Culture and Creative Industries in Australia

Terry Flew, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, AustraliaPresentation to 3rd China Trade in Services Congress, Beijing, China, June 1-3, 2011

Origins of Australian Creative Industries in 1990s Creative Nation cultural policy

• This cultural policy is also an economic policy. Culture creates wealth ... [and] adds value, it makes an essential contribution to innovation, marketing and design. It is a badge of our industry. The level of our creativity substantially determines our ability to adapt to new economic imperatives. It is a valuable export in itself and an essential accompaniment to the export of other commodities. It attracts tourism and students. It is essential to our economic success. (Creative Nation, 1994)

Creative Industries Sectors

1. Advertising, Graphic Design and Marketing;

2. Architecture, Visual Arts and Design;

3. Film, Television and Entertainment Software;

4. Music Composition and Publishing;

5. Performing Arts;

6. Writing, Publishing and Print Media.

4

Creative Trident

• Specialist creatives (cultural occupation/cultural industry

• Embedded creatives

(cultural occupation/non-cultural industry

• Support activities (non-cultural occupation/cultural industry

5

Australian creative workforce - using creative trident

Source: Higgs, Cunningham and Pagan 2007.

6

Sectoral composition- employment

Source: Higgs, Cunningham and Pagan 2007

7

Value of Australian CIs - using creative trident

Source: Higgs, Cunningham and Pagan 2007.

Australian CIs as industry share, 2006

CI growth by sector, Australia, 1996-2007

Australia’s GDP Growth, 1995-2010

Australia’s terms of trade, 1995-2010

Internet and digital media technologiesMass communications media (20th century)

Convergent social media (21st century)

Media distribution

Large-scale; high barriers to entry

Internet dramatically reduces barriers to entry

Media production

Complex division of labour; media content gatekeepers; professional ideologies

Easy-to-use Web 2.0 technologies; multi-skilling; small collaborative teams

Media power One way communications flow Greater empowerment of users/audiences

Media content Tendency towards standardised mass appeal content to maximise audience share

‘Long tail’ economics; de-massification and segmentation of media content markets

Producer/consumer relationship

Impersonal, anonymous and commoditised (audiences as target mass market)

Potential to be more personalised and user-driven (user created content – UCC)

The new cultural policy

• Governments have searched for ways to surf the wave of the new information economy, looking to the creative industries broadly defined as sources of innovation to feed economic growth and employment creation at both national and local levels … [enabling] the arts [to] be seen as part of a wider and more dynamic sphere of economic activity, with links through to the information and knowledge economies, fostering creativity, embracing new technologies and feeding innovation (David Throsby, 2008).