Employment and Socio-spatial Relations in Australia's Cultural Economy (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Information Society, 2010
The connections between the development of creative industries and the growth of cities was noted by several sources in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but explanations relating to the nature of the link have thus far proven to be insufficient. The two dominant "scripts" were those of "creative clusters" and "creative/cities/creative class" theories, but both have significant limitations arising from how they privilege amenities-led, supplydriven accounts of urban development and how they fail to adequately situate cities in wider global circuits of culture and economic production. The author proposes that the emergent field of cultural economic geography provides some insights that redress these lacunae, particularly in the possibilities for an original synthesis of cultural and economic geography, cultural studies, and new strands of economic theory.
Resilient creative economies? Creative industries on the urban fringe
Continuum: Journal of …, 2010
As the economic and social benefits of creative industries development become increasingly visible, policymakers worldwide are working to create policy drivers to ensure that certain places become or remain ‗creative places'. Richard Florida's work has become particularly influential among policymakers, as has . But as the first wave of creative industrial policy development and implementation wanes, important questions are emerging. It is by now clear that an ‗ideal creative place' has arisen from creative industries policy and planning literature, and that this ideal place is located in inner cities. This article shifts its focus away from the inner city to where most Australians live: the outer suburbs. It reports on a qualitative research study into the practices of outer-suburban creative industries workers in Redcliffe, Australia. It argues that the understanding of creative places requires some recalibration to take into account the material and experiential aspects of creative place. This paper presents preliminary findings from an Australian research project called Creative Suburbia. Evidence from an outer-suburban study in Brisbane demonstrates the usefulness of viewing ‗creative place' policy through the lens of theory of place, which states that place comprises imagined, material, and experiential elements. We argue that ‗creative place' policy, planning and analysis literatures tend to be based on a separation between the imagined aspects of place from its material and experiential aspects. Policy imaginations informed by ‗creative city' strategies (Florida 2002) may lead to a mistaken, ‗one-size-fits-all' emphasis on inner-city locations as the focus for creative industries workers, creative clusters, and ‗creative place' policy.
The Cultural economic spaces of Sydney
2002
One particular spatial dimension of the cultural economy of cities is the socalled 'cultural district'. This paper seeks to assess the efficacy of 'cultural districts' as a marker of distinctiveness and as an instrument for cultural economic planning and policy with reference to Sydney. The aim is to begin to critically evaluate the notion of cultural districts rather than simply embrace it as an unproblematic catchphrase.
Creative Industries' Viability in Regional Settings
The creative industries sector is recognised as an economic growth area in many parts of the world, feeding on the innovation, technological development, and networks that are part of creative cities. But do creative industries need the metropolitan context to thrive, or are they viable in regional settings away from the major urban centres? Using regional settings in New South Wales, Australia as an example, this paper argues that creative industries have long been part of the fabric of the regional and rural environment. The identity of communities and their sense of place have always been associated with the arts practice of the place. Policy in new creative industries growth arguably needs to acknowledge the importance that places do not only consume culture, they also should produce culture. While technology continues to change the nature of geographic location in relation to markets and innovation, the examples of the New South Wales context show that creative industries in regional settings may have their own set of conditions for success.
Understanding the value of the creative arts: place-based perspectives from regional Australia
Cultural Trends, 2021
This article highlights challenges of attempting to rigorously evaluate and meaningfully communicate the social impacts of arts and culture in regional Australia. By examining how arts and culture are perceived in two geographically opposed communities, this research finds the benefits of arts engagement can be tangible and intangible, and both offer high value to regional communities. More nuanced approaches to impact assessment can help to effectively account for an array of understandings of the value of arts and culture, beyond solely numerical measures, and instead ascribe worth to localized narrative indicators of success. Opportunities exist in increasing attention to place. Sensitivity to place can illuminate how regional communities innovatively leverage creative capacities, address local challenges and create localized impact. This research suggests the value of arts and culture might be best understood at a local level, and that community-led and community-generated creative experiences are those which communities find most impactful.
The cultural and creative industries contribution to the economic and social sustainability of cities is a well acknowledged phenomenon which has accelerated in the era of urban renewal since the late twentieth century. The second-tier city of Brisbane, Australia was for many years considered a cultural backwater in the national context, yet its recent urban development within a short period of time has produced a city that now has all the hallmarks of a 'creative city'. Brisbane's transformation has been shaped by urban and cultural policies that are largely focussed around its inner-metropolitan localities, producing a growth in cultural infrastructure and the aestheticisation of inner-city precincts.
International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2020
This paper draws policy insights from the first comparative analysis of multiple hotspots of regional cultural and creative activity across Australia. Focussing on the state of Queensland, it provides three interlinked findings relevant to international cultural policy debates. The first-municipal agency-goes to the crux of the value of studying small regions. We examine the degree to which Cairns, an isolated, small regional city, can exercise effective cultural agency in a tripartite system of government, demonstrating that policy ambition and asset management at the local level can deliver outsized cultural infrastructure benefits through a focus on demand from the local community. The second further illuminates the question of demand for cultural infrastructure as a critical enabler, in conjunction with allied infrastructure, in a very remote, distressed community-the Central West region. Cultural tourism's surprising prominence as support for mainstream tourism on the Gold Coast, an international mecca for surf, sand and sun, is the third example, deepening the significance of allied industry connectivity. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2019, the trend data and analysis offered here will be significantly impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.
Re)Turning Cultural Workers: Lifestyle Migration and Regional Creative Capital
While some less desirable locations suffer a crisis of critical mass, other regional places are in demand from incomers in search of affordable housing, enhanced quality of life or some of the other affordances of rural locales. As such, regional places beyond large cities able to attract such amenity migration are experiencing transformational growth in their post-productivist (including tourism and creative) economies. In Australia, these places include those like the town of Healesville in the hills of the Yarra Valley just outside Melbourne where the above sign: 'the artists are taking over this town' was photographed outside the Artist's Lounge, a retail shopfront on the main street selling