Creative Employment Mapping and Creative Business Benchmarker

The objectives of the Creative Economy Mapping project are to:

1. Establish a more robust evidence base for policy development and evaluation
2. Establish more effective toolsets for creative practitioners to be able to assess and improve their performance at the business of being creative.
3. Established better metrics for measuring the extent, impact and viability of creative businesses and creative professionals.

These objectives are being met through the implementation of three streams of activities:

a) The metrics of Creative Employment
CCI developed the Creative Trident methodology to better understand the patterns of creative employment – creative professionals employed across the economy as well as other occupations that are employed within creative businesses.

b) The metrics of Creative Businesses
The Creative Business Benchmarker service is an online data capture and business analysis project that seeks to address the historical lack of accurate, time series and up-to-date Creative Industries data that hinders all Creative Industries segments but most especially those firms within the newer or fastest growing segments such as design and interactive content. Benchmarker’s objective is to provide a confidential information service that meets the specific needs of four different types of stakeholders:
• businesses - including sole practitioners,
• industry associations and professional bodies,
• policy developers within government,
• academic and industry researchers.

c) The Creative Economy EvidenceBase - a statistics repository to manage and analyse a diverse range of very large national datasets that spreadsheets could not effectively handle.
The EvidenceBase not only stores the data but also enables authorised users to access and analyse the data they want online. Central to the strategy of the EvidenceBase is that every set of data is linked to the appropriate standard classification hierarchies. This significantly improves the consistency and reliability of the datasets and improves the ability of other researchers to re-use the data.

Progress in 2010
Creative Employment Mapping
During the second half of 2010 the research report undertaken by CCI into Arts employment a range of census based employment data was released in August by the Australia Council for the Arts.
Auckland City Council commissioned CCI to produce a report on the extent of its creative employment using CCI’s trident methodology. The study revealed Auckland had a higher proportion of creative employment relative to its workforce than Sydney and with a higher rate of growth.

Creative Business Benchmarker
July 2010 saw the successful completion of the pilot project conducted in partnership with Queensland Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation. Over the previous 2 years the project has processed over 480 surveys submitted by over 350 creative businesses to produce almost 500 personalised benchmark reports.

Plans for 2011
Creative Employment Mapping
Additional research is being conducted into the patterns of employment of creatives in creative disciplines outside of their own.
In the lead up to the 2011 Australian Census planning has commenced into the creative employment research needs of state, federal and local governments.

Creative Business Benchmarker
CCI has signed new partnership agreement with the Queensland Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation to take the Creative Business Benchmarker project to the next level of functionality and to additional creative segments. CCI is working with Reload Consulting to develop the next generation of software for firms to contribute their business information and to immediately receive feedback on their performance relative to their peers.

Outputs and impact (see also Director’s Report) included continuing upgrades to the Benchmarker web interface (www.benchmarker.org.au) and the data architecture supporting the project, as well as:

• Higgs, Peter L. (2010) Auckland’s Creative employment: what the Census tells us. Auckland City Council
• Cunningham, S., Higgs, P., Freebody, S. and Anderson, P. (2010) What’s your other job? A census analysis of arts employment in Australia, The Australia Council for the Arts, Sydney. http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/research/artists/reports_and_publicat...

New Knowledge Generated
Over the course of the Benchmarker project we have developed and proved viable a framework for a new paradigm in business data gathering that involves the collaboration between the information providers (businesses), information seekers (government) and university researchers who also act as facilitators. We have proved that with suitable care in the design of the information collection instruments and the benchmarking reports benefits accrue to all parties that cannot be obtained as effectively in any other way.