fact common-pool resources, can lead to conflicts and degradation of common-pool resources, which results in the loss of advantages providing wellbeing. Because people’s lives depend on subtractable natural resources, it is necessary to raise awareness about them among the general public and professional community, emphasize their vulnerability, and explain that they cannot be accessible to anyone in unlimited quantities. Furthermore, in an international context, using the Slovenian case, we seek to improve the understanding of human behaviour and expectations concerning public goods and common-pool resources in post-communist transitional societies.
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