Plane

Mixed media. 23" x 19", Complexity Series.

Dolly

Mixed media. 23" x 19", Complexity Series.

Tracks

Mixed media. 23" x 19", Complexity Series.

Working in the Australian suburbs: Creative industries workers’ adaptation of traditional work spaces

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. However, like most Australian cities, the majority of Brisbane’s population live, and increasingly work in the suburbs. This article is based on a large research project that shows that creative industries workers are well represented across suburban localities. The article examines the policy and planning implications for creative industries located in Australian outer suburbs and the communities in which they are located.

Developing agency in the creative career : a design-based framework for work integrated learning

Research shows that approximately half of creative practitioners operate as embedded creatives by securing gainful employment within organisations located in the field beyond their core discipline. This foregrounds the significance of having the skills necessary to successfully cross the disciplinary boundaries in order to negotiate a professional role. The multiple implications of such reframing for emerging creative practitioners who navigate uncertain professional boundaries include developing a skill of identifying and successfully targeting the shifting professional and industry coordinates while remaining responsive to changes. A further implication involves creative practitioners engaging in a continuous cycle of re-negotiation of their professional identity making the management of multiple professional selves - along with creating and recreating a meaningful frame of references such as the language around their emerging practice - a necessary skill. This chapter presents a case study of a set of Work Integrated Learning subjects designed to develop in creative industries practitioners the skills to manage their emerging professional identities in response to the shifts in the professional world.

Journal of Education and Work: Special Issue: Creative Graduate Pathways Within and Beyond the Creative Industries

This special issue explores the nuances of graduate creative work, the kinds of value that creative graduates add through work of various types, graduate employability issues for creative graduates, emerging and developing creative career identities and the implications for educators who are tasked with developing a capable creative workforce. Extant literature tends to characterise creative careers as either ‘precarious’ and insecure, or as the engine room of the creative economy. However, in actuality, the creative workforce is far more heterogeneous than either of these positions suggest, and creative careers are far more complex and diverse than previously thought. The task of creative educators is also much more challenging than previously supposed.

Embedded engagements : the challenge of creative practice research to the humanities

This article explores the opportunities and challenges surrounding a viable cross-disciplinary engagement between the Humanities disciplines and the Creative Practice disciplines within the innovative context of the Creative Industries Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology. This will involve a charting of the intersection of the emerging field of creative practice-led research with various disciplines in the Humanities such as cultural studies. The potential for a reciprocal, transformative process in these creative fields will be addressed. Several examples of postgraduate students’ research will be foregrounded as case studies of the issues involved in fostering a genuine cultural critique both within and through creative practice. Some observers may argue that the research higher degree creative practitioner in effect looks outward from the symbolic material forms being created, in search of an interpretative paradigm, thereby trawling the Humanities for a theory. Several current debates within the postgraduate research arena regarding the balance between the theoretical exegesis and the creative work (e.g. performance, drama, dance, visual art, creative writing, film and screen production, music, interactive media etc) will also be critically examined.

The creative sector in New Zealand : mapping and economic role : report to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise

The New Zealand creative sector was responsible for almost 121,000 jobs at the time of the 2006 Census (6.3% of total employment). These are divided between • 35,751 creative specialists – persons employed doing creative work in creative industries • 42,300 support workers - persons providing management and support services in creative industries • 42,792 embedded creative workers – persons engaged in creative work in other types of enterprise The most striking feature of this breakdown is the fact that the largest group of creative workers are employed outside the creative industries, i.e. in other types of businesses. Even within the creative industries, there are fewer people directly engaged in creative work than in providing management and support. Creative sector employees earned incomes of approximately $52,000 per annum at the time of the 2006 Census. This is relatively uniform across all three types of creative worker, and is significantly above the average for all employed persons (of approximately $40,700). Creative employment and incomes were growing strongly over both five year periods between the 1996, 2001 and 2006 Censuses. However, when we compare creative and general trends, we see two distinct phases in the development of the creative sector: • rapid structural growth over the five years to 2001 (especially led by developments in ICT), with creative employment and incomes increasing rapidly at a time when they were growing modestly across the whole economy; • subsequent consolidation, with growth driven by more by national economic expansion than structural change, and creative employment and incomes moving in parallel with strong economy-wide growth. Other important trends revealed by the data are that • the strongest growth during the decade was in embedded creative workers, especially over the first five years. The weakest growth was in creative specialists, with support workers in creative industries in the middle rank, • by far the strongest growth in creative industries’ employment was in Software & digital content, which trebled in size over the decade Comparing New Zealand with the United Kingdom and Australia, the two southern hemisphere nations have significantly lower proportions of total employment in the creative sector (both in creative industries and embedded employment). New Zealand’s and Australia’s creative shares in 2001 were similar (5.4% each), but in the following five years, our share has expanded (to 5.7%) whereas Australia’s fell slightly (to 5.2%) – in both cases, through changes in creative industries’ employment. The creative industries generated $10.5 billion in total gross output in the March 2006 year. Resulting from this was value added totalling $5.1b, representing 3.3% of New Zealand’s total GDP. Overall, value added in the creative industries represents 49% of industry gross output, which is higher than the average across the whole economy, 45%. This is a reflection of the relatively high labour intensity and high earnings of the creative industries. Industries which have an above-average ratio of value added to gross output are usually labour-intensive, especially when wages and salaries are above average. This is true for Software & Digital Content and Architecture, Design & Visual Arts, with ratios of 60.4% and 55.2% respectively. However there is significant variation in this ratio between different parts of the creative industries, with some parts (e.g. Software & Digital Content and Architecture, Design & Visual Arts) generating even higher value added relative to output, and others (e.g. TV & Radio, Publishing and Music & Performing Arts) less, because of high capital intensity and import content. When we take into account the impact of the creative industries’ demand for goods and services from its suppliers and consumption spending from incomes earned, we estimate that there is an addition to economic activity of: • $30.9 billion in gross output, $41.4b in total • $15.1b in value added, $20.3b in total • 158,100 people employed, 234,600 in total The total economic impact of the creative industries is approximately four times their direct output and value added, and three times their direct employment. Their effect on output and value added is roughly in line with the average over all industries, although the effect on employment is significantly lower. This is because of the relatively high labour intensity (and high earnings) of the creative industries, which generate below-average demand from suppliers, but normal levels of demand though expenditure from incomes. Drawing on these numbers and conclusions, we suggest some (slightly speculative) directions for future research. The goal is to better understand the contribution the creative sector makes to productivity growth; in particular, the distinctive contributions from creative firms and embedded creative workers. The ideas for future research can be organised into the several categories: • Understanding the categories of the creative sector– who is doing the business? In other words, examine via more fine grained research (at a firm level perhaps) just what is the creative contribution from the different aspects of the creative sector industries. It may be possible to categorise these in terms of more or less striking innovations. • Investigate the relationship between the characteristics and the performance of the various creative industries/ sectors; • Look more closely at innovation at an industry level e.g. using an index of relative growth of exports, and see if this can be related to intensity of use of creative inputs; • Undertake case studies of the creative sector; • Undertake case studies of the embedded contribution to growth in the firms and industries that employ them, by examining taking several high performing noncreative industries (in the same way as proposed for the creative sector). • Look at the aggregates – drawing on the broad picture of the extent of the numbers of creative workers embedded within the different industries, consider the extent to which these might explain aspects of the industries’ varied performance in terms of exports, growth and so on. • This might be able to extended to examine issues like the type of creative workers that are most effective when embedded, or test the hypothesis that each industry has its own particular requirements for embedded creative workers that overwhelms any generic contributions from say design, or IT.

Theoretical critique of the work of art : co-producers in research

The ways in which the "traditional" tension between words and artwork can be perceived has huge implications for understanding the relationship between critical or theoretical interpretation, art and practice, and research. Within the practice-led PhD this can generate a strange sense of disjuncture for the artist-researcher particularly when engaged in writing the exegesis. This paper aims to explore this tension through an introductory investigation of the work of the philosopher Andrew Benjamin. For Benjamin criticism completes the work of art. Criticism is, with the artwork, at the centre of our experience and theoretical understanding of art – in this way the work of art and criticism are co-productive. The reality of this co-productivity can be seen in three related articles on the work of American painter Marcia Hafif. In each of these articles there are critical negotiations of just how the work of art operates as art and theoretically, within the field of art. This focus has important ramifications for the writing and reading of the exegesis within the practice-led research higher degree. By including art as a significant part of the research reporting process the artist-researcher is also staking a claim as to the critical value of their work. Rather than resisting the tension between word and artwork the practice-led artist-researcher need to embrace the co-productive nature of critical word and creative work to more completely articulate their practice and its significance as research. The ideal venue and opportunity for this is the exegesis.

Frank and Stein : from research scientist to creative writer (a screenplay and exegesis)

The screenplay, “Perfect Blood” (Frank and Stein), is the first two-hour episode of a two-part television miniseries Frank and Stein. This creative work is a science fiction story that speculates on the future of Western nations in a world where petroleum is scarce. A major theme that has been explored in the miniseries is the tension between the advantages and dangers of scientific progress without regard to human consequences. “Perfect Blood” (Frank and Stein) was written as part of my personal creative journey, which has been the transformation from research scientist to creative writer. In the exegetical component of this thesis, I propose that a key challenge for any scientist writing science fiction is the shift from conducting empirical research in a laboratory-based situation to engaging in creative practice research. During my personal creative journey, I found that a predominant difficulty in conducting research within a creative practice-led paradigm was unleashing my creativity and personal viewpoint, practices that are frowned upon in scientific research. The aim of the exegesis is to demonstrate that the transformative process from science to art is not neat and well-structured. My personal creative journey was fraught with many ‘wrong’ turns. However, after reflecting on the experience, I realise that every varied piece of research that I undertook allowed me to progress to the next stage, the next draft of Frank and Stein. And via the disorder of the creative process, a screenplay finally emerged that was both structured and creative, which are equally essential elements in screenwriting.

Research Ethics and Creative Arts Hypothetical

The merits of a research project are commonly framed in terms of perceived benefits with respect to knowledge production, wellbeing, the social good, and so on. Such measures can, however, be at odds with certain types of creative practice, which may be perceived as frivolous, unsettling, or shocking. Moreover, creative practice research methodologies commonly eschew more traditional research conventions. In exploring these tensions, this live performance event (including a DVD component) adapted key dramatic principles developed in Geoffrey Robertson's groundbreaking Hypotheticals. The event was presented for an audience of staff and students at QUT's Creative Industries Faculty in July 2010. It confirmed Dr Angela Romano's contention that: “Part of the ethical clearance process for practice-led researchers will be to find a language to explain the methodology, significance, merit and integrity of their research to people outside their field of practice.” (Angela Romano, QUT Creative Industries) “Part of the ethical clearance process for practice-led researchers will be to find a language to explain the methodology, significance, merit and integrity of their research to people outside their field of practice.”

From cultural to creative industries : theory, industry, and policy implications

Across post-industrial societies worldwide, the creative industries are increasingly seen as a key economic driver. These industries - including fields as diverse as advertising, art, computer games, crafts, design, fashion, film, museums, music, performing arts, publishing, radio, theatre and TV - are built upon individual creativity and innovation and have the potential to create wealth and employment through the mechanism of intellectual property. Creative Industries: Critical Readings brings together the key writings - drawing on both journals and books - to present an authoritative and wide-ranging survey of this emerging field of study. The set is presented with an introduction and the writings are divided into four volumes, organized thematically: Volume 1: Concepts - focuses on the concept of creativity and the development of government and industry interest in creative industries; Volume 2: Economy - maps the role and function of creative industries in the economy at large; Volume 3: Organization - examines the ways in which creative institutions organize themselves; and Volume 4: Work - addresses issues of creative work, labour and careers This major reference work will be invaluable to scholars in economics, cultural studies, sociology, media studies and organization studies.

Creative industries, its critics, and some answers

Arguments as to just what should be included under the definition of «creative industries» have limited their acceptance and the adoption of suitable policies. There are opposing analyses and statistical categories, such as the copyright industry, the content industry, the cultural industry, the digital content industry, the arts and entertainment industry, etc. that make it difficult to gather accurate, reliable, timely data on this mega-sector. Another major criticism is that «creative» work is idealised and that the exporting of the concept outside its country of origin may be tantamount to imperialism. However, the creative industries have evolved in the past ten years from being limited to specific sectors to becoming seen as creative agents that can generate change and innovation, and have achieved high levels of acceptance and significance in many different countries.

Creativity and the Australian suburbs : the appeal of suburban localities for the creative industries workforce

The locus of creative inspiration and production is commonly associated with either the dynamism of the inner city or with the natural landscape, with its Arcadian transformative associations. This article considers the spatiality of creative work in an in-between site: the outer suburbs in Australia. The outer suburbs occupy a conflicted status in the national imaginary: frequently regarded as the locus of consumption and materialism, they are localities which few associate with creativity or creative industries. Creative city discourse further instils the idea that all things creative occur only in the inner city. Yet Australia is a highly suburbanised country: the middle and outer suburbs are where most Australians live and work. This article challenges the perception that creativity is spatially clustered in the inner city. It is based on empirical and qualitative research that maps and investigates the experience of creative industries workers in outer-suburban localities of Brisbane and Melbourne. One of the key findings is the significance of the relationship between work and place for creative workers located in outer-suburban localities, rupturing assumptions about suburbia and “creative” inner-city enclaves.

The Creative Industries, Culture and Policy

The rise of creative industries requires new thinking in communication, media and cultural studies, media and cultural policy, and the arts and information sectors. The Creative Industries, Culture and Policy sets the agenda for these debates, providing a richer understanding of the dynamics of cultural markets, creative labor, finance and risk, and how culture is distributed, marketed and creatively reused through new media technologies. This book: develops a global perspective on the creative industries and creative economy draws insights from media and cultural studies, innovation economics, cultural policy studies, and economic and cultural geography explores what it means for policy-makers when culture and creativity move from the margins to the center of economic dynamics makes extensive use of case studies in ways that are relevant not only to researchers and policy-makers, but also to the generation of students who will increasingly be establishing a ‘portfolio career’ in the creative industries. International in coverage, The Creative Industries traces the historical and contemporary ideas that make the cultural economy more relevant that it has ever been. It is essential reading for students and academics in media, communication and cultural studies. Table of Contents - Introduction - Origins of Creative Industries Policy - International Models of Creative Industries Policy - From Culture Industries to Cultural Economy - Products, Services, Production and Creative Work - Consumption, Markets, Technology and Cultural Trade - Globalization, Cities and Creative Spaces - Creative Industries and Public Policy - Conclusion