On and beyond the Creative City: performative narratives, policy translation, and frontiers of ‘splashing’ acts

The Creative City often appears in the existing literature as a policy narrative that travels widely across borders. Scholars have long debated whether this travel resulted in a homogenisation of urban cultural policies and whether the narrative still had viability for the future. The term ‘narrative’, however, has often been taken for granted. This article thus explores the implications of thinking about the Creative City as a narrative, particularly a ‘travelling narrative’. Conceptually, it builds on two major frameworks. The first is a processual approach to narration as a fundamental act of organising reality. It emphasises unification or the organisation of different layers or elements into a coherent narrative. The second is a performative approach to translation as acts of re-narration. It highlights multiplication or how a policy narrative can be translated into multi-directional, even competing, policy acts across contexts. Empirically, the article examines the narrative form and accomplishment of the Creative City as it was taken up in Vietnam through the designation of Hanoi as a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN). The analysis shows both possibilities and limitations of ‘splashing’ acts that sought to engage with the narrative in ways that could move beyond the frequently criticised power structures that set the travelling narrative in motion.