Progress in 2012
The Creative Workforce program in 2012 entered into a summative phase, with researchers aiming to reflect on, provide integration of several years of work and apply the work internationally. This resulted in a contract with international publisher Edward Elgar for a book entitled Creative Work beyond the Creative Industries: Innovation, Employment and Education, to be published late 2013. The book will bring together the range of work by CCI researchers around the phenomenon of the ‘embedded creative’, noting that although labour and employment in the core creative industries are the subjects of a growing number of studies creative workers embedded in other industry sectors have, for the most part, remained invisible. Using the latest CCI analyses of Census 2011 and other new international data, the book will explore labour market, career and educational issues associated with the embedded creative workforce.
Empirical work on graduate tracking, and qualitative studies of embedded designers in manufacturing and the finance sector were carried out. The Interactive Skills Integration Scheme (ISIS) project, conducted with the Creative Industries Innovation Centre and Creative Enterprise Australia, evaluated innovative interactive media pilot projects that demonstrate the embedding of creative capacities that have been developed for the mining, manufacturing and education sectors. This report was presented to the federal Department of Industry Innovation Science and Tertiary Education in December.
Meanwhile CCI theory is being integrated into creative education programs internationally, for example:
- Infusion of project-identified capabilities into QUT’s core Bachelor of Creative Industries and Master of Creative Industries programs, providing demonstrable enhancement of student employability (Bridgstock)
- British Council South East Asia Global dialogue on higher education and the creative industries (Bridgstock)
- Tamkang University, Taiwan, international forum on culture and creative industries (Banks/Bridgstock/Donovan/Klaebe)
- South Africa eSkills Summit (Bridgstock/Banks) with University of Pretoria and University of western Cape; Department of Communications and the eSkills Institute, South Africa (Hearn).
- Graduate trajectories for specialist and embedded creatives: Skills, strategies, outcomes and contributions. Conduct tracking research into career trajectories of Australian arts, media and design graduates across creative product and service and specialist, embedded and support destinations.
- Creative Industries Faculty curriculum development. Embed Creative Workforce research findings (e.g. creative trident, creative capabilities, graduate tracking) into QUT Creative Industries Faculty undergraduate and postgraduate programs, with an emphasis on the Bachelor of Creative Industries and Master of Creative Industries programs.
- Complete publication of Creative Work beyond the Creative Industries. The book will discuss:
- how creative workers interact with non-creative industries and sectors to drive innovation in the knowledge economy, and what key roles they play in innovation processes
- comparisons of creative production, creative services and embedded creative workers
- career trajectories and career patterns of embedded creatives in various disciplines and industry sectors and the skills and knowledge sets of embedded creatives
- labour markets and labour conditions for embedded creatives in comparison with those in core creative industries.
New Knowledge Generated
- Continued development data of media, communication and cultural studies graduate career paths, destinations and the types of value they add to the workplace
- Detailed qualitative exploration of the expectations, career plans of designers working in other sectors especially manufacturing
- Theoretical developments on the nature of embedded creative work and creative services teams using the Resource Based View of the firm
- Examination of the precarious labour debate in terms of cultural production versus creative service workers.