ISSN: 1329-878X

Creative Networks Number 112, August 2004 Theme Editors: Tom O'Regan, Lisanne Gibson and Paul Jeffcutt Order form Abstracts

Contents

Abstracts

Tom O'Regan, Lisanne Gibson and Paul Jeffcutt: Creative Networks

In the February 2002 issue of Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, 'Culture: Development, Industry, Distribution', issue editors Lisanne Gibson and Tom O'Regan identified 'a shift in the underlying principles governing contemporary cultural policy'. Of 'particular importance in this refocusing', they argued, were 'the two distinct but related notions of "cultural development" and the "creative industries"'.

This issue, edited by Tom O'Regan, Lisanne Gibson and Paul Jeffcutt, is MIA's second 'creative industries' issue. It begins where the previous issue left off, with its tantalising suggestion that 'effective cultural policy-making needs to be premised on a dual engagement with the global conditions of cultural practice and consumption and the actual conditions of local cultural production and consumption'. Concepts of 'cultural cluster' and 'cultural network' have been the conceptual tools through which policy-makers and theorists have sought to manage and account for creative practice and industry in ways which encompass both local and global conditions of production and consumption. The articles in this volume analyse, account for, describe, advocate and critique a variety of articulations and applications of 'cultural cluster' and 'cultural network', and in so doing both provide a current snapshot of contemporary policy and theory on the creative industries, and suggest future directions.

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Steve Redhead: Creative Modernity: The New Cultural State

This essay introduces two new concepts into the international debate about the theory and practice of creative industries. These concepts are 'creative modernity' and the 'new cultural state'. The new cultural state has a double meaning. It refers to the new cultural condition we find ourselves in, what we call here creative modernity, and the form in which the modern state has governed, or intervened in, culture through law and other means of governance or regulation. In this process, the modern state - as it did in the United Kingdom for a while - sometimes becomes a part of the 'cultural' sphere through the project of creative modernity. As we see here in a rethinking of the case of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in the British New Labour government, an experiment which is often cited approvingly in the creative industries debates around the world, creative modernity involves the social engineering of a 'new individualism' where citizens are remade as creative entrepreneurs. In this essay, it is argued that to move the arguments forward, the debate about creative industries should be re-situated within the wider framework of cosmopolitan sociology's analyses of modernity, the state and culture.

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Tom O'Regan and Mark David Ryan: From Multimedia To Digital Content And Applications: Remaking Policy For The Digital Content Industries

This article analyses the two policy moments of digital content industries policy development of the Keating (1992-96) and Howard (2001-04) governments. In bringing these two moments into dialogue, our aim is to illuminate and evaluate the broader policy frameworks, and the political and policy contexts, which gave rise to and subsequently shaped these different digital content strategies. The Keating government connected culture and services to harness multimedia as a vehicle for cultural expression and as a new economically viable growth industry suited to a convergent information age. The Howard government's innovation agenda has reconstructed industry development priorities for the digital content industries, influencing their conception as inputs and enablers for both the ICT and broader industries in an information economy framework. The article concludes with an evaluation of the assumptions and priorities, shortcomings and advantages of these two quite different approaches to developing digital content industries.

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Andy C. Pratt: Creative Clusters: Towards The Governance Of The Creative Industries Production System?

The aim of this paper is to critically assess the notion of the creative cluster, and to consider whether it is an appropriate tool for the governance of the creative industries, or even a suitable point from which to begin an analysis of the creative industries. The paper argues that creative clusters are formally a sub-set of business clusters. A critique of the business clusters literature highlights its shortcomings: a focus on individual firm preferences and a lack of attention to non-economic, situated temporal and spatial variables; a lack of attention to the specificity of particular industries and their associated regulatory peculiarities; and finally, information issues associated with the operationalisation of the cluster model. The paper concludes with a discussion of an alternative approach, looking at a creative industries production system that would better meet the concerns of those seeking to govern the creative industries and creative clusters.

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Paul Jeffcutt: Knowledge Relationships And Transactions In A Cultural Economy: Analysing The Creative Industries Ecosystem

This paper addresses creativity in a broad organisational field of knowledge relationships and transactions in a cultural economy. In considering key issues and debates across this complex field, the paper concentrates on the generic problems of investigating, understanding and influencing this cultural economy. The paper locates its consideration of these knowledge relationships and transactions in a discussion of a pioneering in-depth study of the creative industries in a region of the United Kingdom. Significantly, this study found these creative industries to be inhabiting an ecosystem of creative space and also found that the development strategy for these industries needed to be ecological. The paper concludes with several key challenges for research and policy in the building of situated and strategic knowledge on cultural economies.

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Chris Gibson and Daniel Robinson: Creative Networks In Regional Australia

Much recent academic and public discourse has centred on the fate of non-metropolitan Australia under successive federal neoliberal reform agendas. This paper discusses creative networks in non-metropolitan areas in light of this, with a focus on issues of youth unemployment and out-migration. First, it draws on research on creative industry development on the New South Wales Far North Coast to assess the efficacy of creative networks as a source of new job growth in rural areas. Second, and more broadly, the paper discusses the North Coast Entertainment Industry Association (NCEIA), a nascent creative network in the region. Several observations are drawn from its experiences. Creative networks in non-metropolitan areas face problems of informal and itinerant membership, and anti-socialisation attitudes. Yet they appear to have a substantial role in improving the conditions of viability for vulnerable cultural producers. When conceived as part of interventionist strategies to promote youth employment and to stem the youth exodus from rural areas, they may also have sociodemographic implications beyond the scope of their original intent.

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Greg Hearn, Abraham Ninan, Ian Rogers, Stuart Cunningham and Susan Luckman: From The Margins To The Mainstream: Creating Value In Queensland’s Music Industry

As elsewhere, the music industry in Queensland comprises two tiers. The first tier is composed of products and services engaged by major music labels and commercially successful artists who at times attract significant sales. The second tier - or what is sometimes referred to as the 'grassroots' (Gibson, 2002) - largely consists of independent musicians, production personnel and producers attracting both niche and at times mainstream audiences. Characterised by informally networked micro-economies, independent artists, niche markets and the exploitation of new technologies, the second tier is also of interest to cultural researchers, who have tended to concentrate on subcultural music communities and music produced outside of the mass market first tier. A mapping survey which examined the Queensland music industry in terms of size, location, income and activity is complemented by interviews with musicians, label owners, production personnel and others involved in the music 'scene'. We explore how second-tier practices (such as a reliance on social networking to achieve recordings and performance opportunities, as well as DIY culture and innovative business approaches) offer alternative methods for 'doing music' and generating value in the creative industries.

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Susan Ward: National Cinema Or Creative Industries? Film Policy In Transition

In 2002, 'film' consolidated a position within municipal governance as part of the Brisbane City Council's economic development program based on the 'new economy' understanding of the role of the city as the physical location of commercial and cultural activity. This positioning of film within the notion of industry clustering, and the acknowledgment that production technologies of film and television share a common ground with games development, and other forms of leisure software, represent a fundamental departure from the precepts of the traditional national cinema model. Are creative industries discourse and cluster logic opening up a new field of governance for film policy? How does this translate to the state and federal levels if policy is to become more accommodating to the structures and dynamics of specific regional locations? This paper examines two Queensland approaches to creative industries discourse and cluster logic as a way of understanding the impact this move to a 'global knowledge-based economy' will have on the traditional policy framework.

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Justin O'Connor: ‘A Special Kind Of City Knowledge’: Innovative Clusters, Tacit Knowledge And The ‘Creative City’

That the cultural industries are highly networked and operate in clusters is now well established. The notion of cluster is linked to the idea of place-based advantage, with cultural industries gaining competitive advantage from mobilising the resources of places to compete in global markets. 'Place' in the cultural industries is frequently taken to be the city, where city is seen as the key resource for cultural industry clusters and a primary point of intervention for cultural industry policy in creative city policy-making. In this article, I want to look at some of the implications of these moves for both academic research and policy discussion. The reasons for this emphasis on policy relates to some large questions of urban governance and cultural politics surrounding the proactive government of clusters which are raised by recent work on the cultural industries, notably by Alan Scott.

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Jim Shorthose: Accounting For Independent Creativity In The New Cultural Economy

What is the best way to capture and account for the independent sector of the cultural economy, given that it operates in significantly different ways from the formal economy? While economic impact studies have provided one answer to this question, this article proposes in their stead an ethnographic study of the cultural economy which would uncover the often hidden, temporary and spontaneous features of the sector. Such an ethnographic approach to economic issues is identified as one way in which research designs and strategies can be made appropriate to the specificities of the cultural sector. Such an approach can help illuminate the dynamics of creativity and highlight the practical, everyday nature of work and employment in the cultural sector. It can also help to focus attention on the importance of informal economic and cultural processes which tend to be hidden from view when there is an economic outcomes-based focus.

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Patricia Wise and Sally Breen: The Concrete Corridor: Strategising Impermanence In A Frontier City

The Gold Coast can be understood as a 'new frontier city', a site which does not meet usual expectations of urban formations and cultural practices. This article explores novel potentials for creative industries and cultural development in the city by focusing on emergent intersections between large-scale real estate development and the creative sector. Drawing on ways of thinking developed by Deleuze and Guattari, we utilise notions of rhizomes and assemblages as a methodological strategy. The article aims to demonstrate that, for the Gold Coast's urban and cultural trajectories, which are marked more by impermanence than continuities, such thinking is likely to prove very useful alongside, supplementary to, or instead of a range of established approaches to urban analysis and policy development.

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Stuart Cunningham, Terry Cutler, Greg Hearn, Mark Ryan, Michael Keane: An Innovation Agenda For The Creative Industries: Where Is The R&D?

What would an innovation systems approach to the creative, and especially the digital, content industries look like? This is important for two reasons: such an approach may open up dynamic and central policy territory which has been the preserve of science, engineering and technology (SET) worldwide; and it asks new questions, outside the domain of cultural support, which may precipitate a more holistic approach to the creative industries. This article draws on aspects of a report produced as part of the Australian government's Creative Industries Cluster Study, which outlined key elements of such a system. It focuses on the issues raised in looking at the role of key public institutions such as research agencies, educational and training bodies, including universities, government support agencies and others. We argue that these elements need to be greatly strengthened as well as challenged in terms of their orientation and their capacity to contribute to the innovation system.

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Luke Gregory and Brett Hutchins: Everyday Editorial Practices And The Public Sphere: Analysing The Letters To The Editor Page Of A Regional Newspaper

This paper investigates the social construction of a site of public discourse: the letters to the editor page of an Australian regional daily newspaper, The Daily News. Of key concern are the processes through which public discourse is constructed and mediated by those who select and edit letters for publication. Drawing on a content analysis of the letters page and in-depth interviews with the editorial staff, it is demonstrated how routine practices and the social knowledge of media workers play a specific and discernible role in shaping public dialogue. In light of the findings presented, the concluding section discusses the relationship between editorial practices and the public sphere.

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Brennon Wood: Genre Diversity And The State’s Hegemony Over Free-To-Air Television In New Zealand

The commercialisation of New Zealand television in the 1990s has provoked debate between those who hold that markets increase diversity and those who believe that competition produces homogeneity. Focusing on the formal structure of program types, this article uses a range of statistics to assess historical shifts in the entropic breadth of genres, the stability of this mix, shifts in modality and variations by channel. In keeping with the convergence hypothesis, the findings indicate a general trend towards stabilisation, domination by entertainment and increased hybridity. However, entropy has remained consistently high. Moreover, entertainment declined and information rose throughout the 1990s. These unexpected results are an outcome of market partitioning established by state television in the 1970s and 1980s. Rather than either the advent of neo-liberal variety or a decline of public service diversity, this analysis emphasises the state's persistent hegemony over the free-to-air market.

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Reviews:

Berry, Chris, Martin, Fran and Yue, Audrey, Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia
Dicks, Bella, Culture on Display: The Production of Contemporary Visitability
Grant, Alisdair (ed.), Australian Telecommunications Regulation: The Communications Law Centre Guide, 3rd edn
Heffernan, Kevin, Ghouls Gimmicks and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business 1953-1968
Jancovich, Mark, Reboll, Antonio Lázaro, Stringer, Julian and Willis, Andy (eds), Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste
McGuigan, Jim, Rethinking Cultural Policy
Miller, Toby and Yúdice, George, Cultural Policy
Pearson, Mark, The Journalist's Guide to Media Law: Dealing with Legal and Ethical issues, 2nd edn
von Feilitzen, Cecelia and Carlsson, Ulla (eds), Promote or Protect? Perspectives of Media Literacyand Media Regulations
Wayne, Mike (2003) Marxism and Media Studies: Key Concepts and Contemporary Trends

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