Progress in 2012
Keane, Antons, Montgomery, Flew, Hjorth, Tacchi and Hartley presented at international conferences in China, Taiwan, Korea, Germany, and Singapore. In December a number of the project team participated in the Internet Freedom and the Law in Asia workshop coordinated by Antons and held at Deakin University.
Donald was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship, 'Migration and mobility: the question of childhood in Chinese and European cinema since 1945', which will will produce a comparative account of the migrant and mobile child in postwar film, researched in China and Europe. Jo Tacchi successfully led teams to win competitive grants (ARC Linkage and ABC International Development/AusAID). Keane worked with CCI researchers John Banks, Elaine Zhao and Darryl Woodford on the Hong Kong Internet Games Industry project with the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Keane was an Eastern Scholar with Shanghai Theatre Academy for two months. Tacchi was Visiting Professor to the UNESCO Chair in Community Media, University of Hyderabad, and appointed Communication for Development (C4D) Specialist, Technical Advisor Group (TAG), Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS), for 2012. Flew was part of an International Expert Advisory Panel for the Media Development Authority (Singapore) in October 2012.
Hartley and Potts published a report of Creative City Index funded by the Beijing Research Centre for Science of Sciences, as well as published a paper based on the Index in the new Review of International Cultural Economy (University of International Business and Economics, Beijing). Horst, Hjorth and Tacchi edited a special issue of Media International Australia.
ACT hosted the 5th International Association for Cultural and Creative Industries Forum: Creative Transformations: Policy, Markets and Communities, which considered the theme of creative transformation in the second decade of the 21st century.
The ACT website (www.creativetransformations.asia/) added a new outreach feature in 2012. The Asia-Pacific Creative Landing Pad Inflight Magazine is produced bi-monthly and enjoys a subscription community of scholars, policy makers and business practitioners.
We are developing plans to extend the concept of Asian Creative Transformations in China with a view to incubating a Chinese Creative Transformations node in Shanghai. We have also developed a relationship with Peking University’s International association for Cultural and Creative Industries (IACCI) that will see CCI experts attending a forum in Japan.
Horst, Hjorth, Tacchi and Lewis plan to undertake comparative research on the consumption and circulation of digital content in Australia, India and China, as well as other countries in the region.
Keane has two forthcoming books in 2013: M. Keane, Creative Industries in China: Art, Design, Media (Polity); and M. Keane, M. and W. Sun, eds, China’s Media: Critical Approaches: A Reader (4 volumes: Routledge). Hjorth has two forthcoming journal publications that report on her Asia-Pacific media. Hjorth has been invited to speak on mobile games at the International Conference on Creative and Media Industries at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in June.
Keane and Cunningham have taken up Editorial Board positions with a new Taiwan-based journal The International Journal of Cultural and Creative Industries (IJCCI). The Asia-Pacific Creative Landing Pad Inflight Magazine will be further developed in 2013.
A new site for the Asian Lifestyle TV ARC Discovery was established (see www.telemodernities.org/), and a special issue of Media International Australia is in preparation edited by Lewis, Fran Martin and John Sinclair.
New work has been generated in a range of publications by project members, including book monographs, articles, book chapters and reports.
Michael Keane’s work has explored new ways of understanding China’s strategies for competing internationally through linking technological innovation (science) with cultural creativity (humanities). Other work by Keane, Montgomery and Zhao has looked at grassroots innovation occurring in informal copyright and IP environments, such as shanzhai communities.
Hjorth has contributed to a deep understand of the varieties of mobile culture in Asia while Lewis’s work on lifestyle TV in Asia is the first of its kind.
Antons has continued to work on issues related to internet freedom in Asia.
New understandings of Asia’s creative transformation are evidenced in the recent spate of activity in China, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.