UNLOCKING A NATION’S CREATIVE DRIVE

Australia has a superlative opportunity to generate new jobs, exports and cultural richness if it can tap the creative powers of all its citizens.

This is the view of Prof. John Hartley AM, research director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) at the Queensland University of Technology, who has just completed a ground-breaking five-year ARC Federation Fellowship investigating the new opportunities opening up with the digital age.

“One of the most important findings of our research is that creativity is population-wide – it isn’t just confined to big multi-media companies, artistic institutions or cultural elites.

“In the digital age, every Australian is creative,” Prof. Hartley says. “We have to find ways to take advantage of that.”

“Some of the most innovative ideas using new media are emerging from remote Aboriginal communities, from people’s garages and back rooms, from small businesses, from students who are seeing alternative livelihoods to merely getting a job.”

The huge policy challenge facing all governments, political parties and corporations is how to unlock this fount of creativity, to help it to flourish rather than trying to wrap it in rules and red tape.

“Education in the new technologies and social networks is the key in the digital age. Education in digital skills and literacy is growing like topsy outside educational institutions – while the formal education system lags far behind, often trying to stifle this new form of education rather than nurture it,” he adds.

“An example is the continuing row over internet filtering. We need to train people who are spontaneous, imaginative and informed – not block their access to information and ideas, like some old Stalinist bureaucracy.”

Another important dimension to the digital age to emerge from the research of Prof. Hartley and his colleagues is the growing dominance of the consumer over content and choice of technology in all areas of the media – but also in politics, medicine and industry.

“Cultural acceptance and social uptake now have a much bigger impact on the success of technologies – but governments, corporations and researchers appear still largely driven by a desire to control the technology.

“The National Broadband Network is a case in point, where the focus has been massively on the technology rather than on content and on enabling more Australians to use it, more creatively,” Prof. Hartley says.

This consumer-driven age is invading politics, with political parties increasingly tethered to tiny twitches in opinion polls – when what voters are really seeking is the kind of candour they encounter on the social media: “The web works best when people are who they say they are, and that applies to politics too,” he says.

Equally it is changing the public attitude to health. “Patients are much more astute in using the internet to look up medical facts and actively to intervene in and manage their own health issues. This is transforming the role of the medical professional in subtle, but important ways.”

Prof. Hartley rejects the contention of advocates of older media that, because there is a lot of opinion, trivia and unsubstantiated claims on the web, it can’t be trusted. “Today’s digital consumer is becoming remarkably discerning about what they can and can’t trust – indeed their ability to smell a spin-doctor is influencing their approach to other media and to politics. As for all the chatter on the internet, that is simply an aspect of its liveliness.”

However he also rejects the notion that ‘old media’ – newspapers, TV, radio and magazines – are reaching their ‘use-by’ date under the onslaught of new media. “So far at least, history has shown that the dominant media are supplemented by new media, not supplanted by them. Perhaps there is a tendency for the indiscriminate mass audience to move on, but that tends to leave better quality ‘old’ media with a more discriminating audience.”

Prof. Hartley says his team’s research defines a clear opportunity for Australia to become a world leader of research and applications in user-led innovation for the creative industries.

“It shows how we can uplift the capabilities of the general population in multimedia literacy, to promote wider social participation in creative content production – and how we can draw on the strengths, skills and creative imaginations of our entire population, not just parts of it.”

The ARC Centre for Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) is helping to build a creative Australia through cutting edge research spanning the creative industries, media and communications, arts, cultural studies, law, information technology, education and business.

More information:
Professor John Hartley, CCI and QUT, 07 3138 5605 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              07 3138 5605      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              07 3138 5605      end_of_the_skype_highlighting or 0410 589 451
email: j.hartley@qut.edu.au
Professor Stuart Cunningham, Director CCI, ph 0407 195 304
email: s.cunningham@qut.edu.au
Rebekah McClure, Manager CCI, ph +61 7 3138 3889
Julian Cribb, CCI media, 0418 639 245