Australia’s Arts and Entertainment Sector underpins cultural and social innovation, improves the quality of community life, is essential to maintaining our cities as world class attractors of talent and investment, and helps create ‘Brand Australia’ in the global marketplace of ideas (QUT Creative Industries Faculty 2010). The sector makes a significant contribution to the Australian economy. So what is the size and nature of this contribution?

Australia currently lacks a mechanism to gather evidence on the formation of public attitudes to the introduction of new technologies, particularly the formation of attitudes to nuclear energy technology.

This is a limiting factor in achieving informed debate in the development of a national energy policy.

These are key findings in a research project recently completed by the National Academies Forum. Its report, Understanding the Formation of Attitudes to Nuclear Power in Australia, will be released today at a CEDA function in Perth (details below).

The Creative Economy Report Card provides a snapshot of key facts about Australia's creative industries, the creative workforce and businesses -- based on analysis of national statistics and reports.

Abstract

It has now been over a decade since the concept of creative industries was first put into the public domain through the Creative Industries Mapping Documents developed by the Blair Labour government in Britain. The concept has developed traction globally, but it has also been understood and developed in different ways in Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and North America, as well as through international bodies such as UNCTAD and UNESCO.

Julian Thomas
The Australian
February 22, 2010 12:00AM

CONFUSION and disarray surround Stephen Conroy's decision to rebate licence fees for commercial television broadcasters.

The decision raises the most basic question that can be asked about government dispensation of any kind: what was this money for?

There are young Australians who are already making a name (and money) for themselves in the latest market for creative content – and it didn’t exist a moment ago. YouTube is a huge repository of amateur content, but it is also rapidly evolving into a site that has legally contracted Hollywood movies and TV shows but is working out ways to share revenues from advertising with gifted and committed amateurs whose creativity attracts a big following.

Can government play a role in assisting Australian creative talent to catch some of dynamism of emerging markets for culture?

Outlining their radical new roadmap for cultural R&D, the authors’ proposals challenge two entrenched prejudices, which block arts and cultural organisations from playing their full role in society and economy.

Australian Financial Review

Creativity is today’s ultimate black box a Rorschach blot onto which there are projected innumerable meanings. When academic Richard Green reviewed the literature recently, he found so much variation that he concluded the field was ‘so attenuated, extenuated, or misunderstood that operationalising of the key concepts is missing or impossible’. He tried to order the field, and constructed a profile of 42 models of creativity which, when combined with assorted variations and typologies, totted up 303 variables!

Faculty Seminar Series

Professor Justin O’Connor, Research Capacity Building Professor Tuesday 28th April 12pm-1pm The Hall (Z2-226) CI Precinct QUT Kelvin Grove

Creative labour: emancipation or honey-trap?

Why_do_some_ideas flourish and others fail?
Why is independent thought valued in some societies and discouraged in others?

Ecology is the study of how organisms relate to their environment. Following on from the success of his 2001 book The Creative Economy, leading thinker John Howkins applies ecological principles to the concepts of creativity and innovation, generating Creative Ecologies.

Download paper: Developing creative capital: what can we learn from the workplace?

Creativity is known to be of central importance to the generation of new ideas, new ways of working and innovation. Creativity and the harnessing of creative capital are essential for the success of firms, in fields as diverse as the creative industries and multi-media to computing, engineering, architecture, science and technology and in public sector organizations. This paper reviews research which identifies how the creative capital of organizations is enhanced and applied and suggests that programs, practices and processes can be developed to extend and build capacity in Australian organisations.

Abstract: Open access to knowledge is the foundation of learning and discovery in higher education. Yet in Australian music faculties, the use of essential material is regulated and commercialized by record companies and music publishing houses. This paper details the impact of this framework through the eyes of music academics and students by making equity parallels with traditional academic arrangements.

The creative industries are one of the most important contributors to the UK economy. So it is important that we accurately measure their contribution to economic activity. Doing so can help both policymakers and industry professionals to communicate key concepts, share reliable data and make the case for greater investment. There have been renewed attempts to estimate the true size of the creative economy. The Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Greater London Authority (GLA) both published studies in 2007.

The production of knowledge has become central to economic life. Competitiveness in the 21st century market place is now characterized by the ability to translate scientific and technological knowledge into innovation. But does this render cultural and social knowledge unimportant?

The argument that studying the arts boosts academic achievements in other subjects has been the subject of extensive research and the consensus view could be summed up as 'not proven'. But as Kate Oakley argues, there is stronger evidence for the relationship between arts education and a variety of social or 'non cognitive' skills, from self-confidence to communication skills.