tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/creative-economy-8470/articlescreative economy – The Conversation2022-11-23T19:10:59Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1938382022-11-23T19:10:59Z2022-11-23T19:10:59ZCultural industries have been captured by billionaires – a new book considers what we can do about it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496333/original/file-20221121-48207-h8xs98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C1198%2C786&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Laia Alsina from The Crab Apples, September 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gabri Guerrero/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This book speaks to a disenchanted present. </p>
<p>The heady days of internet 2.0, with its anarchic disruption, empowered prosumers, flat hierarchies and sharing economies, are well behind us now. So too is the glamour of start-ups and creative entrepreneurs, remaking the self through pure willpower while transforming capitalism from the inside out, one almond latte at a time. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/chokepoint-capitalism-9781761380075">Chokepoint Capitalism</a>, Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow have added their detailed knowledge of corporate practice and their legal-technical web-weaving to the growing body of critical work on Big Tech and the stark realities of creative work. The result is a dark portrait of a cultural system captured by billionaires. </p>
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<p><em>Review: Chokepoint Capitalism – Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow (Scribe).</em></p>
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<p>The tone is set from the first:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Three massive conglomerates own the three record labels and three music publishers that control most of the world’s music. They designed the streaming industry, dominated by Spotify, which itself is (or was) partly owned by those same three labels. </p>
<p>When Disney swallowed 21st Century Fox, a single company assumed control of 35 percent of the US box office. Google and Facebook have a lock on the digital ads that are wrapped around music, videos, and news online. Google, along with Apple, is the gatekeeper of everything mobile, giving it a massive cut on games, books, music, and movies. Via Youtube, it controls video streaming […] </p>
<p>Amazon has an iron grip on book, ebook, and audio-book sales, and dominates ebook and audiobook production. The only publisher that might be able to hold its own is Penguin Random House, and then only by gulping down as many other big publishers as it possibly can.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And so on, through radio, live music, artists’ agents, games, apps, devices – the whole ecosystem has been captured by huge corporations whose sole purpose is to reduce costs and maximise profits. </p>
<p>“Ecosystem” has a benign ring to it, but, as Giblin and Doctorow argue, a corporation is more like </p>
<blockquote>
<p>an immortal colony organism that treats human beings as inconvenient gut flora. It doesn’t have a personality and it doesn’t have ethics. Its sole imperative is to do whatever it can get away with to extract maximum economic value from humans and the planet. </p>
</blockquote>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/chokepoint-capitalism-why-well-all-lose-unless-we-stop-amazon-spotify-and-other-platforms-squeezing-cash-from-creators-194069">Chokepoint Capitalism: why we'll all lose unless we stop Amazon, Spotify and other platforms squeezing cash from creators</a>
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</em>
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<h2>‘Chickenization’</h2>
<p>Chokepoint refers to the mechanism by which this dominance is achieved. We now know that Big Tech’s business model is not “disruptive innovation”, but rather monopoly. It is Jeff Bezos’s “Get Big Fast” strategy, designed to drive competitors to the wall, lock in customers, and ratchet up prices. </p>
<p>But it is also a <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/monopsony.asp">monopsony</a>, in which big corporations are the only buyers. “If you can only sell your product to a single entity, it’s not your customer; it’s your boss.” </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496336/original/file-20221121-9492-34vva7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496336/original/file-20221121-9492-34vva7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496336/original/file-20221121-9492-34vva7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496336/original/file-20221121-9492-34vva7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496336/original/file-20221121-9492-34vva7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496336/original/file-20221121-9492-34vva7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496336/original/file-20221121-9492-34vva7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496336/original/file-20221121-9492-34vva7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jeff Bezos’s successful business strategy was to ‘Get Big Fast’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dennis Van Tine/AP</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Giblin and Doctorow call the total control of the production process “chickenization”. Lock-in techniques pioneered by agribusiness corporations like Monsanto are being applied to live music and other cultural producers. </p>
<p>Once corporations are in a dominant position, they can afford to lobby governments to keep it that way. Big Tech’s billions can make sure that regulations are made in their favour – US radio not having to pay royalties for the music they play, for example (an arrangement the US shares only with Rwanda, Iran and North Korea). Or they can actually introduce legislation, such as California’s <a href="https://www.californialawreview.org/the-aftermath-of-californias-proposition-22/">Proposition 22</a>, which led to an explosion of gig working across the state.</p>
<p>These strategies combine to create an “anti-competitive flywheel” of great momentum. Rather than the “virtuous circle” of lower costs, lower prices, higher customer satisfaction, and industry growth, we have locked-in users, locked-in suppliers, competition eliminated, and reduced prices paid to workers and suppliers. </p>
<p>In creative industries, as elsewhere in the economy, there has been a huge shift in the returns to capital at the expense of labour, with wage stagnation the other side to an unprecedented accumulation of wealth among the elite. </p>
<p>The authors are clear as to the culprit – the Chicago School of economics, aka neoliberalism. Though its proponents are normally associated with a deregulated “free” market, a key move was their about-turn on antitrust legislation, spearheaded by the jurist Robert Bork. Monopoly was against competitive markets and so bad, right? Well, as it turns out, no. Efficient monopolies, Bork proposed, deliver good returns to consumers (in the short term) in the form of cheaper prices. </p>
<p>This argument provided the legal loophole that has allowed corporations to advance their monopolistic ambitions. As many <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674979529">historians</a> of neoliberalism have shown, the pivot away from antitrust was crucial in getting major corporations to buy in to the neoliberal agenda, giving obscure <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-neoliberal-order-9780197519646?cc=au&lang=en&">right-wing think tanks</a> the financial boost required to enter the mainstream of policy making. </p>
<p>Big Tech has been a prime beneficiary. Its locked-in suppliers and customers are regaled with the rhetoric of free choice, while the <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2021/10/the-contrarian-peter-thiel-max-chafkin-review">founders</a> exercise the world-making and world-breaking freedom reserved for masters of the universe. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496885/original/file-20221122-18-rz3abo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496885/original/file-20221122-18-rz3abo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496885/original/file-20221122-18-rz3abo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496885/original/file-20221122-18-rz3abo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496885/original/file-20221122-18-rz3abo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496885/original/file-20221122-18-rz3abo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496885/original/file-20221122-18-rz3abo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496885/original/file-20221122-18-rz3abo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Ronald Reagan Meeting with Judge Robert Bork in The Oval Office, July 1987.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Practical ideas</h2>
<p>Giblin and Doctorow devote the second part of their book to ways in which this situation might be challenged. Those who follow the debates around platform capitalism will be familiar with some of their arguments, as will those concerned with the exploitation and accelerated precarity of creative labour. </p>
<p>The book merges these two critical streams. The authors call for systemic answers, not just tweaking copyright, or digital locks, or even revitalising antitrust laws. The latter is important, but is phenomenally difficult. It often misses other forms of lock-in, charted in detail in the book, while the laws themselves can often be circumvented by corporations with billion-dollar war chests.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496324/original/file-20221120-13-3y3ohk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496324/original/file-20221120-13-3y3ohk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496324/original/file-20221120-13-3y3ohk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496324/original/file-20221120-13-3y3ohk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496324/original/file-20221120-13-3y3ohk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496324/original/file-20221120-13-3y3ohk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496324/original/file-20221120-13-3y3ohk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496324/original/file-20221120-13-3y3ohk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>There are other practical ideas, which are detailed in some compelling chapters. These include “transparency rights” that would cut through opaque contracts, so we know who gets paid what and on what grounds. The authors also discuss time limits on copyright, questioning the absurd length of time that those rights can be exercised after the creator’s death (over 70 years), and they discuss other ways of reforming a copyright system that, once upon a time, was there to protect creators, but now enslaves them. </p>
<p>They propose “radical interoperability” legislation to end the proprietary system that allows the ring-fencing of separate devices and operating systems. And they call for minimum wages for creatives – their proposals less focused on dollar-per-hour rates than on legal and regulatory interventions that would ensure creatives are appropriately remunerated across the range of complex transactions that typically make up their incomes: licenses, on-sales, streaming fees, collection mechanisms.</p>
<p>Collective action is also a crucial precondition to overcoming an atomised workforce. Union membership is currently growing, as the individualised glamour of the “creative entrepreneur” wears thin. More generally, Giblin and Doctorow propose that we must take back collective ownership, build citizen platforms, promote shared tech and other new forms of common production.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496890/original/file-20221123-14-k2vnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496890/original/file-20221123-14-k2vnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496890/original/file-20221123-14-k2vnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496890/original/file-20221123-14-k2vnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496890/original/file-20221123-14-k2vnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496890/original/file-20221123-14-k2vnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496890/original/file-20221123-14-k2vnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496890/original/file-20221123-14-k2vnir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, artists were put to work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>These ideas are not meant to be exhaustive or prescriptive; they are pointers to a radical new agenda aimed at overturning the chokepoint capitalism that is strangling us all. As the final chapter makes clear, neither systemic regulatory change nor the practical points of intervention the authors outline can work if not undertaken as a collective endeavour. </p>
<p>This does not just mean in the creative sector. The experiences of monopoly and precarity, declining wages, and ever-increasing health, housing and education costs are common to many walks of life. The authors evoke the 1930s New Deal, linking its programs to put artists to work (brilliantly outlined in Michael Denning’s book <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/523-523-the-cultural-front">The Cultural Front</a>) with current calls for a job guarantee. </p>
<p>Rather than a somewhat individualised and expensive universal basic income, a job guarantee would provide socially useful work for all who require it, at a decent wage. This would not only break the monopsony of having to work for the corporations on conditions set to their advantage, but make cultural production possible at a new scale outside the chickenised systems of Big Tech and Big Content. </p>
<h2>A radical edge</h2>
<p>Chokepoint Capitalism is a wake-up call. The emphasis it places on the need for a collective response to chokepoint capitalism gives the book its radical edge. The authors portray a “free-market” capitalism that, unchecked, runs inevitably to concentration and monopoly at the expense of workers and consumers alike. </p>
<p>Capitalism might not be fit for any purpose, they suggest, but in the meantime, it can be made more equitable. Workers can be properly paid, customers need not be locked-in and fleeced, and small businesses can be given entry to a level playing field. These measures would involve technical regulation but, as with the New Deal, they are ultimately about a collective struggle that aligns creative workers with those in many other sectors.</p>
<p>One of the powerful aspects of the book is that it deals with “actually existing” creative industries. It discusses art and culture (the words are used interchangeably) in a capacious and inclusive fashion.</p>
<p>The idea of the creative industries that has dominated policy thinking for three decades has produced reams of statistics for the advocacy machine. There have been five such reports this year at least. These reports tend to focus on narrowly economic categories like employment, growth and exports – all of which can be used in support of a sector that, as “art and culture”, is otherwise deemed surplus to requirements by neoliberal policymakers.</p>
<p>Reading reports by the <a href="https://unctad.org/webflyer/creative-industry-40-towards-new-globalized-creative-economy">UN</a>, the <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/publication/cities-culture-creativity">World Bank</a>, <a href="https://www.oecd.org/cfe/notetojournalists-culture-english.htm">OECD</a> and <a href="https://www.adb.org/publications/creative-economy-2030-imagining-and-delivering-a-robust-creative-inclusive-and-sustainable-recovery">others</a>, one might be forgiven for thinking the bright new world of creative economy 4.0 (or are we at 6.0 yet?) is already with us. </p>
<p>What they all prefer to ignore is how these industries actually work, how they are organised, how they actually make their money, and with what consequences for workers and consumers. </p>
<p>“Art” – usually meaning the subsidised sector, or traditional visual and performing arts – tends to be separated from “industry”. South Australia, for example, isolates “the arts” from music, film, games and so on, which are “creative industries” and allocated to a separate ministry. The federal arts minister has no jurisdiction over the ABC, let alone the regulations and communications infrastructure with which this book is concerned. </p>
<p>The cultural commentariat follow suit, rendering the creative industries unto a commercial Caesar in the forlorn hope that the arts will be given all that “market failure” money earmarked for “Australian stories”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496892/original/file-20221123-18-qqd4a1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496892/original/file-20221123-18-qqd4a1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496892/original/file-20221123-18-qqd4a1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496892/original/file-20221123-18-qqd4a1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496892/original/file-20221123-18-qqd4a1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496892/original/file-20221123-18-qqd4a1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496892/original/file-20221123-18-qqd4a1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496892/original/file-20221123-18-qqd4a1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow consider actually existing creative industries. Image: Powderfinger at the Big Day Out, 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steve Collis/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/creative-city-smart-city-whose-city-is-it-78258">Creative city, smart city ... whose city is it?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Art and public policy</h2>
<p>The roots of the problem can be traced back to the 1960s, when culture began to be dominated by commercial companies. In the following decades, cheaper technologies, more education and a newly dynamic popular culture brought in a whole new range of producers, from gonzo journalists to punk rockers, street fashions and fanzines, indie labels and artists’ factories. </p>
<p>International agencies, such as UNESCO, began asking how to rethink democratic cultural policy when most production and consumption was taking place outside of the state-subsidised system. Cities from London to Melbourne, Manchester to Toronto, sought new ways to stimulate these new urban cultures and keep the proceeds in the local economy. </p>
<p>The creative industries embraced markets, entrepreneurialism and disruptive tech as the markers of our progress to the next stage of economic development. Chokepoint Capitalism, a stroll round Dorian Grey’s attic, confronts us with the reality belying that fantasy.</p>
<p>The book suggests ways out of the enclosure and, in calling for collective action, makes links with other groups and sectors similarly afflicted. In common with the growing body of critical creative-labour studies, it urges us to drop the elitism of Richard Florida’s concept of the “creative class”. It evokes art and creativity as central to who we are as humans – something that, in part, accounts for our willingness to self-exploit, and for the over-supply of creative labour that corporations exploit. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496887/original/file-20221122-20-f027vo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496887/original/file-20221122-20-f027vo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496887/original/file-20221122-20-f027vo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496887/original/file-20221122-20-f027vo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496887/original/file-20221122-20-f027vo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496887/original/file-20221122-20-f027vo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496887/original/file-20221122-20-f027vo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496887/original/file-20221122-20-f027vo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Social theorist Richard Florida developed the concept of the ‘creative class’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jere Keys/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>But the book stops short of exploring how the cultural system might be reframed in public policy. Is culture an industry like any other, which must be made more equitable and open? Or is it an area of public policy like health, education, social services, all of which have their monopolies and monopsonies, their global corporations exploiting workers on the breadline, but which are recognised (just about) as delivering public benefit?</p>
<p>Nor does the book explain how the cultural system was so rapidly privatised, or how cultural consumption was reframed as the choice of sovereign individual consumers aggregated by the market. If the struggle of artists against chokepoint capitalism must be collective, then surely the cultural system also needs to be reframed as a collective concern. </p>
<p>This returns us to some of the unfinished business of the 1970s and 1980s. It is necessary to think about culture and democratic citizenship, not just in terms of state-subsidised art, but across the whole culture system. Our failure to engage with this question, leaving it up to the market to decide, has resulted in one of the most profound technological and cultural transformations in our history being handed over to a bunch of sociopaths in Northern California. Chokepoint Capitalism helps us start the daunting task of taking back control.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193838/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin O'Connor receives funding from The Australian Research Council</span></em></p>Chokepoint Capitalism is a dark portrait of a cultural system where monopolies and monopsonies predominate to the detriment of artists.Justin O'Connor, Professor of Cultural Economy, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1639272021-08-19T18:43:11Z2021-08-19T18:43:11ZMusical communities and improvisation: ‘Finding a way out of no way’ in this year of precarious living<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416828/original/file-20210818-23-1wwycwn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C119%2C1753%2C1125&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anishinaabe musician Melody McKiver
plays at the Bus Stop Theatre in Halifax, May 2018. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Steve Louie/Flickr)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The COVID-19 pandemic has made us all improvisers. Medical researchers <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/">raced to develop vaccines</a>. Students and teachers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2020.1807478">adjusted to online classes and socially distanced learning</a>. Collectively, we improvised new ways of being together while apart.</p>
<p>Musicians and musical communities, meanwhile, <a href="https://mmfcanada.ca/news/2020/4/1/the-canadian-music-industry-asks-federal-government-for-urgent-relief-during-covid-19-pandemic">found themselves improvising their very livelihoods in response to the pandemic</a>.</p>
<p>In March 2020, when the Canadian music industry shut down, we began a conversation that led to the Spring 2021 publication of two <a href="https://www.criticalimprov.com/index.php/csieci/issue/view/417">linked volumes of the online journal <em>Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation</em></a>. The subject: <a href="https://www.criticalimprov.com/index.php/csieci/issue/view/421">musical communities and improvisation during the COVID-19 pandemic</a>. </p>
<p>As in so many other <a href="https://www.budget.gc.ca/fes-eea/2020/themes/building-back-better-rebatir-mieux-en.html">facets of our economy, we are called upon to build back better</a>. To do so requires a basic level of economic and social security for freelancers working in the performing arts.</p>
<h2>Economic viability of pre-pandemic models</h2>
<p>We invited academic and non-academic pieces from improvising musicians, community organizers, activists, industry personnel and scholars who were responding in creative ways to the pandemic. The 60-plus pieces in these volumes — articles, testimonials, interviews, videos, <a href="https://www.criticalimprov.com/index.php/csieci/article/view/6433/6142">a zine</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6313">a podcast</a> — challenge us to reflect on this extraordinary time. </p>
<p>We heard accounts from communities of <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-big-music-needs-to-be-broken-up-to-save-the-industry/">freelance musicians, small venues and arts organizations</a> that have been <a href="https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/public-research-findings-canadians-understand-the-cultural-and-economic-impacts-of-the-pandemic-on-live-music-and-its-need-for-continued-support-842741155.html">some of the hardest hit</a> in the creative economy. </p>
<p>Necessary social distancing quickly unravelled the presumptions of mobility and physical closeness that underpin music-making and music consumption. <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6471">Virtual performance spaces proliferated</a> in response to the pandemic. But those new spaces also <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/this-is-how-covid-19-is-affecting-the-music-industry/">called into question the economic viability of current models of musical performance, curation and dissemination</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Creative commons’ is vital</h2>
<p>Social distancing revealed how much we value the human connection music brings. <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/13/965644120/music-therapy-brings-solace-to-covid-19-patients-and-healers">Music therapist Tom Sweitzer</a>, and researchers around the world, have shown that <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.648448">music is key to sustaining mental health and social connection during the pandemic</a>. </p>
<p>Sequestered in our homes, many of us turned to music. The pandemic showed how <a href="https://www.criticalimprov.com/index.php/csieci/article/view/6553/6113">the creative commons — the myriad spaces in which diverse forms of human expression are produced, explored, celebrated — are vital to civil society</a>.</p>
<p>Authors wrote of <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i2.6430">the multiple precarities of making a living through music</a>, all <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i2.6578">exacerbated by the pandemic</a>.</p>
<p>Some discussed what many scholars named this year as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m2303">“the other pandemic”</a> of systemic racism, <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-two-pandemics-of-anti-black-racism-and-covid-19-are-tied-together">anti-Black racism</a> and white supremacy. These problems have received increased attention in response to the brutal murder of George Floyd and killings of many other Black people by police. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman is mixing sound in front of a microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416809/original/file-20210818-15-1qhgoyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C99%2C1019%2C531&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416809/original/file-20210818-15-1qhgoyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416809/original/file-20210818-15-1qhgoyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416809/original/file-20210818-15-1qhgoyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416809/original/file-20210818-15-1qhgoyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416809/original/file-20210818-15-1qhgoyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416809/original/file-20210818-15-1qhgoyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Contributor Saxophonist Matana Roberts writes: ‘I make records and work that reminds us of past injustices because … we have a very eerie amnesia problem that sits at the root of pretty much every struggle to date.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Rewire Festival/Ed Jansen/Flickr)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Powerful texts by improvising saxophonist <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i2.6323">Matana Roberts</a> and interdisiplinary Black studies scholar <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6507">Rinaldo Walcott</a> address the racial violence threatening Black creative practitioners and communities and the collective work needed to bring about change.</p>
<h2>Fair and equitable funding</h2>
<p>Forced to improvise new ways of musical being-in-the-world, contributors proposed an abundance of actions.</p>
<p>Alan Greyeyes, director of the <a href="https://www.sakihiwe.ca/">sākihiwē festival</a> (<a href="https://www.criticalimprov.com/index.php/csieci/article/view/6429/6120">interviewed by Anishinaabe musician and composer Melody McKiver</a>), calls for federal funding bodies to increase support for participatory practices in Indigenous communities. Greyeyes notes that the Department of Canadian Heritage should change its funding criteria to work for powwow dancing as it is practised.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A musician holding a guitar and singing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416840/original/file-20210818-15-8aruot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416840/original/file-20210818-15-8aruot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416840/original/file-20210818-15-8aruot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416840/original/file-20210818-15-8aruot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=728&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416840/original/file-20210818-15-8aruot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416840/original/file-20210818-15-8aruot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416840/original/file-20210818-15-8aruot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Michael League of Snarky Puppy offers a frank assessment of the new economic realities for working musicians in an interview with his brother, Panayotis League.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Justin de Nooijer/Flickr)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other contributors — including pianist <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6303">Marianne Trudel</a>, guitarist <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6332">Aram Bajakian</a> and jazz fusion collective <a href="https://snarkypuppy.com/">Snarky Puppy</a> frontman <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i2.6305">Michael League</a> — call for fair compensation in the creation and recording of music. The call for fairness extends to Canadian-specific entities like <a href="http://www.socan.com/">the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN)</a> and big tech aggregators like YouTube, Apple, Spotify and Google.</p>
<p>Two international collaborations — one involving authors <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i2.6458">with legacies in creative scenes in Greece and Iran, filtered through migrant experiences in the United Kingdom and Austria</a>, the other
by people working in <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6309">Ecuador, Indonesia and Florida</a> — highlight how the pandemic exacerbated the already precarious position of musicians.</p>
<p>These collaborations consider a variety of national contexts under <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-84755">neoliberal capitalism</a> — whereby across the world, <a href="https://parsejournal.com/article/artistic-production-in-the-context-of-neoliberalism-autonomy-and-heteronomy-revisited-by-means-of-infrastructural-critique/">artists feel the effects</a> of what happens when states promote free markets and corporate profits in lieu of bolstering commitments to public welfare and an equitable sense of the common good.</p>
<p>Contributors discuss how support for <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6428">youth engagement with the creative commons</a> is critical. This is especially so <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6345">for inequitable public education systems where access to programs has been severely constrained</a>.</p>
<h2>Civic-well being</h2>
<p>Numerous testimonials discuss <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i2.6346">the challenges of sustaining community-owned and artist-driven co-op spaces</a>. These are spaces where improvised music develops and flourishes, incubates new artistic directions and gives sanctuary to diverse practitioners. </p>
<p>They include <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6498">new artist-driven virtual spaces</a> that sprang up during the pandemic across the country, and also longstanding institutions such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6420">independent venues</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6481">annual music festivals that feature jazz and improvised music</a>.</p>
<p>Arts and community organizations require infrastructure, committed leadership and resources for programming that is generative, informed and attentive to difference. It is essential to support these spaces that play such a crucial role in fostering community and civic well-being, and in sustaining <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6304">a larger network of creative outputs and economies</a>.</p>
<h2>Privilege, exclusion in the arts</h2>
<p>Throughout the volumes, there are urgent calls to recognize how <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6405">privilege</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6343">belonging</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6326">exclusion</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6507">violence</a> are at work in the arts.</p>
<p>Reimagining how we allocate resources to the creative commons has much to learn from improvisation. Precarity, resourcefulness, the capacity to make a way out of no way. The <a href="https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6344">repurposing of tools intended for other uses</a>. These are all part of the accomplished improviser’s expansive toolkit.</p>
<p>The truth is that many precarious communities — where people are vulnerable to economic exclusion, or systemic racism or intersectional barriers — generate inspiration and creative ferment.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/10/874334270/houstons-hip-hop-scene-remembers-george-floyd">George Floyd</a>, after all, was a freestyle rapper. Floyd’s work was respected on his home turf of Houston’s Third Ward, the same community space that gave rise to Beyoncé and <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/culture/main/article/Jazz-genius-Jason-Moran-immersed-in-Houston-6065218.php">jazz pianist improviser</a> extraordinaire <a href="https://www.gpb.org/news/2020/07/20/george-floyds-third-ward-reflections-on-the-neighborhood-made-him">Jason Moran</a>. Improvisation, there, as elsewhere, is the uncommon power nested in the commons. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/3-lessons-from-musical-improvisation-to-help-navigate-2021-152385">3 lessons from musical improvisation to help navigate 2021</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Spaces that matter energize experimentation and incubate new practices. They support a wide range of musical genres and communities of difference, fostering inclusion and diversity. For example, dancer Nic Gareiss interviews interdisciplinary artist Ty Defoe, from the Oneida and Ojibwe Nations, <a href="https://www.criticalimprov.com/index.php/csieci/article/view/6406/6300">about practices related to ‘Indigiqueering’ spaces</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SYYJRD-__gU?wmode=transparent&start=169" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Gareiss and Defoe in conversation as part of Signature Sounds’ Backstage Sessions, March 21.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Participatory decision-making about arts</h2>
<p>So, how do musicians build on the lessons learned during the pandemic? Tkarón:to-based multi-disciplinary performing artist Olivia Shortt says, “<a href="https://www.criticalimprov.com/index.php/csieci/article/view/6308/6114">This isn’t the new normal. This is life</a>.” The impact of the pandemic on musicians will, in other words, be ongoing.</p>
<p>The voices gathered in the two volumes argue for a fundamental first principle. <a href="https://www.criticalimprov.com/index.php/csieci/article/view/6553">Direct actions — that is, public policy — that support the allocation of resources to the creative commons should avoid top-down decision making</a>. The latter limits the influence and lived experience of those most in need of access to, and use of, precious public resources. </p>
<p>Sustaining the generative diversity that makes for a healthy public commons requires more transparent forms of dialogue. But also less gatekeeping. And more community spaces where voices are listened to, and reclaim their remarkable capacity to inspire and transform.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163927/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span><a href="mailto:dfischli@uoguelph.ca">dfischli@uoguelph.ca</a> has received funding from SSHRC. He is affiliated with Silence, a community artspace and not-for-profit. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Risk receives or has received funding from SSHRC, FRQSC and the GRAMMY Museum Grants Program. She is on the board of EspaceTrad, a not-for-profit traditional arts organization.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jesse Stewart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Meditations on improvisation in a year of both COVID-19 and what some called ‘the other pandemic’ of racism push us to go deeper to find ways to sustain healthy public common life.Daniel Fischlin, Full Professor, School of English and Theatre Studies, University of GuelphJesse Stewart, Professor of music, School for Studies in Art and Culture, Carleton UniversityLaura Risk, Assistant Professor of Music and Culture in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1658972021-08-18T06:47:38Z2021-08-18T06:47:38ZHow Indonesian young creative workers in Yogyakarta stay productive amid the pandemic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416286/original/file-20210816-23-1o44o5i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Danastri Rizqi Nabilah, a filmmaker from Yogyakarta – a city in Indonesia known for its education and art – has no choice but to sell snacks after losing up to 40% of her income during the pandemic.</p>
<p>The 29-year-old usually travels between Yogyakarta and Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, for a number of projects. However, COVID-19 has forced her to stay in her home town.</p>
<p>“I received an offer from a film producer. Of course I accepted. But now I have to tend to my small catering business too,” she said when we interviewed her last October.</p>
<p>Danastri is one of <a href="https://bisnis.tempo.co/read/1221592/faktor-penyebab-pertumbuhan-industri-kreatif-di-yogya-tinggi">172,000 creative workers in Yogyakarta</a> who have had to seek alternative sources of income to make ends meet and continue their artistic endeavours.</p>
<p>The pandemic has battered the arts and culture sector in Indonesia. Many producers and organizers have been forced to cancel events, concerts and movie releases.</p>
<p>A recent <a href="https://www.sindikasi.org/wp-content/uploads/SurveyFreelanceCovid_Content_200415.pdf">survey</a> by the Jakarta-based creative workers’ collective, SINDIKASI, shows nearly half (42%) of 144 respondents have had to rely on their personal savings to get by, while 22% have had to borrow money from friends and family.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://pair.australiaindonesiacentre.org/research/young-people/creative-economy-how-young-creative-workers-in-yogyakarta-are-dealing-with-covid-19">our latest research</a>, we sought to understand how the pandemic has impacted young creative workers who make up around 18% of the total number of people working in Indonesia’s creative sector. The economic contribution of this sector amounted to <a href="https://www.kemenparekraf.go.id/asset_admin/assets/uploads/media/pdf/media_1598879701_BUKU_BEKRAF_28-8-2020.pdf">nearly 5% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2019</a>.</p>
<p>The study was done in Yogyakarta, home to the largest community of creative workers in Indonesia. The province contributed Rp 3.3 trillion (around US$208 million) to the national economy in 2016 – the largest among the country’s many provinces.</p>
<p>We found a combination of many factors determine how these creative workers in Yogyakarta respond to the pandemic. These factors include demographic background, social class, network and artistic capabilities. </p>
<p>In turn, these factors help the creative workers seek the best strategies to stay productive in these turbulent times.</p>
<h2>Turbulent times in Yogyakarta</h2>
<p>Our team conducted in-depth interviews with 30 young workers in Yogyakarta from a number of creative fields such as film, dance, photography, fashion, music and theatre.</p>
<p>Due to COVID-19, we selected informants and held all focus group discussions online.</p>
<p>These interviews and discussions were held in October 2020, so the study captures the conditions in Yogyakarta after eight months of the pandemic.</p>
<p>We found the coping strategies of these creative workers vary.</p>
<p>Some were caught off guard by the pandemic and forced to postpone their plans and projects. Some even developed signs of social anxiety and are still reeling from the effects of lockdowns and social restrictions. </p>
<p>Others chose to remain patient and observe how the industry will adapt, while relying on their personal savings to cover daily expenses. The rest found new sources of income and business opportunities.</p>
<p>We found a number of factors affected which of these responses were taken by Yogyakarta’s diverse community of young artists. These factors included their social class, artistic skills and professional networks.</p>
<p>As their incomes have shrunk while their savings remain limited, a large chunk of our informants have had to try their luck in other sectors to survive during the pandemic.</p>
<p>Meyda Bestari (27), a producer for a small puppet theatre group in Yogyakarta, has had to work as a translator and web consultant to scrape by. Her husband Rangga, who also studies theatre in the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta, on the other hand, is growing a gecko-breeding business, which has saved them financially.</p>
<p>This is also what Danastri experienced. However, despite the many limitations imposed by the pandemic, Danastri is able to stay productive as she has access to a solid network of some of the best filmmaking communities in Jakarta and Yogyakarta. This allows her to continue working on a number of productions.</p>
<p>Professional connections with other artists determine what options these young creative workers have to continue working on projects during the pandemic.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415403/original/file-20210810-19-rx5v7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415403/original/file-20210810-19-rx5v7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415403/original/file-20210810-19-rx5v7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415403/original/file-20210810-19-rx5v7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415403/original/file-20210810-19-rx5v7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415403/original/file-20210810-19-rx5v7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415403/original/file-20210810-19-rx5v7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Irwanda Putra (24) is a professional dancer involved in this study. In March 2021, Irwanda performed his solo composition in the 8x3 Festival held by the research team.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Documentation of the Youth Studies Centre, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ObO_vq472v8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Irwanda’s performance in the 8x3 Festival.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Agni Tirta (35), a filmmaker based in Yogyakarta, is the founder of the <a href="https://belantara-films.business.site/">Belantara Film</a> production house and also the head of the Yogyakarta Filmmakers’ Community (<a href="https://paguyubanfilmmakerjogja.wordpress.com/"><em>Paguyuban Filmmaker Jogja</em></a>, or PFJ)</p>
<p>During the pandemic, Agni says they have lost a number of jobs. However, their years of relations with officials in the city’s Department of Culture has helped them find new work opportunities.</p>
<p>With the PFJ, Agni managed to arrange funding from the department to support filmmakers in Yogyakarta during the pandemic.</p>
<p>Agni’s extensive experience in Yogyakarta’s filmmaking scene has helped him build the network and reputation needed to get by in challenging times.</p>
<p>However, the story of Yogyakarta-based musician Adrian Muhammad (31) paints a different picture and proves that just having musical capabilities may not be enough.</p>
<p>Adrian is part of a well-known orchestra in Jakarta, but he was forced to return to his home town after all his shows and projects were cancelled.</p>
<p>Despite his proven skills as a musician, Adrian now has to start from the bottom again in Yogyakarta. He does not have a solid professional network of artists, as is the case with Agni and Danastri.</p>
<p>While looking for opportunities, the father of two even dipped his toes in a number of attempts at business, including selling frozen food and used cars.</p>
<p>However, his instinct for music leads him to come up with fresh artistic ideas from time to time. </p>
<p>“I have plans to compose songs for children […] such as [the famous Indonesian children’s song] <em>Naik-Naik ke Puncak Gunung</em>, and collaborate with other artists who can make animations,” he said.</p>
<h2>Is there hope ahead?</h2>
<p>From the findings above, we conclude that young creative workers in Yogyakarta possess a strong drive to get through the pandemic. With all the limitations due to social restrictions, they have still managed to adapt to challenges in their respective fields.</p>
<p>Some have even successfully created new strategies to stay productive during the pandemic.</p>
<p>However, the stories we gathered from these creative workers show a need for the government to better support Indonesian artists.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415402/original/file-20210810-27-15o3rrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415402/original/file-20210810-27-15o3rrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415402/original/file-20210810-27-15o3rrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415402/original/file-20210810-27-15o3rrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415402/original/file-20210810-27-15o3rrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415402/original/file-20210810-27-15o3rrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415402/original/file-20210810-27-15o3rrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This creative exhibition is part of the 8X3 Festival. The event is a collaboration between the research team and young creative workers involved in this study.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Documentation of the Youth Studies Centre, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From their experiences, we note the urgency of sustaining various collectives that can help young creative workers stay connected with not only each other but also national and global stakeholders in the creative economy.</p>
<p>These <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective">collectives</a> include but are not limited to groups of individuals who work together, share connections and collaborate on projects.</p>
<p>Establishing sustainable collectives will help young creative workers by tapping into the network and artistic assets of its members, particularly in challenging times such as the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>Young creative workers can use these collectives to better communicate and share information on jobs and project opportunities. They can access its members’ digital talents – something that has grown in importance as the economy becomes increasingly online. Collectives can also drive artists to keep innovating and finding new ways to show their art.</p>
<p>We hope that, through these initiatives, Yogyakarta can be a site for a pilot project to create a sustainable creative ecosystem. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This research is funded by the Australian government through the <a href="https://pair.australiaindonesiacentre.org/">PAIR program</a> facilitated by the Australia-Indonesia Centre (AIC)</em>.</p>
<p><em>The Australia-Indonesia Centre (AIC) supports The Conversation Indonesia (TCID) in the publication of this article</em>.</p>
<p><em>The article has been updated to correct the name of one of the respondents. It should be Danastri Rizqi Nabilah, and not Danastri Rizky Nabilah as previously stated.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165897/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oki Rahadianto Sutopo receives funding from the Australia-Indonesia Centre.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Annisa R. Beta receives funding from the Australia-Indonesia Centre.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ariane Utomo receives funding from the Australia-Indonesia Centre.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregorius Wibawanto receives funding from the Australia-Indonesia Centre.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Novi Kurnia receives funding from the Australia-Indonesia Centre.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Brown is a member of the Australia Indonesia Business Council (AIBC). Her start-up, Bisnis Asia, received Australian government funding for research on foreign investment in collaboration with CIPS Indonesia. She works for The Australia-Indonesia Centre, which is funded by the Australian Government.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marlene Millott is employed by The Australia-Indonesia Centre which receives funding from the Australian Government.</span></em></p>The pandemic has battered the arts and culture sector in Indonesia. Many producers and organizers have been forced to cancel events, concerts and movie releases.Oki Rahadianto Sutopo, Executive Director of Youth Studies Centre, Faculty of Social and Political Science, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Universitas Gadjah Mada Annisa R. Beta, Lecturer in Cultural Studies, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts, The University of MelbourneAriane Utomo, Lecturer in Demography and Population Geography, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Faculty of Science, The University of MelbourneGregorius Ragil Wibawanto, Lecturer at Department of Sociology, Fisipol UGM., Universitas Gadjah Mada Novi Kurnia, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Science, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Universitas Gadjah Mada Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1396712020-06-03T20:09:44Z2020-06-03T20:09:44ZGiving it away for free – why the performing arts risks making the same mistake newspapers did<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339077/original/file-20200602-95024-12mltta.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C130%2C1916%2C1493&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sydney Chamber Opera's Breaking Glass online performance from Carriageworks. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There’s a long-running adage about working for free in the performing arts. “The problem with working for exposure,” it goes, “is you can die from exposure”.</p>
<p>Only partly a joke, the saying is also a sober warning to performers. Work in the cultural industries is precarious, and performers rely on a combination of short-term gigs, casual contracts, and “day jobs” to make ends meet. Unpaid work is a common feature of the market, and performers often find themselves working without remuneration in order to make connections or add a line to their resume.</p>
<p>COVID-19 has exposed the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-government-says-artists-should-be-able-to-access-jobkeeper-payments-its-not-that-simple-138530">true insecurity of the cultural workforce</a>, and now we’re seeing the double-edged sword of “exposure” also extending to arts organisations. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-government-says-artists-should-be-able-to-access-jobkeeper-payments-its-not-that-simple-138530">The government says artists should be able to access JobKeeper payments. It's not that simple</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>All the web’s a stage</h2>
<p>Since March 2020, there has been a <a href="https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/on-with-the-show/">worldwide influx</a> of digital arts content. Forced to shutter live seasons, performing arts organisations collectively jumped on the digital bandwagon. From live-streaming events to archival production footage, audiences are inundated with virtual performance events. </p>
<p>In most cases, this content has been offered for free. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Opera Australia, New York’s The Metropolitan Opera, and the UK’s National Theatre, among many others, have streamed live or prerecorded performances on digital platforms for no charge. </p>
<p>Companies without access to archival footage have posted free offerings of different kinds. The Melbourne Theatre Company, for example, has posted behind-the-scenes features, play readings, and artist interviews.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339076/original/file-20200602-95065-1xqzgqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339076/original/file-20200602-95065-1xqzgqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339076/original/file-20200602-95065-1xqzgqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339076/original/file-20200602-95065-1xqzgqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339076/original/file-20200602-95065-1xqzgqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339076/original/file-20200602-95065-1xqzgqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339076/original/file-20200602-95065-1xqzgqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339076/original/file-20200602-95065-1xqzgqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Australian Chamber Orchestra has announced a new digital season commemorating 30 years of artistic direction under Richard Tognetti.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ACO</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the beginning of the shutdown, digital platforms were a critical tool for audience engagement. Arts organisations could communicate the importance of the arts as a source of comfort and inspiration during a time of crisis, while simultaneously reaching <a href="https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/tens-of-millions-watching-streamed-theatre-shows-worldwide">a far wider audience</a> than their physical spaces could ever hold.</p>
<p>But it’s increasingly clear the <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/culture/theatre/let-us-open-our-theatres-companies-ask-government-20200602-p54ysp.html">return to live performance</a> may be a matter of months or even years.</p>
<p>For starters, safety is a major concern. A number of genres, including opera and musical theatre, pose particular risks to both performers and audience members due to <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-song-in-your-heart-shouldnt-lead-to-an-infection-in-your-lungs-reasons-to-get-with-online-choirs-137705">singers’ potential role as super-spreaders</a>. The risks posed by, and to, dancers, instrumentalists, and spoken theatre artists remains uncertain. </p>
<p>From a business perspective, financial viability is also of grave concern. Under social distancing guidelines, performing arts venues will be limited <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/may/29/theatre-post-lockdown-spaced-seating-berliner-ensemble-germany">to a fraction </a> of their standard audience capacity. In a sector reliant on box office sales to maintain the bottom line, theatres may find it cheaper to simply <a href="https://www.gramilano.com/2020/05/la-scala-would-lose-e50000-a-day-if-it-reopened/">stay closed</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CAxj0LKDYWX","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/home-of-the-arts-inside-an-arts-centre-keeping-body-and-soul-together-138801">Home of the Arts – inside an arts centre keeping body and soul together</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A problematic precedent</h2>
<p>In this climate, digital content may be the only means for sustaining the sector in the medium-term. But a problematic precedent has been set. </p>
<p>In the initial panic of moving their artistic offerings online, companies have undervalued their own product. In this regard, we can see clear parallels with the newspaper industry’s shift to online platforms over the last decade. After initially offering online news for free, the industry is still struggling to shift consumer expectations, <a href="https://theconversation.com/digital-only-local-newspapers-will-struggle-to-serve-the-communities-that-need-them-most-139649">with major repercussions</a> for both journalists and papers.</p>
<p>To survive, arts organisations must establish a monetised business strategy for online performances and presentations. But this shift must be navigated carefully, particularly by companies that began with an open-access model and now risk alienating audience members.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339075/original/file-20200602-95009-irxmuf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339075/original/file-20200602-95009-irxmuf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339075/original/file-20200602-95009-irxmuf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339075/original/file-20200602-95009-irxmuf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339075/original/file-20200602-95009-irxmuf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339075/original/file-20200602-95009-irxmuf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339075/original/file-20200602-95009-irxmuf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339075/original/file-20200602-95009-irxmuf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Claire Foy and Matt Smith will perform a socially distanced version of Lungs at London’s Old Vic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://twitter.com/i/events/1266034423419539456">Twitter/The Old Vic</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Several arts organisations have already experimented with different ways of monetising digital content. In the UK, the Old Vic theatre is live-streaming a socially distanced version of <a href="https://www.oldvictheatre.com/whats-on/2020/lungs-in-camera">Lungs</a> for £10-65 (A$18-120) per “ticket”. In Australia, the <a href="https://melbournedigitalconcerthall.com/">Melbourne Digital Concert Hall</a> is producing virtual concerts for a paid audience, with all ticket proceeds going to the performers. </p>
<p>Many companies, like New Zealand’s <a href="https://www.tempo.co.nz/">Tempo Dance Festival</a>, are making shows available online but asking for donations. <a href="https://www.redlineproductions.com.au/">Red Line Productions</a>’ online readings have featured marquee names like Alec Baldwin and Rose Byrne, and also asked for donations. Based out of New York, <a href="https://marathon2020.bangonacan.org/">Bang on a Can</a>’s June marathon promises six hours of streamed live music with a request to “consider” purchasing a ticket or paying extra to commission a new piece. But voluntary contributions can’t sustain the operating costs of these companies long term.</p>
<p>Depending on how various models develop, there will be unavoidable impacts on performers. At present, there are no standardised rates for artist compensation for digital work, whether participating in a prerecorded performance or generating new content for a company to post online. </p>
<p>We’ve already seen how artists’ passion for their craft can be exploited for a cause. The Metropolitan Opera cancelled contracts for its principal singers and union orchestra and chorus in March 2020, only to have them perform for free as part of the company’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/arts/music/met-opera-at-home-gala.html">digital fundraising gala a month later</a>. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra similarly stood down its instrumentalists in April 2020 but has since asked them to participate in <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/culture/music/musicians-say-breakdown-with-mso-management-irreparable-20200529-p54xqi.html">social media marketing campaigns without pay</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/B-4FgISnCXA","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/there-is-no-easy-path-out-of-coronavirus-for-live-classical-music-138207">There is no easy path out of coronavirus for live classical music</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Bottom line</h2>
<p>While involvement in promotional activities is standard practice for contracted artists, it’s impossible to ignore the problematic power dynamic now at play. Companies are asking unemployed artists to provide free labour to support organisations that may or may not employ them in the future. And because performers love what they do and want to support the struggling sector, they agree. </p>
<p>While there are <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/arts-fund-the-show-must-go-on/news-story/9e6e2fa745bc0ffc82f00e510d8c29b1">reports</a> the government is working on an arts rescue package, the message being sent is one the sector has heard time and again. The arts are important, and artists should be compensated … but only when it’s financially convenient. </p>
<p>Arts organisations cannot survive from digital exposure and goodwill alone. They must develop new business models for online platforms. But companies must also tread carefully to ensure they don’t ultimately undermine the value of the arts – or their artists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139671/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caitlin Vincent is a member of OPERA America and Victorian Opera's Peer Review Panel.</span></em></p>COVID-19 has exposed the insecurity of the cultural workforce. Making the performing arts freely available online may further diminish their value, right when the sector is arguing its worth.Caitlin Vincent, Lecturer in Creative Industries, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1267932020-01-20T13:52:39Z2020-01-20T13:52:39ZHow international trade can unlock the potential of the cultural economy in developing countries<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310493/original/file-20200116-181653-1pcilxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Evidence should inform policies aimed at realising the benefits of the creative economy</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is growing interest in the creative economy in emerging markets in terms of its impact on employment and economic growth, as well as social and cultural impacts. </p>
<p>In South Africa, for example, a recent <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/download/328/cd00692c3bfe59267d5ecfac5310286c/FULL+MAPPING+STUDY+REPORT+-+Mapping+of+SA+CCI+and+Creative+Economy+-+A+Baseline+%281%29">study</a> by the <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/">South African Cultural Observatory</a>, found that the country’s creative economy contributed 1.7% to the economy in 2016. And that the creative sector grew faster than South Africa’s overall economy – by 4.9% between 2011 and 2016 compared with 1.6% for whole economy.</p>
<p>An important contributor to this growth is international trade in cultural goods and services. Cultural trade offers developing countries an opportunity to take advantage of the growing interest globally in cultural goods and services.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://unctad.org/en/pages/PublicationWebflyer.aspx?publicationid=2328">recent report</a> on the outlook for the creative economy shows that the global market for creative goods more than doubled between 2002 and 2015. Its growth averaged more than 7% globally. In developing countries growth was even faster at 9%. The reports also shows that South-South trade in cultural goods and services is rising.</p>
<p>In South Africa, <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/download/334/2f2b265625d76a6704b08093c652fd79/SAs+trade+in+cultural+goods+and+services+with+a+focus+on+cultural+trade+with+BRICS+partners+FNL">the export of cultural goods</a> grew by 10.3% between 2015 and 2017. Since 2011 cultural goods exports grew more quickly than total commodity exports. </p>
<p>For Africa, there will be even greater opportunities if all 54 countries join the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). This would create one of world’s largest single markets - US$4 trillion in spending and investment – offering great opportunities for mutually beneficial cultural trade. </p>
<p>Building on a <a href="https://unctad.org/en/Pages/MeetingDetails.aspx?meetingid=2234">recent meeting</a> hosted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, this article outlines some of the trends and challenges in growing international cultural trade. </p>
<h2>Potential benefits</h2>
<p>Cultural trade can be seen as the nexus between creativity and globalisation. The equal distribution of creativity can provide a way for emerging market economies to benefit from both. </p>
<p>The cultural economy is also a source of innovation in both products and processes. These can spill over into other industries, increasing their competitiveness and productivity. For example, <a href="https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/cuewpaper/awp-05-2014.htm">a study</a> of nine South American countries showed that a rise some creative industries exports (design, media and graphic arts) increased exports in non-creative sectors in following years.</p>
<p>Cultural trade also has non-market values associated with it. For example in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/creative-wealth-of-nations/7CE193C43DDBB2701C7A530E3E5895B1">“The Creative Wealth of Nations”</a>, Patrick Kabanda argues that international trade in cultural goods can have a direct economic impact, as well as help build country brand or image. This, in turn, can have a positive effect on investment and trade in other sectors. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The important point, for the purposes of trade in the arts, is that one mode (of supply) can lead to another, in a self-reinforcing cycle that can create jobs, spur investment, boost growth, strengthen the bonds among people and cultures and promote the arts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the potential positive impacts won’t necessarily be achieved automatically. Emerging economies need realistic, evidence based policies that are built on their specific “cultural economy” for the benefits to materialise.</p>
<h2>Challenges and trends</h2>
<p>Research in both developed and developing countries shows that the vast majority of cultural or creative industry firms are micro enterprises employing fewer than 10 people. In sub-Saharan Africa, there is also a high level of informality, with an International Labour Organisation report estimating that the informal sector <a href="https://www.ilo.org/africa/whats-new/WCMS_377286/lang--en/index.html">accounts</a> for 66% of employment in the region.</p>
<p>Small, informal firms face particular difficulties in the cultural economy of the developing world. This affects their ability to benefit from international trade. </p>
<p>One of the key factors affecting the ability of these firms to thrive is there access to e-commerce, according to a UNCTAD <a href="https://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=1707">report</a>. A recent <a href="https://www.pwc.co.za/en/publications/entertainment-and-media-outlook.html">PWC report</a> on the entertainment and media outlook in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Tanzania underscores this. It points to the rising proportion of digital revenue in the sector. </p>
<p>Yet African small and medium sized enterprises have low adoption rates of e-commerce technologies like mobile-money. This means that they risk being excluded from the digital economy that increasingly facilitates trade. This also translates into a generally low proportions of cultural and creative industry firms who have access to international markets, as shown by some South African <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/download/171/a4a042cf4fd6bfb47701cbc8a1653ada/Snowball%2C+Collins+and+Tarentaal%2C+2016%2C+Transformation+and+job+creation+in+the+cultural+and+creative+industry+in+SA%2C+SACO">research</a>. </p>
<p>Another area that affects companies in the sector are the terms of intellectual property country’s trade under. For example, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302294">research</a>has found that trade agreements with an intellectual property clause increases implementation time. But, on the positive end of the scale, intellectual property provisions can increase trade flows from developing to developed countries. </p>
<p>This suggests that intellectual property legislation can help to make trade between the global north and global south more even. However, some authors argue that, for cultural content that can be shared online across boarders, traditional trade barriers (like quotas and intellectual property legislation) cannot be enforced and will not be effective. </p>
<p>In South Africa, the value of payment for intellectual property imports still far exceeds the value of intellectual property exports.</p>
<h2>Precariousness of cultural employment</h2>
<p>Another challenge that needs to be addressed is the precariousness of jobs in cultural employment, especially for young people and women. Encouraging and supporting structures, such as industry associations and co-working spaces, are important in improving working conditions for cultural sector workers.</p>
<p>An additional challenge is the startlingly <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/download/460/98b297950041a42470269d56260243a1/The+Employment+of+Youth+and+Women+in+Cultural+Occupations+in+South+Africa">low proportion of young women</a> in cultural occupations compared to young men in countries like South Africa. </p>
<p>This is an important moment for emerging markets to capitalise on the globalisation and culture nexus. New trading partners with emerging markets, as well as with traditional, developed economies, are growing. </p>
<p>There is clear potential for cultural trade to contribute to sustainable development. But this is not an automatically positive relationship, and specific policies to manage challenges, especially for micro-enterprises, will be needed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126793/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jen Snowball is a Professor of Economics at Rhodes University, and a researcher at the South African Cultural Observatory, which is funded by the Department of Sport, Art and Culture.</span></em></p>Trade in cultural goods and services offers emerging markets an opportunity to benefit from their cultural capital and globalisation.Jen Snowball, Professor of Economics, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/868752017-11-21T09:50:41Z2017-11-21T09:50:41ZWhy being a historian is about so much more than producing displays for museums<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195498/original/file-20171120-18547-qjf33t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A display at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dgmckelvey/9228008523/in/photolist-f4rXre-WMifTH-behNNX-9NEtYQ-jPxme2-9NGKrb-81JzLb-8Mjbpv-rhjKbX-81EsMc-81JCL1-pb24DJ-9M2DUT-f4G9B9-9NJybd-81JAH3-5tFwKC-9NDrQR-9NGabs-9NEwpU-8367w1-f4FCgy-51onL4-TpsTN4-jPxkXk-f4GkK5-pekuwu-jPwsxi-6fSXcE-jPyMm5-81FtLe-f4G7eJ-f4FCNh-WVvFUs-f4GnFA-77ZJrH-f4Ghay-f4GjfS-f4rW94-f4rJbn-f4GfNd-f4rpoV-6CRfLJ-f4GjTd-6CSFHE-o7mDzu-784GeL-f4rSMZ-f4rVkM-f4rKfx">David McKelvey via flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What does society want and need from the arts and humanities? That’s a question that we’ve been asking in a recent project called <a href="http://gw4.ac.uk/bridging-the-gap/">Bridging the Gap</a>, which explored the wider social, cultural and economic value of arts and humanities research and how to better unlock that value. </p>
<p>One thing that has emerged are the ways that the arts and humanities, like any academic discipline, contribute specific content to the wider world. That could be content about a particular place or point in history, or detail about an artist.
Content isn’t to be dismissed, and as my colleagues and I discovered during our research, there is a continuing demand for specific subject expertise in a range of quarters. One thing we heard time and again from those working in the heritage sector is how important knowledge of a particular historical issue is to the way that content is interpreted. In a stately home for example, academic expertise on something like the changing nature of domestic service across the 19th and 20th centuries feeds in to shaping visitor experiences. </p>
<p>But there are times when the link is far less obvious. It isn’t always easy to predict what knowledge will be relevant where and when. During the recent Ebola outbreak, it was not just specific medical knowledge that was crucial, but also the more seemingly esoteric knowledge of <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/01/150130-ebola-virus-outbreak-epidemic-sierra-leone-funerals/">anthropologists with expertise</a> in West African mourning and burial rituals. The specific content knowledge of the arts and humanities is a rich resource that can be drawn upon to inform and shape anything from policy to museum display.</p>
<p>But academic research into the arts and humanities is also much more than just content. </p>
<h2>A wider skillset</h2>
<p>What we were particularly interested in examining were those moments when arts and humanities researchers bring something more than their subject specialism to the table. To test this we undertook something of an experiment, sending two groups of arts and humanities researchers into the wild. We chose two National Trust sites at Stourhead and Sherborne, which none of the researchers had specialist knowledge of. In both cases, they knew far less than the staff there who possess in-depth and intimate knowledge of these places. We were interested in seeing what, if anything, they brought from the wider skill set of the arts and humanities. </p>
<p>We were surprised by the results. In both cases, something very similar happened. The teams ended up falling into a set of ways of working that characterise arts and humanities research. They asked questions, read the various texts they discovered, looked for stories and isolated a range of broader themes. The results were “big narratives” that provided those working at these sites with novel ways of looking at, and thinking about these familiar places. For example at Sherborne, they connected two seemingly unconnected buildings – a 17th-century hunting lodge and 20th-century airfield building – through their balconies and ideas of the view.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195505/original/file-20171120-18574-1adj9tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195505/original/file-20171120-18574-1adj9tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195505/original/file-20171120-18574-1adj9tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195505/original/file-20171120-18574-1adj9tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195505/original/file-20171120-18574-1adj9tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195505/original/file-20171120-18574-1adj9tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195505/original/file-20171120-18574-1adj9tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lodge Park at Sherborne, Gloucestershire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lodge_Park,_Gloucestershire,_May_2016_side_view.jpg">Celuici via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The researchers brought something of value to the heritage sector, but in a less obvious, direct and measurable way than the subject-specific knowledge of a historian of domestic service who helps shape display practice both upstairs and downstairs in a country house. </p>
<h2>Unlocking value</h2>
<p>Being both a specialist and generalist is something that academics are well used to as they combine research and teaching within their day-to-day life and persona. And it is something that we discovered more arts and humanities researchers are embracing, in particular in their interactions with the creative industries.</p>
<p>Here we were struck by the way that the most successful collaborations were ones where the distinct identities of arts and humanities researchers and businesses in the creative industries blurred. One inspiring example was <a href="http://yellobrick.co.uk/2017/06/07/traces-olion/">Olion/Traces</a>, an app offering visitors to St Fagans National Museum of History in Cardiff an innovative way of experiencing the museum grounds as it melds fact and fiction, the archives and the site itself. This innovative interpretative tool was co-developed by an academic, Jenny Kidd from Cardiff University, a creative producer, Allie John at yellobrick, and a heritage professional, and Sara Huws from the digital media department at Amgueddfa Cymru/National Museum of Wales. </p>
<p>What the team found was that Kidd wasn’t simply involved at the “ideas” stage, inputting her specialist knowledge and then stepping back. But rather, all three were involved at each and every stage of development and feedback. Olion/Traces is one example of new and fruitful ways of working, where arts and humanities researchers become active participants in the creative economy. </p>
<p>This sense of new ways of working in the arts and humanities is something that I’ve thought a lot about personally. In some ways I am still a traditional researcher whose specialist knowledge of the Holocaust is, for example, drawn upon by museums who want content to create a new display. But, alongside that, I’ve also discovered the opportunities, and challenges, of working alongside others in the creative economy, in my case working with artists Stand+Stare to develop a sound journal called <a href="http://www.mayflysound.com">Mayfly</a>. In our research, we discovered plenty of other academics from the arts and humanities who are using their knowledge and skills in unexpected – as well as expected – ways.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86875/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Cole is a co-director of Mayfly Sound. He received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and GW4 for the Bridging the Gap project. </span></em></p>What does society want and need from the arts and humanities?Tim Cole, Professor of Social History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/830422017-08-29T20:11:05Z2017-08-29T20:11:05ZCan our cities’ thriving creative precincts be saved from ‘renewal’?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183565/original/file-20170828-3645-f2xgwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">At first glance, old industrial sites, like this one in Carrington Street, don't look like much. But they provide vital spaces for creative precincts to flourish.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Jones</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Governments are busily rezoning our cities for high-rise apartments. The New South Wales government, for example, plans to rezone a 20-kilometre corridor in Sydney, <a href="http://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/Plans-for-your-area/Priority-Growth-Areas-and-Precincts/Sydenham-to-Bankstown-Urban-Renewal-Corridor">from Sydenham to Bankstown</a>, for urban density, in concert with a new metro rail line. <a href="https://www.sydbankalliance.com/">Residents and community groups</a> have reacted vociferously to the prospects of high-rise buildings in previously low-density suburbs. </p>
<p>But there is another, overlooked dimension to the redevelopment. Much of it is on industrial land: pockets of old factories and workshops, portrayed as decrepit and in need of renewal. </p>
<p>Our <a href="http://www.urbanculturalpolicy.com/">new project</a> documents enterprises that actually use urban industrial lands. It’s a story of surprising and largely hidden vibrancy at the interface between creative industries and small manufacturing.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/create-to-regenerate-cities-tap-into-talent-for-urban-renewal-63992">Create to regenerate: cities tap into talent for urban renewal</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>Planners and economic developers tend to assume manufacturing has left central cities and that manufacturing enterprises can simply locate to city-fringe greenfield sites. In reality, manufacturing is changing form, and often depends on – and benefits from – urban industrial lands.</p>
<p>Despite the scale of renewal plans, no detailed knowledge exists of what will be lost, or of existing enterprises’ needs. </p>
<h2>Manufacturing has a new, creative face</h2>
<p>In <a href="http://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/%7E/media/Files/DPE/Reports/sydenham-bankstown-corridor-employment-analysis-2016-10.ashx">planning reports</a> for renewal strategies, industrial zones are seen as redundant because it’s assumed that manufacturing is in a state of inevitable decline. This is false and misleading.</p>
<p>Employment, exports, <a href="http://www.oecd.org/std/business-stats/entrepreneurship-at-a-glance-22266941.htm">enterprise formation</a> and <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/theausinstitute/pages/536/attachments/original/1464819264/Manufacturing_Still_Matters___Centre_for_Future_Work.pdf?1464819264">R&D investment statistics</a> all point to manufacturing’s endurance, as well as its transformation and increasingly diverse character. </p>
<p>Most manufacturers these days are small, agile and creative. Manufacturing is increasingly interwoven with creative industries, through innovation-driven additive manufacturing, craft-based production, and bespoke maker scenes. </p>
<p>Cities such as <a href="https://gmdconline.org/">New York</a> and <a href="https://www.portlandmade.com">Portland</a> are actively planning for this, because they recognise that the creative-manufacturing interface generates jobs, assists place marketing, contributes to liveability and enlivens local communities.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183569/original/file-20170828-30371-15xqowc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183569/original/file-20170828-30371-15xqowc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183569/original/file-20170828-30371-15xqowc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183569/original/file-20170828-30371-15xqowc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183569/original/file-20170828-30371-15xqowc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183569/original/file-20170828-30371-15xqowc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183569/original/file-20170828-30371-15xqowc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mia Penn, aka The Raisin Did It, makes clothes from vintage and rare fabrics in Sydney. Her suppliers and support services are all within a 2.5km radius.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Jones</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-can-our-cities-match-europes-for-finding-value-in-their-creative-vibe-80954">How can our cities match Europe’s for finding value in their creative vibe?</a></em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Creative-manufacturing favours older industrial sites</h2>
<p>There is, however, a planning dilemma cities must face. Enterprises at the interface tend to locate in inner-city industrial zones. This is where other relevant enterprises are co-located and buildings are more suitable, often older and lower rent, with limited restrictions on noise. </p>
<p>Like-minded micro-enterprises sub-let workshops or pods within older factory complexes. They cannot afford commercial rents in stand-alone buildings. Older industrial zones also provide access to distribution and business networks, cultural venues and institutions, and final markets. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183566/original/file-20170828-27547-1hnfo9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183566/original/file-20170828-27547-1hnfo9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183566/original/file-20170828-27547-1hnfo9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183566/original/file-20170828-27547-1hnfo9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183566/original/file-20170828-27547-1hnfo9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183566/original/file-20170828-27547-1hnfo9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183566/original/file-20170828-27547-1hnfo9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carrington Road, Marrickville, the natural inner-city habitat of creative micro-enterprises and small manufacturers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Jones</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These are the very zones favoured for major “renewal” schemes. In practically every case, this means medium- and high-rise apartments. Retail space is provided, typically at ground-floor level (which often sits vacant for months or years). </p>
<p>Ironically, the presence of creative industries <a href="http://rsa.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08111146.2014.967392">helps sell real estate</a>. But such renewal schemes rarely, if ever, provide replacement workshop space zoned for industrial uses. </p>
<h2>Carrington Rd, an unassuming creative-manufacturing hub</h2>
<p>Our <a href="http://www.urbanculturalpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Made_in_Marrickville_DP170104255-201702.pdf">new report</a> documents enterprises in one such industrial precinct in Marrickville, inner Sydney, that’s slated for redevelopment. A single 700-metre-long stretch of Carrington Road is home to more than 200 diverse micro-enterprises and small manufacturers. </p>
<p>These have strong local ties, employing an estimated 1,800 workers. Fifteen discrete enterprise clusters thrive there. These include theatre production, puppet and prop-making, furniture restoration, fashion and textiles. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183564/original/file-20170828-27560-1bywwsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183564/original/file-20170828-27560-1bywwsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183564/original/file-20170828-27560-1bywwsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183564/original/file-20170828-27560-1bywwsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183564/original/file-20170828-27560-1bywwsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183564/original/file-20170828-27560-1bywwsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183564/original/file-20170828-27560-1bywwsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183564/original/file-20170828-27560-1bywwsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Functional clusters in Carrington Road, Marrickville.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Made in Marrickville report, 2017</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What underpins this pre-eminent creative-manufacturing interface precinct? It’s a combination of affordability, sympathetic landlords, industrial land use zoning, and a mix of small and large factory spaces with suitable features. </p>
<p>Proximity to the CBD, media corporations, major entertainment venues and iconic cultural institutions is vital. That’s because these firms supply stage sets, install event equipment, rent studios for photography, television and film shoots, and perform at corporate functions. </p>
<p>The social and cultural milieu of surrounding areas is also crucial. These areas generate nearby markets for locally made fashion, jewellery and ceramics. </p>
<h2>No consultation on a looming loss for the city</h2>
<p>Shockingly, enterprises in industrial zones potentially affected by this latest renewal strategy are not being consulted before rezoning. </p>
<p>NSW Planning and Environment commissioned a consultancy firm to <a href="http://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/%7E/media/Files/DPE/Reports/sydenham-bankstown-corridor-employment-analysis-2016-10.ashx">investigate employment impacts</a> of proposed redevelopments throughout the Sydenham-Bankstown corridor. The report was a desktop study. Detailed site inspections “were not undertaken nor interviews or consultation with businesses in the Opportunity Sites”.</p>
<p>When we visited Marrickville’s creative-manufacturing enterprises, it became clear none had been consulted about the details of renewal plans for the precinct. They were unaware the closing date for public submissions was imminent. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183570/original/file-20170828-17108-wx69pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183570/original/file-20170828-17108-wx69pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183570/original/file-20170828-17108-wx69pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183570/original/file-20170828-17108-wx69pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183570/original/file-20170828-17108-wx69pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183570/original/file-20170828-17108-wx69pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183570/original/file-20170828-17108-wx69pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kings Knitwear, on Carrington Road, is one of Sydney’s last woollen knitwear factories and supplies local makers and designers as well as national fashion brands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Jones</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Creative micro-enterprises and small manufacturers reported that city fringe relocation is not feasible. Rezoning this industrial space, one of inner Sydney’s last, may force enterprises to close altogether. Others said they would move overseas. </p>
<p>The loss for Sydney could be tragic. As one artisan said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If all the people who worked on this street worked in one company and were sacked, it’d be national headlines.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similar processes are under way in Melbourne’s inner north, an iconic part of that city’s cultural profile. Rezoning in the name of urban density has given a green light to the conversion of old light industrial buildings into residential developments. </p>
<p>So, just as Creative Victoria establishes a <a href="http://capmelbourne.org/">Collingwood Arts Precinct</a> to host creative practitioners, tenants next door have been evicted to make way for a 12-storey apartment block. The developer has now objected to the potential noise from local venues.</p>
<h2>Learning from other global cities</h2>
<p>Our project’s next phase is to explore how other global cities foster creative and manufacturing enterprises. </p>
<p>Chicago has <a href="http://www.architecture.org/architecture-chicago/topics-news/retrofitting-buildings/5-things-to-know-about-chicagos-planned-manufacturing-districts/">planned manufacturing districts</a> and Portland, Oregon, has <a href="http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=58694">industrial sanctuaries</a>. These are long-standing and successful examples of industrial land preservation. The <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01944360708978524">German zoning system</a> has also long mixed “non-disturbing” industry with other uses. </p>
<p>San Francisco’s <a href="http://sf-planning.org/about-eastern-neighborhoods">production, distribution and repair (PDR) zone</a> attempts to accommodate the growth of small manufacturers. New, higher-rent office development cross-subsidises lower-rent industrial space. Austin, Boston, Los Angeles and Nashville in the US and Vancouver, Canada, are pursuing similar policies.</p>
<p>In China, <a href="http://english.gov.cn/2016special/madeinchina2025/">Shenzhen</a>, the 21st-century “workshop of the world”, is looking to the “creative economy” not to replace but to enhance Chinese manufacturing prowess.</p>
<p>While growing cities like Sydney clearly need to plan for housing, another conversation in our cities is needed, not just about high-rise redevelopments, but about what’s at stake when industrial lands are rezoned.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct a reference in a caption to Kings Knitwear being Sydney’s last woollen knitwear factory.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83042/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Gibson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandra Crosby is a board member of Frontyard Projects, a Marrickville-based arts organisation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carl Grodach receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin O'Connor receives funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Xin Gu receives funding from Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Lyons does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new project documents who uses urban industrial lands slated for redevelopment. It reveals a vibrant but largely hidden sector at the interface between creative industries and small manufacturing.Chris Gibson, Director, UOW Global Challenges Program & Professor of Human Geography, University of WollongongAlexandra Crosby, Senior Lecturer, Design, University of Technology SydneyCarl Grodach, Professor Urban Planning & Design, Monash UniversityCraig Lyons, Research Assistant, Australian Centre for Culture, Environment, Society and Space (ACCESS), University of WollongongJustin O'Connor, Professor of Communications and Cultural Economy, Monash UniversityXin Gu, Lecturer in Communications and Media, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/796502017-07-25T20:08:37Z2017-07-25T20:08:37ZNot jobs and growth but post-capitalism – and creative industries show the way<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175132/original/file-20170622-3053-1m2990k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The creative economy is failing to live up to the fast-growing, young entrepreneurial image it promotes. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/arselectronica/14959708488/">Ars Electronica/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The term “creative industries” was <a href="https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/42872_Flew.pdf">first applied</a> to the cultural sector by UK New Labour in 1998, and rapidly gained global traction.</p>
<p>It was a kind of Faustian bargain for the cultural sector, which gave up its traditional suspicion of commercial imperatives in return for a seat at the grown-ups’ table where the governmental big bucks were allocated. </p>
<p>Perhaps it was not so Faustian after all. It seemed the “new” economy was all about ideas and experiences, creativity and left-of-field innovation. That’s less a sell-out and more a win-win. As cities shed their dirty industries, the creative sector would provide new, more fulfilling employment, rewriting the rules of the old economy as it did so.</p>
<p>The problems with this narrative are <a href="https://currencyhouse.org.au/node/174">well aired</a>. Software (which had been included precisely to bump up the numbers) and advertising and marketing accounted for most of the <a href="https://www.acola.org.au/PDF/SAF01/6.%20Culture%20creativity%20cultural%20economy.pdf">employment growth</a>. </p>
<p>Outside these sectors (and often within) <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504630.2015.1128800?src=recsys&journalCode=csid20">studies</a> showed persistent low wages, high debt, self-exploitation, precarious employment (the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/26/will-we-get-by-gig-economy">gig economy</a>”), multiple job-holding (“don’t give up your night job”) and a nepotism that comes with excessive reliance on networking. </p>
<p>The divergence between the shiny narrative and the mundane reality is now blindingly obvious (at least outside the consultancy reports). Few in the cultural sector do more than lip-sync to its hymns. </p>
<p>But is this simply a story of deflation, of promises reneged? Might there be another narrative?</p>
<h2>A new narrative emerges</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178549/original/file-20170718-21774-10k3q7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future, by Paul Mason (Allen Lane, 2015)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostCapitalism:_A_Guide_to_our_Future">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In recent years the notion of “post-capitalism” has become more widespread. <a href="http://affirmpress.com.au/publishing/a-revolution-in-the-making/">Guy Rundle</a> has been talking about this in Australia, and <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Postcapitalism-Paul-Mason/9780141975290?redirected=true&utm_medium=Google&utm_campaign=Base1&utm_source=AU&utm_content=Postcapitalism&selectCurrency=AUD&w=AF45AU99ZZC1SZA80C5LAF4S&pdg=kwd-309568335522:cmp-680104063:adg-37898644947:crv-151944074570:pid-9780141975290:dev-c&gclid=CO3Vos2ky9QCFYuUvQodBOUJAg">Paul Mason</a> in the UK. </p>
<p>In part it continues the optimism about the transformative potential of new technologies that formed around the internet in the 1990s, and which gave the early “creative industries” agenda such a powerful charge. </p>
<p>But since 2008 many have felt that capitalism is no longer capable of delivering on that potential. It has been locking it up in monopoly platforms and extracting “rent” from what is essentially free.</p>
<p>Indeed, capitalism is intent on maximising short-term profit from these technologies while allowing the ecological catastrophe of climate change to let rip. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178550/original/file-20170718-21790-vg3gfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1173&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Revolution In The Making: 3D Printing, Robots and the Future, by Guy Rundle (Affirm Press, 2014)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://affirmpress.com.au/publishing/a-revolution-in-the-making/">Affirm Press</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rundle and Mason evoke the enormous potential of technological innovation, not just in communications but in medicine, materials science, agriculture, transport and the rest, but this potential is stuck in the old relations of capitalism. </p>
<p>Post-capitalism evokes not just the technology but the new kinds of social relations required for it to live up to its full human potential. They argue that these new technologies – distributed, networked, ideas-rich, decreasingly expensive – are giving rise to enclaves within contemporary society that provide a glimpse into a more human future. </p>
<p>Peer-to-peer networks, sharing and gift economies (for real, not Uber), open-source movements, non-monetary labour exchanges – all of these grow out of the essentially public and democratic nature of knowledge-based production and distribution. Capitalism squats on these new democratic forces, wringing profit from a knowledge it does not produce but seeks to own. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178551/original/file-20170718-21752-1e7hfus.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Postcapitalist Politics, by J.K. Gibson-Graham (University of Minnesota Press, 2006)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/a-postcapitalist-politics">University of Minnesota Press</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rundle is the more naive politically, while Mason, re-inventing a Marxist political economy long thought dead and buried, recognises that systems are not given up without a fight. </p>
<p>What stands out, however, is a sense that things are already changing. We need not wait for the big collapse, but can work in the here and now to effect real social transformation. </p>
<p>This connects with <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/a-postcapitalist-politics">the work</a> of <a href="http://www.communityeconomies.org/people/jk-gibson-graham">J.K. Gibson-Graham</a> and others, who see older forms of social activism as working towards a different kind of post-capitalist future right here, right now.</p>
<h2>Creating a more human future</h2>
<p>There are, and will be, many objections to the coherence of the term post-capitalism and the agenda it announces. But perhaps it can help us rethink the creative industries. </p>
<p>Rather than the narrative of the fast-growing, entrepreneurial, start-up economy moving us into the next stage of knowledge capitalism, post-capitalism gives us a different story. </p>
<p>The low-waged, under-employed, precarious creative sector embarrasses the policymakers by not being really serious about growth (“lifestyle”) and failing to live up to the entrepreneurial image promoted at all those glitzy creative industry events. But these low-growth, socially embedded and ethically driven creatives may represent a future far more convincingly than those MBAs in hip clothing setting out to be the next “unicorn”.</p>
<p>The job of the creative sector is not to produce “jobs and growth” but cultural value. Those long hours on low wages and short-term contracts are accepted (mostly) as the price to create something of cultural value, to alter the world a little bit, to make us see it in a different way, to critique and to celebrate ourselves, and to bind us together. </p>
<p>This ecosystem of micro-businesses, freelancers and serial project workers represents the vast majority of <a href="https://ccskills.org.uk/supporters/blog/freelancing-and-the-future-of-creative-jobs">cultural sector employment</a>. They have been systemically sidelined from the grand creative industries narrative, but are, in fact, its main business.</p>
<p>Arguments for culture dressed up as economics no longer convince anyone. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-brandis-plans-to-insulate-the-arts-sector-from-the-artists-42305">George Brandis</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/reagan-called-america-a-city-on-a-hill-because-taxpayers-funded-the-humanities-74721">Donald Trump</a> and 100 right-wing authoritarian cultural budget cuts across the globe testify to this. </p>
<p>It is time to give up on the fiction of the creative industries delivering post-industrial capitalism. Instead, we should acknowledge the new ways of making and sharing, the commitments to community and place, the social labour involved in creative work as a powerful resource for wider transformation of our common culture.</p>
<p>And, at the moment, the future of that common culture points us toward some kind of post-capitalism – rather than simply more of the same.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79650/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin O'Connor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The notion of the creative sector driving fulfilling work as cities shed old industries has worn thin. But those creatives might be delivering value of a different kind, offering a more human future.Justin O'Connor, Professor of Communications and Cultural Economy, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/809542017-07-23T20:09:09Z2017-07-23T20:09:09ZHow can our cities match Europe’s for finding value in their creative vibe?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178940/original/file-20170720-23992-1l9vijb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Edinburgh is one of the European cities that make the most of their creative and cultural assets.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/topaz-mcnumpty/9425861004/in/photolist-fmW15U-fti4HW-2A8KwB-2A8BPF-fv8XzL-71UmQR-ftpCEa-oFPdEt-cNL8s3-fnyJkZ-fvxiQ7-acU4NJ-fQ4mEw-VeZbgB-nfGB2-fqLD6s-fqobox-fvLeCS-fmU94i-oU4ytV-5bXXpQ-5e2qPA-fzWWhp-fqmwUB-fu6Sns-fvyeUw-cMDtMW-xfPNM-ay7HPA-5f66XN-fncGas-9fBRmh-fmZvwT-2yehya-fmZxAD-fu5Jh1-5f1J9p-5fF58g-2ZEXt8-nfGB4-cNFgXL-cNA8rs-Vo1u9A-WqFPZt-fqLEsF-d5fyCs-5f1JnP-ay4ZTx-fmZrEM-fmZwCH">Hamish Irvine/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>European cultural and creative cities have stronger economic output and more jobs than their Australian counterparts. So why is our urban creative vibrancy associated with city size, not economic performance?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Culture nurtures our souls and binds our communities together, while creativity helps reveal new answers to our challenges and anxieties. Industries that build on creativity and culture are also a source of great economic value and social well-being.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So opens the latest European Union report, <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/eur-scientific-and-technical-research-reports/cultural-and-creative-cities-monitor-2017-edition">The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor 2017 Edition</a>. The report and supporting data represent an effort to measure something we all know is important – the creative vibe of cities. </p>
<p>Creativity is making its way more and more into policy discussions. Note the European <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/culture/policies/strategic-framework/strategy-international-cultural-relations_en">policy</a> announced last year, Towards an EU Strategy for International Cultural Resolutions, and the European Parliament’s <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P8-TA-2016-0486&language=EN">resolution</a> to deliver “coherent EU policy for cultural and creative industries”. </p>
<p>Australia <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/89368/">lacks a current national cultural and creative industries policy</a>. There are clear parallels, though, with the national <a href="https://industry.gov.au/innovation/GlobalInnovationStrategy/index.html">Global Innovation Strategy</a>. Other innovation and creative programs are happening at state level, such as <a href="https://www.business.qld.gov.au/running-business/growing-business/becoming-innovative/innovation-grants-support/innovate-queensland">Innovate Queensland</a>.</p>
<p>The European work shows that having cultural and creative cities can deliver significant economic benefits. The positive associations between cultural and creative cities and annual GDP per capita and jobs per capita are clear and strong.</p>
<p>Overall, they also found city size isn’t everything: smaller cities perform just as well as big cities. </p>
<h2>How do the biggest 36 Australian cities compare?</h2>
<p>We don’t have the data to construct the same metrics as the EU. However, based on the <a href="http://www.regionalaustralia.org.au/Great_small_cities_data_tool">publicly available data</a> from the Regional Australia Institute, we use the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/06/bohemian-index/57658/">Bohemian Index</a> as a proxy indicator for creative economy. </p>
<p>This index, <a href="http://www.creativeclass.com/rfcgdb/articles/6%20Bohemia_and_Economic_Geography.pdf">devised</a> by <a href="https://www.creativeclass.com/rfcgdb/articles/The%20Australian.pdf">Richard Florida</a>, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/06/bohemian-index/57658/">measures</a> “the concentration of working artists, musicians, writers, designers, and entertainers across metropolitan areas”.</p>
<p>Australian findings show no association between creatives and city output, measured as gross value added (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_value_added">GVA</a>) per capita. There is only a slight positive relationship between jobs and creativity, as shown below. In contrast, the European <a href="http://www.politico.eu/blogs/playbook-plus/2017/07/eu-identifies-the-ultimate-european-city/screen-shot-2017-07-06-at-13-39-30/">Creative and Cultural Cities Index</a> is highly and positively correlated to both GDP and jobs per capita.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178376/original/file-20170717-14267-w1hvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 1. Bohemian Index of Australia’s 36 largest cities and output (GVA) per capita and jobs per capita.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As we can see, there is a positive relationship between Australian city size and creative employment. This is the opposite of what the Europeans found. </p>
<p>So what do Australia cities share with European cities in the way of creative economy and economic performance? Basically, there is a positive and strong correlation between a city’s Bohemian Index and new business start-up rate, trademark rate (see Figure 2) and rate of business owners.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178377/original/file-20170717-30889-1v3042m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 2. Bohemian Index of Australia’s 36 largest cities and trademark applications.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Creativity also has significant positive associations with higher rates of bachelor degree qualifications or higher, housing affordability and commute time. </p>
<p>Disturbingly for Australia, creativity is positively associated with income inequality (measured as 80:20 ratio) as well. Does this mean that our cities with more creative jobs also have more rich patrons and poor arts students?</p>
<p>Importantly, not all cities perform the same. Our 31 regional cities show a significant and negative relationship between unemployment rates and Bohemian Index. Maybe the metro “Big 5” can learn from our regional city strengths in delivering stronger creativity and lower unemployment. </p>
<h2>What can Australia learn from Europe?</h2>
<p>Creative and cultural cities are obviously valued as important for global society, but European research clearly shows that these cities are also capable of delivering jobs and strong economic output. </p>
<p>Do we want all Australian cities to resemble Gladstone, with its high jobs and output, or Hobart, with its strong creative occupations? The Europeans have shown us we can have both in the one city – and not just in the big cities.</p>
<p>Importantly, if Australia follows a policy-transfer approach to creative and cultural cities, we should be cautious. These policies are also promoting economic performance in Europe, but what will they do here when we don’t see the same relationships?</p>
<p>While the latest EU work shows you can measure the cultural and creative aspects of a city, it does stipulate that this is not a be-all-and-end-all metric. It’s more the start of the discussion: how can we better measure our cities’ creativity and cultural values?</p>
<p>Europe uses three metrics (combining quantitative and qualitative data) to gauge a city’s cultural vibrancy, creative economy and enabling culture environment. The work is long and involved. Cities are required to provide information on 29 indicators – number of seats in a theatre, for instance. </p>
<p>We have just used one metric here, perhaps highlighting that poor data hinders good decision-making. A better measure of creative and cultural Australian cities could have provided different associations. </p>
<p>Australia is the “lucky country”, so why can’t we have it all – jobs and creativity in all our cities?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80954/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leonie Pearson works for the Regional Australia Institute (RAI). The RAI is a not-for-profit think tank and receives funding from government and non-government organisations. </span></em></p>A comparison of 36 Australian cities finds that, unlike Europe, the data on their creativity and culture are not closely linked to their capacity to generate economic value and social well-being.Leonie Pearson, Adjunct Associate, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/789872017-06-13T20:20:44Z2017-06-13T20:20:44ZIn defence of serendipity: the Silicon Emperor is wearing no clothes<p>Serendipity is the process of finding something useful, valuable or just generally “good” without actually looking for it. Throughout the history of invention and discovery serendipity has functioned as a sort of Freudian unconscious, leading – or, perhaps better, tricking – the curious human mind onto unexpected novelty. </p>
<p>And yet, only recently have we started to become truly aware of the crucial role of serendipity in our attempts to creatively grasp toward the future. </p>
<p>Over the last few years, it has become an important – if not overused – reference for the creative industries and for our innovation-obsessed economy in general. This is remarkable as “serendipity” was conceived in mid-18th-century literary circles. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Horace-Walpole-4th-earl-of-Orford">Horace Walpole</a> <a href="https://interestingliterature.com/2015/01/28/a-short-history-of-the-word-serendipity/">coined the term</a> in 1754. </p>
<p>Walpole had come across the “silly fairy tale” <em>Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo</em>, an Italian translation of the Persian parable of the three princes of Serendip. During their travels, Walpole <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/01/28/the-invention-of-serendipity/">wrote</a>, they “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of”.</p>
<p>Walpole’s definition of serendipity spread through the world of literates and bibliophiles. Scientists were always able to relate to the term. Louis Pasteur’s <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/73/174.html">adage</a> about chance favouring only prepared minds reflects serendipity’s significance for scientific discoveries and inventions.</p>
<h2>Accident and sagacity</h2>
<p>Today, serendipity is emerging as an important reference for those whose job it is to make our economies more innovative, our industries and cities more creative, and our future, well, better.</p>
<p>Yet unsurprisingly, in this world of <a href="https://www.ted.com/">TED</a>, <a href="http://www.pechakucha.org/">PechaKucha</a> and awesome one-liners, serendipity is fast becoming a fad. </p>
<p>This is unfortunate as the notion offers more than meets the Google-glassed eye. Walpole defined the term as a convergence of accident and sagacity. </p>
<p>And this allows us to understand serendipity as a response to an age-old conundrum that the philosopher Plato baptised <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemic-paradoxes/#MenParInqPuzAboGaiKno">Meno’s paradox</a>: the search for new knowledge is a sheer impossibility as one either knows what to look for, in which case the object of the search is not new, or one doesn’t know what to look for, which makes the search impossible. </p>
<p>Serendipity offers a possible solution by suggesting that the new always enters the world through the back door of the accident. For true novelty to emerge, anomalies, detours or confusions are required to occur. </p>
<p>However, it is equally important to notice these accidents and recognise their potential. This is where sagacity comes in. It represents the ability to turn the virtuality of the accident into the actuality of something new entering the world.</p>
<h2>The capitalist dilemma</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, our infrastructures of innovation are neither susceptible to accidents of the disruptively generative kind nor particularly hospitable to the kind of sagacity that would recognise disruptive potential – in the non-Californian sense of the term. </p>
<p>This may sound counterintuitive, given the omnipresent chatter about disruption and digital innovation, but look around: where are the mind-blowing innovations promised by the prophets of Silicon Valley and their local subsidiaries? </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173523/original/file-20170613-10193-1v0lgx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173523/original/file-20170613-10193-1v0lgx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173523/original/file-20170613-10193-1v0lgx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173523/original/file-20170613-10193-1v0lgx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173523/original/file-20170613-10193-1v0lgx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173523/original/file-20170613-10193-1v0lgx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173523/original/file-20170613-10193-1v0lgx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173523/original/file-20170613-10193-1v0lgx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the great contemporary icons of product innovation is basically a digitally pimped wristwatch.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Blake Patterson/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The new iPhone? Thank you for getting <a href="https://theconversation.com/iphone-updates-charm-and-annoy-in-equal-measure-but-apple-leaves-mac-users-in-the-shade-65086">rid of the headphone jack</a>. Flying cars? Nowhere to be seen. And what happened to supersonic air travel – ’50s technology that seems too advanced for the digital age? </p>
<p>If we look more closely at what passes as the great contemporary icons of product innovation, we might realise that these are a <a href="https://theconversation.com/apple-watch-why-are-so-many-prepared-to-pay-so-much-without-even-knowing-why-40059">digitally pimped wristwatch</a> and a car that takes away the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-winners-and-losers-in-the-race-for-driverless-cars-63874">experience of driving</a> (remember: this is the <a href="https://hbr.org/1998/07/welcome-to-the-experience-economy">experience economy</a>).</p>
<p>Harvard Business School professor <a href="http://www.claytonchristensen.com/biography/">Clayton Christensen</a> refers to this lack of real innovation as “<a href="https://hbr.org/2014/06/the-capitalists-dilemma">the capitalist’s dilemma</a>”: the economy is losing creative momentum thanks to its entrenchment in the matrices of finance. The risk-averse logic of finance, he argues, prevents companies from investing in exciting new ideas that could lead to new products and services. </p>
<p>Christensen’s argument links the innovative impotence of the economy to businesses’ increasing inability to serve society. Thanks to its thorough financialisation, the economic game has become radically hermetic. </p>
<p>The result is not just soaring social inequality, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/piketty-challenges-us-to-consider-if-we-need-to-rein-in-wealth-inequality-67552">bemoaned by Thomas Piketty</a>. It also cuts off economic rationality from the diversity of non-economic inputs needed to move the economy forward.</p>
<h2>The naked silicon emperor</h2>
<p>It would be wrong to believe that Silicon Valley is an exception to such economically dysfunctional navel-gazing. When its venture capitalists are not busy funding the latest app for dog shit collection, they tend to focus on the so-called <a href="https://theconversation.com/renting-isnt-lending-the-sharing-economy-fallacy-27084">sharing economy</a>. They are looking to invest in the “next Uber for X”. </p>
<p>The question is: how innovative are these platform business models in fact? They are certainly disruptive, but not exactly in the way that brilliantly innovative products or services are. </p>
<p>Look at the platform poster boys: Airbnb is disrupting the sustainability of urban living by <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-governments-are-treading-lightly-around-airbnb-76389">driving up rents and real estate prices</a>, while Uber and its offshoots happily introduce <a href="https://theconversation.com/driverless-uber-cars-are-coming-to-disrupt-the-sharing-economy-but-capitalism-carries-on-as-usual-64245">feudalist work conditions</a> for their hyper-exploited pseudo-entrepreneurs. </p>
<p>And these companies can do these things because they can rely on massive funding that effectively takes them out of any market competition. </p>
<p>The goal of these financially overfed business-bullies is to create super-monopolies that capture entire markets to lock vendors and customers into their platforms – pseudo-markets that function according to their supreme (often algorithmic) rule. </p>
<p>These business models not only have disastrous effects on their societal “environment” but are also – because they absorb entire markets into the hermetic space of self-referential platforms – great inhibitors of serendipity and, indeed, innovation.</p>
<p>If this tendency towards platform capitalism goes unchecked, we will soon face a situation similar to that at the end of the Eastern Bloc. While the global party press (TED, <a href="https://www.wired.com/">Wired</a>, <a href="https://www.oreilly.com/">O’Reilly Media</a>) runs hot churning out the credo of the innovation economy, the hiatus between the image of the world according to the digital innovation gospel and the real economic (and social) stasis grows to comical proportions.</p>
<p>It is high time we called out the Silicon Emperor for being naked and did so in the name of innovation – that is, in defence of serendipity.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The author is the keynote speaker at the June 15 <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/symposium-smart-city-creative-city-tickets-34763468470?utm_source=eb_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=order_confirmation_email&utm_term=eventname&ref=eemailordconf">Smart City-Creative City symposium</a> hosted by Monash University’s <a href="http://mfjcme.wixsite.com/culturemediaeconomy">Culture Media Economy</a> (CME) research unit in Melbourne.</em> </p>
<p><em>The Australian launch of the author’s book, In Defence of Serendipity: For a Radical Politics of Innovation (Repeater Books, London 2016), will be hosted on Wednesday, June 14, at 4pm by CME. Register for the free public lecture and launch <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/in-defence-of-serendipity-book-launch-public-lecture-by-seb-olma-tickets-34788928622">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78987/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sebastian Olma does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The digital pin-ups’ business models actually inhibit serendipity and, indeed, innovation by absorbing entire markets into the sealed-off space of their platforms.Sebastian Olma, Professor of Autonomy in Art, Design and Technology, St Joost Art Academy, Avans University of Applied SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/782582017-06-11T20:30:41Z2017-06-11T20:30:41ZCreative city, smart city … whose city is it?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172600/original/file-20170607-3668-1wymt6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When the smart city looks inhuman: a robot police officer from Dubai greets guests at last November's Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ramon Costa/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2007 US creative cities “guru” <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Creative-Class-Transforming-Community/dp/1491576766">Richard Florida</a> was flown up to Noosa to tell the local city council how they, too, could become a creative city. </p>
<p>Noosa was one of a long line of cities across the globe queuing up to pay big bucks to the US-based academic-entrepreneur. “Being creative” had become an almost universal aspiration. Who would not want to be a creative city? </p>
<p>And so Creative [insert name of city here] signs sprang up in the most unlikely places, along with stock shots of creative young things hunched over laptops in cafes.</p>
<p>Ten years later, different gurus are being flown around and the signs have been replaced by Smart [insert name of city here]. The stock shots are much the same, but now the young things are being innovative, disruptive and above all “smart”. That’s the trouble with fast policy: here today, gone tomorrow.</p>
<p>Below the surface more tectonic shifts can be felt. In its first outing in the mid-1990s the “creative city”, associated with thinkers such as <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Creative-City-Toolkit-Urban-Innovators/dp/1844075982/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496259774&sr=1-1&keywords=charles+landry+the+creative+city">Charles Landry</a>, was an energising vision of a new role for cultural creativity in our cities.</p>
<p>Now expanded in democratic fashion beyond the world of “high art” to embrace popular, everyday creativity, culture would be a key resource for the 21st-century city. </p>
<p>Culture could re-activate the decayed industrial zones of the inner city, breathing new life into the dead infrastructures of factories and power stations, dockyards and tram depots, schools, barracks and banks. Culture could renew stale urban identities, catalyse new aspirations and stamp a different global brand on long-dormant cities. </p>
<p>And with the creative industries – culture plus all things design and digital – all that was needed were some creative people and a bit of entrepreneurial flair. Then we would have one of the industries of the future. </p>
<p>Creativity broke cities away from the old bureaucratic top-down planning silos of the industrial city and let them approach the future holistically. Culture would be what cities do best, earning a living and enjoying it at the same time. </p>
<p>By the time Florida had left Noosa the discontent was growing. Big investments in photogenic CBD developments seemed more intended for the creative class than local citizens, generating massive real estate profits while the suburbs languished unloved. </p>
<p>Creative industries turned out not to be so inclusive after all. They failed to soak up all those unemployed dirty industry workers and were reliant on educated workers willing to work their way up on low pay and high debt.</p>
<h2>The turn of the smart city</h2>
<p>Since the global financial crisis the energising vision has been around social justice, citizenship and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-habitat-iii-defend-the-human-right-to-the-city-57576">right to the city</a>, with a return of community and activist-focused arts activities. Creatives are now less Californian start-ups and more counter-cultural “post-capitalists”.</p>
<p>Enter the <a href="https://theconversation.com/while-governments-talk-about-smart-cities-its-citizens-who-create-them-59230">Smart City</a>, creativity without all those messy cultural bits. The tech start-ups were just as cool, the fab labs and hacker spaces just as disruptive, but now slotted onto a very different agenda.</p>
<p>This too promised a re-invention of the city, not now a cultural re-imagining but a complete re-tooling of the social and governmental infrastructure of the city. Courtesy of some very big global tech companies, a new digital infrastructure could be rolled out, applying sensors, data-capture devices and large-scale computing power to urban life.</p>
<p>Smart cities are data cities, promising efficient management of transport and utilities, security, and customised commerce. If the early Creative City embraced the messiness of city life, viewing it not as chaos but creative fecundity, the Smart City give us a clean utopian picture of the perfectly transparent city. </p>
<p>It’s messy on the surface, but with a big data back-room providing bespoke information for almost any aspect of urban living your care to ask for. What’s not to like?</p>
<h2>A corporate taming of creativity</h2>
<p>That the brains of the Smart City – as envisioned by its corporate promoters – are increasingly embedded in its walls rather than its inhabitants reveals much about the trajectory of the digital economy so closely tied to Florida’s conception of the Creative City and its industries. </p>
<p>Internet scholar <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Future-Internet-How-Stop/dp/0300151241/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496259831&sr=1-1&keywords=jonathan+zittrain">Jonathan Zittrain</a> has described the rise of “app” culture as a betrayal of the creative potential unleashed by the mainstreaming of the internet. If the open internet was messy and chaotic, Zittrain argues that it was correspondingly “generative”, promoting experimentation and creativity. </p>
<p>By contrast, the “app” represents the pacification and domestication of the internet: its transformation from a productive medium to an infrastructure for consumption and marketing. Apps sort our music and photos for us, tell us where to eat, how to get there, and what to watch afterwards. The price of the newfound convenience that renders smart phones so addictive is a shift in the balance of control away from the end user. </p>
<p>For Zittrain, the “applified” world is “one of sterile appliances tethered to a network of control” – which is not a bad description of the corporate blueprint for the Smart City. </p>
<p>As urbanist <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Against-smart-city-here-Book-ebook/dp/B00FHQ5DBS/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496259876&sr=1-3&keywords=adam+greenfield">Adam Greenfield</a> has observed, the corporate world has taken the lead in both envisioning and promoting its version of the “informated” city. It looks suspiciously like the commercial internet projected out into physical space. </p>
<p>The promise is one of efficiency, convenience and security: smart streets that adjust traffic flow in real time, walls that change images to suit our tastes (which have become indistinguishable from market preferences), even floors that cushion us when we fall. </p>
<p>For all the talk of disruption, the paradoxical promise of the smart city is one of data-driven efficiency and predictability. The promotional materials feature the same smart young things, freed up from the impositions of daily life (traffic, shopping, routine decision-making, even driving), to do … what? </p>
<h2>Whose city is it?</h2>
<p>There are surely possibilities here, but the version of smart city as automated city looks inhuman. It promises to serve people by rendering them increasingly efficient, perhaps to the point of their own redundancy. </p>
<p>To subject the future of the city to the corporate imaginary is to concede too much to the galloping privatisation of our cultural and informational infrastructure. </p>
<p>What if the right to the city were also a right to participate in shaping its information infrastructures and their implementation? Can we envision an alternative to centralised corporate control of the city’s data? And how might public priorities be redefined in ways that distinguish them from the private imperatives of the ruling tech giants? </p>
<p>These are the guiding questions for our <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/symposium-smart-city-creative-city-tickets-34763468470?utm_source=eb_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=order_confirmation_email&utm_term=eventname&ref=eemailordconf">June 15 symposium</a> in Melbourne, which explores the possibility of another kind of urban culture beyond the tightly controlled formats of the Smart City/Creative City.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78258/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The corporate world has taken the lead in promoting various creative/smart city visions, which struggle to be inclusive, let alone entrust citizens with control over their lives.Justin O'Connor, Professor of Communications and Cultural Economy, Monash UniversityMark Andrejevic, Guest Lecturer, Monash University; Professor and Chair, Department of Media Studies, Pomona CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/639922016-09-20T19:53:55Z2016-09-20T19:53:55ZCreate to regenerate: cities tap into talent for urban renewal<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135706/original/image-20160829-17859-kz0vn1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">At Tolhuistuin, the government provides the land, old building stock and a maintenance budget for a fixed period while the creatives develop the precinct themselves.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/crossmediaweek/8022949675/">Maurice Mikkers/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The creative industries – ranging from game development to architecture, media, design and the arts – are a hot issue in urban development. </p>
<p>Creative businesses, almost by definition, are innovative. They drive new ideas, people and technologies into the market from the experimental edge. It follows, then, that strategies to make a state, city or town more creative can fuel cultural development, urban regeneration and economic growth.</p>
<p>The logic flows: attracting creative talent is increasingly tied to competing in global markets. Places with a creative industries base attract businesses and skilled workers from other knowledge-intensive industries like health, science, engineering and technology. This realisation has prompted regional governments across the globe, including some in Western Australia, to implement policies to make themselves more creative.</p>
<p>Australia’s creative industries <a href="https://www.sgsep.com.au/projects/valuing-australias-creative-industries">contribute A$90 billion to the economy</a> every year. While making a city “more creative” has obvious economic rewards, gaps can emerge between policy and reality. </p>
<p>Creative businesses often struggle in the face of rising rents and development pressures. They may have difficulty in accessing property, finance and business advice. </p>
<p>The sector is also characterised by freelance, part-time and portfolio work. This means financial insecurity, uncertain employment and demanding working conditions are real challenges for a large proportion of its workers.</p>
<h2>What do creative industries need to thrive?</h2>
<p>Many cities, including some Australian state capitals, have to unpick the mechanics of city regeneration, which complicate creative industry development, through investment. </p>
<p>This public investment is often most visible in designated innovation or cultural precincts. The large public institutions and signature buildings typically found in these areas make plain governments’ involvement. </p>
<p>However, iconic architecture and major events alone aren’t enough to build robust creative economies. The creative economy in Australia is underpinned by the 98% of creative businesses with fewer than 20 employees. This sector plays an outsized role in innovation, experimentation and new ideas.</p>
<p>When municipal or state governments join forces with these smaller creative communities to shape urban regeneration the results can be far-reaching, although government’s role is often less visible.</p>
<p>The creative sector <a href="https://theconversation.com/gaming-trends-show-cities-need-to-rethink-how-they-tap-into-creative-economy-63322">feeds on</a> affordable commercial space, physical and digital connectivity and a critical mass of like-minded but diverse neighbours. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/small-is-beautiful-artist-run-collectives-count-but-theyre-facing-death-by-a-thousand-cuts-52684">Small-to-medium creative enterprises</a> are often deeply embedded in their local contexts. They are also highly networked, using formal and informal platforms to match ideas with potential collaborators, as well as private, government and third-sector investors.</p>
<p>Creating clusters from scratch is notoriously difficult. Building on latent and emerging clusters by leveraging existing property assets and local knowledge is far simpler. It also usually works a lot better. </p>
<p>This approach sounds intuitive, but often doesn’t happen. The reason is a heavy stakeholder focus on building something new, as well as control over land and property use.</p>
<h2>Lessons from Amsterdam and Toronto</h2>
<p>Amsterdam’s municipal council has introduced economic, cultural and spatial development policies that involve partnering small-to-medium creative entrepreneurs to rehabilitate brownfield sites. Creative-led partnerships have developed clusters at <a href="http://deceuvel.nl/en/">De Ceuvel</a>, <a href="http://www.ndsm.nl/en/over-ndsm/">NDSM Wharf</a> and <a href="http://www.whatsupwithamsterdam.com/tolhuistuin/">Tolhuistuin</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135707/original/image-20160829-17880-aaovnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135707/original/image-20160829-17880-aaovnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135707/original/image-20160829-17880-aaovnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135707/original/image-20160829-17880-aaovnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135707/original/image-20160829-17880-aaovnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135707/original/image-20160829-17880-aaovnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135707/original/image-20160829-17880-aaovnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135707/original/image-20160829-17880-aaovnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tolhuisen is home to the world’s first 3D-printed canal house, a publicly accessible ‘Research & Design by Doing’ project initiated by DUS Architects.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Timothy Moore</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The municipality has ceded some of its usual powers to the sector, with responsibility for delivery and success shared. </p>
<p>At Tolhuistuin, the council provides the land, old building stock and a maintenance budget for a fixed period while the creatives develop the precinct themselves (under the watch of a board). The outcome is a new asset-based blueprint for sustainable mixed-use urban development. </p>
<p>Tolhuistuin’s early seeded clusters set the stage for larger projects. These include the <a href="https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/about-eye">Eye Film Institute</a>, the <a href="http://adamtoren.nl/site/">A’DAM Toren</a> and the redevelopment of the <a href="http://theprotocity.com/adaptionadoptionamsterdam-noord/">Van Der Pek</a> and <a href="http://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid:3cda2bbc-93e1-4991-a654-bd88bc28fac0?collection=education">Overhoeks</a> precincts.</p>
<p>This all builds on the municipality’s longstanding <em>broedplaatsen</em> (breeding ground) program. This promotes creative clustering in underutilised buildings across the city by releasing 10,000m² of studio space per year. </p>
<p>The creative industries are empowered to take the lead in developing these projects. Amsterdam council unlocks funding sources and offers expert advice on bureaucratic and legal processes.</p>
<p>In Canada, <a href="http://www1.toronto.ca/City%20Of%20Toronto/City%20Planning/SIPA/Files/pdf/S/SECTION37_Final_JK.pdf">Section 37 of the Ontario Planning Act</a> has helped transform private, government and creative sector partnerships. It allows development regulations to be relaxed in <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/01/16/section-37-what-it-is-and-why-everybodys-fighting-about-it-keenan.html">exchange for community benefit</a>, which includes creating living spaces for creatives.</p>
<p>In the early 2000s, social enterprise <a href="http://www.torontoartscape.org/about-artscape">Artscape</a>, supported by the City of Toronto, leveraged Section 37 to develop <a href="http://www.torontoartscape.org/artscape-triangle-lofts">Artscape Triangle Lofts</a>, home to 68 creative live/work units and <a href="http://www.propellerctr.com/">Propeller Gallery</a>. An innovative affordable <a href="http://www.torontoartscape.org/our-programs">ownership and rental program</a> ensures a mix of uses and incomes in the building. </p>
<p>Toronto’s far-sighted policy decision helped the city retain and grow its creative community in the face of rising property prices. Today the sector contributes <a href="http://www.investtoronto.ca/Business-Toronto/Key-Business-Sectors/Creative-Industries.aspx">C$9 billion a year</a> to Toronto’s GDP and employs 130,000 people.</p>
<h2>Get in early, start small</h2>
<p>The takeaway from this is that constructing a creative economy means implementing long-term transitional strategies to build talent and capacity over time. This avoids the need for more interventionist, expensive and risky strategies down the line.</p>
<p>WA towns and cities have an enviable opportunity to set up the conditions for a healthy creative economy before regeneration of their older building stock comes to pass. Nurturing this sector through a mix of smaller policy interventions could be an affordable and effective way to kick-start sustainable creative economies. </p>
<p>More modest interventions allow the luxury of learning from failure and trialling more experimental ideas. These can then flow through to the wider creative ecology.</p>
<p>All ecologies rely on an ongoing interplay between the large, medium and small. Each brings something different to the table to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. </p>
<p>This requires a policy mix that can support big-ticket projects along with investment in sustainable careers and spaces for small-to-medium creative enterprises. This is true creativity at work.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Conversation is co-publishing articles with <a href="http://www.alva.uwa.edu.au/community/futurewest">Future West (Australian Urbanism)</a>, produced by the University of Western Australia’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts. These articles look towards the future of urbanism, taking Perth and Western Australia as its reference point. You can read other articles <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/future-west-30248">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63992/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bree Trevena is affiliated with Creative Victoria, Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources with the Victorian State Government.</span></em></p>When municipal or state governments join forces with smaller creative communities to shape urban regeneration the results can be far-reaching.Bree Trevena, PhD Researcher, Research Unit in Public Cultures, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/633222016-08-19T05:26:26Z2016-08-19T05:26:26ZGaming trends show cities need to rethink how they tap into creative economy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132914/original/image-20160803-12223-utcsad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">City policymakers are realising creative workers don't have to be permanently clustered together if they can collaborate as needed.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevepurkiss/13945518656/in/photolist-nfjqQQ-dCou8f-ikXbBA-nhCZGi-nhD2RP-nhXFij-nhD5nR-nfSZV3-nhCVvJ-bEzzdt-7xhdHS-7xh13w-65nBfW-FTB7p-65nAUy-4eKahS-qhbHgF-7xdcmz-wFgFRC-7xh1Vd-7xh4jw-ni2QMc-7xh3Nf-hyeB1S-7xh2o1-qf4miE-7xh1wS-368ay3-7xh2YL-9Asmnw-7xdhzM-7MiPFH-7xdgS6-FHsb6q-pknymh-5R6r65-33P8X4-pZWM2M-qT8CUX-quLXkR-qf5yUu-nhV8JH-9TxV9r-nTzH6o-pZMGJE-4SYgYW-4SU4hi-4SYhoJ-qf4hG1-iczfyN">Steve Purkiss/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Various cities in Australia have developed creative economy policies with the aim of diversifying their economy. These policies are about attracting and retaining entrepreneurs and firms from the creative industries sector, such as the music and fashion industries. </p>
<p>Creative economy policies were often based on the <a href="https://hbr.org/1998/11/clusters-and-the-new-economics-of-competition">cluster concept</a> developed by Michael Porter in the 1990s. This was the case for the <a href="https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/creative_brisbane_creative_economy_2013-2022.pdf">creative city strategy in Brisbane</a> and also for the more recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-secrets-to-being-a-superstar-music-city-50184">music industry policy in Melbourne</a>. </p>
<p>Brisbane has been very active in this area. The objective was to be less dependent on natural resources in the future. </p>
<p>Planning initiatives such the <a href="http://www.kgurbanvillage.com.au/">Kelvin Grove Village</a> are examples of economic development strategies based on the cluster concept that translated into planned projects. But positive steps are being taken to provide <a href="http://www.creativespaces.net.au/about-us/our-network/brisbane-city-council">affordable spaces for creative workers</a>.</p>
<p>Recent <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02723638.2015.1067981#.V5_-lOt97q4%20_">research on the video game industry in Australia</a> has shown that new technologies have greatly influenced the production of games. The industry functions as a “networked community” and not strictly as spatially bounded clusters. The use of new platforms such as the internet enables small companies to produce games from remote areas. </p>
<h2>Industry structures are changing</h2>
<p>The composition of the industry has changed significantly since 2006-07, with the closure of several development studios that focused on console games, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krome_Studios">Krome Studios</a>. A variety of platforms – <a href="https://unity3d.com/unity?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=demos-showcase-2016-06-21-Global-AdamFulll">Unity 3d</a>, mobile phones etc – is now available to game developers. </p>
<p>With the shift from console games to mobile phone games, the industry has changed dramatically. The nature of the demand has changed too: consumers of video games are now <a href="http://www.lib.umich.edu/blogs/eaten-grue/rise-mobile-games-factors-contributing-their-success">looking for a quick and fast experience</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.disparitygames.com/about/">Disparity Games</a>, operating from Noosa on the Sunshine Coast, is an example of these new successful companies located outside the main cluster. The people behind Disparity Games are two video game developers working from home in an idyllic environment. The map below shows the location of video game firms in Queensland, with some of those companies operating from the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132689/original/image-20160802-17183-1hrz1wl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132689/original/image-20160802-17183-1hrz1wl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132689/original/image-20160802-17183-1hrz1wl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132689/original/image-20160802-17183-1hrz1wl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132689/original/image-20160802-17183-1hrz1wl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132689/original/image-20160802-17183-1hrz1wl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132689/original/image-20160802-17183-1hrz1wl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132689/original/image-20160802-17183-1hrz1wl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Digital connectivity has led to a wider dispersion of video game companies in southeast Queensland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In an interview with the author, one of the game developers explained why they decided to move their company to Noosa: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>After the collapse of large studios we decided to go indie. With the smaller indie companies, everyone is more supportive. We have meet-ups on marketing, technical issues, game testing. We are exchanging knowledge at those events, [so] we don’t need to be based in the city anymore to be part of the community.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>New technologies enable new ways of working</h2>
<p>These studios have demonstrated that self-publishing is a viable business model in Australia. Independent developers can now bypass traditional international publishers. </p>
<p>New technologies have thus had the effect of <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02723638.2015.1067981">reducing the size of video game companies and increasing their number</a>. This is verified in Queensland, which has become specialised in developing mobile phone games.</p>
<p>New technologies such as the National Broadband Network (NBN) have changed the way video game developers produce games and where they produce them. With the NBN, a small video game company can literally produce a game from anywhere.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132911/original/image-20160803-12201-1blciey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132911/original/image-20160803-12201-1blciey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132911/original/image-20160803-12201-1blciey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132911/original/image-20160803-12201-1blciey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132911/original/image-20160803-12201-1blciey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132911/original/image-20160803-12201-1blciey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132911/original/image-20160803-12201-1blciey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132911/original/image-20160803-12201-1blciey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Co-working spaces allow creative workers to get together only when they need to.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/janelleorsi/12897062203/in/photolist-kDEPgr-9Apr26-a2KK9g-9ApqXv-ikWRxA-ikYcbZ-njFCnP-92jnme-nhXdYL-nhCzUE-nfjqQQ-dCou8f-ikXbBA-nhCZGi-nhD2RP-nhXFij-nhD5nR-nfSZV3-nhCVvJ-bEzzdt-7xhdHS-7xh13w-65nBfW-FTB7p-65nAUy-4eKahS-qhbHgF-7xdcmz-wFgFRC-7xh1Vd-7xh4jw-ni2QMc-7xh3Nf-hyeB1S-7xh2o1-qf4miE-7xh1wS-368ay3-7xh2YL-9Asmnw-7xdhzM-7MiPFH-7xdgS6-FHsb6q-pknymh-5R6r65-33P8X4-pZWM2M-qT8CUX-quLXkR">janelleorsi/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If they already have the professional connections, developers can work on the same game with different experts located in different cities. Face-to-face interactions are important, but this does not mean anymore that video game developers need to be located in the city at all times. </p>
<p>In that sense, creative economy policies should think about flexible ways to accommodate creative workers in the city. The opening of co-working spaces in <a href="https://www.littletokyotwo.com/">South Bank</a> or the <a href="http://www.rivercitylabs.net/">River City labs</a> are good examples in Brisbane.</p>
<p>This research shows it is time to go beyond the cluster type of economic development policies to attract and retain creative workers and firms in cities like Brisbane. </p>
<p>Instead of planning creative neighbourhoods or districts, which are often not affordable for start-up companies, policies should aim for flexible solutions such as co-working spaces. Those are more adapted to an era in which new technologies are to a certain extent changing the geography of creative industries based on technological innovation such as the video game industry.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63322/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sebastien Darchen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cities seeking to attract creative industries have relied heavily on the cluster concept. New research suggests a technology-driven transformation of how the sector works calls for a new approach.Sebastien Darchen, Lecturer in Planning, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/616572016-06-28T03:00:36Z2016-06-28T03:00:36ZThe Rise of the Joyful Economy<p>The relationship between the art world and the market economy has long been one of <em>Sturm und Drang</em>. Deep down, a battle of <em>weltanschauung</em> plays out between light and dark, sky and earth, imagination and rationality, between two different value systems that still must occupy the same physical, political and moral universe. </p>
<p>The great value of modern cultural economics is to have brokered a grand reconciliation between these worlds, with the <a href="http://individual.utoronto.ca/diep/c/fullerton.pdf">analytic concepts of market failure</a> and externalities in cultural production and consumption, and the application of <a href="http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/documents/project-reports-and-reviews/measuringeconomicvalue/">non-market valuation techniques</a> to, as it were, price the priceless. The result is a formula to transfer resources from the economy to the arts that is allocatively efficient, maximising the value of both. </p>
<p>And while the target of various <a href="https://theconversation.com/reforming-arts-funding-is-not-a-job-for-the-market-19820">grumblings</a> from those who would prefer such decisions were determined more historically or politically, rather than economically, there is a rigorous beauty to this way of counting. </p>
<p>So it is an interesting development when a preeminent cultural economist (and economic sociologist) publishes a new book of broad historical sweep, arguing that the deep relationship between these two worlds (between the arts and the economy) is not what we have previously thought. The book was the subject of a special, standing-room-only panel at the recent <a href="http://www.acei2016.uva.es/event_detail/3433/detail/19th-international-conference-on-cultural-economics.html">International Conference of Cultural Economists</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128437/original/image-20160628-28354-1h3u1jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128437/original/image-20160628-28354-1h3u1jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128437/original/image-20160628-28354-1h3u1jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128437/original/image-20160628-28354-1h3u1jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128437/original/image-20160628-28354-1h3u1jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128437/original/image-20160628-28354-1h3u1jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128437/original/image-20160628-28354-1h3u1jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128437/original/image-20160628-28354-1h3u1jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Rise of the Joyful Economy, Michael Hutter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Routledge, 2015</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.wzb.eu/en/persons/michael-hutter">Michael Hutter</a>’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27291191-the-rise-of-the-joyful-economy">The Rise of the Joyful Economy</a> (2015), which focuses on the visual arts, begins in 1420 with the development of linear perspective, and traces how that artistic development played out in the economy of the day, creating surprising new opportunities.</p>
<p>He then examines the paintings of conversations, of among others <a href="http://artuk.org/discover/artists/wright-of-derby-joseph-17341797">Joseph Wright</a>, <a href="http://artuk.org/discover/artists/hayman-francis-17081776">Francis Hayman</a> and <a href="http://artuk.org/discover/artists/hogarth-william-16971764">William Hogarth</a>, and the way this focused a consumer revolution in the emergence of social taste. Moving into the 1950s and 1960s, Hutter traces the translation of artworks into experience goods through case studies of repetition in the modernist architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (the <a href="http://www.archdaily.com/59412/seagram-building-mies-van-der-rohe">Seagram building</a>) and in Andy Warhol’s <a href="http://www.eykynmaclean.com/exhibitions/andy-warhol-flowers/press-release">Flowers</a> series. </p>
<p>Later in the book he maps these artistic revolutions to three associated periods of economic growth: the period of exploiting cognitive illusion (1430-1860); the period of exploiting social relations (1730-1890); and the period of exploiting serial variations (1920s-present). </p>
<p>Hutter then runs the argument the other way, examining artistic responses to economic change. First in the “silent narratives of assertion” in merchant society in the paintings of Flemish artists <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/petr/hd_petr.htm">Petrus Christus</a> (Goldsmith in his Shop, 1449) and <a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/renaissance-reformation/northern/antwerp-bruges/a/pieter-aertsen-meat-stall">Pieter Aertsen</a> (Meat Stall with the Holy family, 1551). Then in the painting of new consumer entertainment of Parisian artists <a href="http://www.wga.hu/html_m/w/watteau/antoine/2/21enseig.html">Antoine Watteau</a> (Shop Sign, 1720) and <a href="http://courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/collection/impressionism-post-impressionism/edouard-manet-a-bar-at-the-folies-bergere">Édouard Manet</a> (Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882). And thirdly in the intentional entanglements between high art and high commerce in, for example, <a href="https://www.artsy.net/artist/andreas-gursky">Andreas Gursky</a>’s digital photograph 99 Cent (1999) and in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/fashion/08ART.html?_r=0">Takashi Murakami</a>’s installation Vuitton Shop (2007).</p>
<p>These micro-sociological case studies in art history illustrate an overarching idea about the nature of the dynamics in the arts, culture, and the economy. The idea is to conceive of distinct arts and economic worlds, or “plays of value” as Hutter frames it, and to propose a general theory of change that arises from the clash between these worlds. This approach fundamentally recasts the relation between arts and economy by showing them to be statically distinct, but dynamically coupled.</p>
<p>Consider what this implies about the dynamics of both the arts world and the economy. In the standard account, growth and change originate from within each world, from the artist and from the entrepreneur respectively. The arts world and the economy are self-contained, linked only by brokered side payments (cultural policy) to generate efficient levels of output. That understanding, in which the different worlds are distinct, is part of the modern consensus and the grand reconciliation between the cultural sector and the market economy. </p>
<p>But if Hutter is right, then that understanding is wrong. If dynamics in each world originate from the clashes and irritations between each world (which Hutter both theorises and extensively documents) then we may need to rethink the basic relationships between economic and cultural policy. </p>
<p>Yet the book isn’t about policy – a third “play of value”, in Hutter’s terms. It’s about a new type of economy that he seeks to differentiate from such policy fashionable neologisms as knowledge economy, creative industries, or experience economy. </p>
<p>Joyful Economy argues for us to redirect our attention away from isolated industry sectors towards the dynamics of tension and resolution, created by interactions between different “logics of worth”.</p>
<p>The joy in The Joyful Economy is an answer to the brilliant but pessimistic Hungarian-American economist Tibor Scitovsky, who argued that a growing consumer economy that failed to nurture ever enhanced consumer sophistication in high quality experience goods would plunge society into, as he put it in the title of his 1976 book, a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2005263.The_Joyless_Economy">Joyless Economy</a>. </p>
<p>Hutter does not fault the logic of Scitovsky’s diagnosis, but finds that Scitovsky failed to understand the deeper co-evolutionary dynamics at play. That difference matters because it is from those outworkings that the Joyful Economy emerges.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61657/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason Potts receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the Institute of Public Affairs. </span></em></p>The relationship between the art world and the market economy has long been one of Sturm und Drang. Deep down, a battle of weltanschauung plays out between light and dark, sky and earth, imagination and…Jason Potts, Professor of Economics, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/529012016-01-12T03:47:46Z2016-01-12T03:47:46ZIndonesia needs creative economy law to spur job creation<p>Indonesia should put in place a law on the creative economy to allow businesses in the sector to operate with legal certainty.</p>
<p>Supporting the growth of the creative economy will spur job creation, an answer to the country’s problems of rising inequality, youth unemployment and exploitation of Indonesian workers abroad. </p>
<h2>What is the creative economy?</h2>
<p>Indonesia lists 15 industries as part of the creative economy: architecture; art; craft; design; fashion; video, film and photography; interactive games; music; performing arts; publishing and printing; computer services and software; television and radio; research and development; and culinary. </p>
<p>It follows the <a href="http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Creative_Industries_Task_Force">definition</a> from the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sports: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Economic potential</h2>
<p>These industries have the potential to provide much-needed jobs in Indonesia. The World Bank has reported that, despite sustained growth in the past decade, Indonesia is facing <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2015/12/08/rising-inequality-risks-long-term-growth-slowdown">rising inequality</a> between rich and poor. Only 20% of Indonesia’s population benefited from the country’s growth, while 200 million people are struggling. </p>
<p>Large numbers of Indonesians of productive age have low education levels. Many are stuck in low-wage informal jobs. </p>
<p>Some work as migrant workers in countries such as Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong. Indonesia migrant workers are overworked according to The International Labour Organisation. Some undergo <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/how-migrant-workers-torture-exposed-hong-kongs-underground-economy/">torture</a> and <a href="https://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/indonesian-migrant-workers-for-sale-rape-the-jakarta-post">rape</a>. More than 200 migrant workers are <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/10/10/281-indonesian-migrant-workers-face-death-penalty-abroad.html">facing the death penalty</a> abroad.</p>
<p>The growth of the creative economy may help reduce the <a href="https://www.bps.go.id/linkTabelStatis/view/id/973">unemployment rate </a>in Indonesia, perched at around 7.39 million people or 6.35% of the total workforce. In 2014, <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/11/04/indonesia-optimize-intellectual-property-rights-boost-creative-economy.html">7.1% of Indonesia’s GDP came from the creative economy</a>, absorbing up to 12 million workers. </p>
<p>The popularity of IT-based start-up businesses that provide apps for transportation services in Indonesia, such as Go-jek, Grab Bike, Grab Taxi, Uber, Blue-Jek and Lady-Jek, is a great example of the creative economy’s potential. </p>
<p>Go-jek, which connects motorcycle taxi drivers with passengers, has now attracted 200,000 motorists, half of them in Jakarta. Motorists who uses these apps have reported a two to three times increase in income. </p>
<p>Go-jek plans to expand the app for other services such as housecleaning, massage and salon services through Go-Clean, Go-Massage and Go-Glam. These three apps have potential to recruit domestic workers, therapists and hairdressers to provide house cleaning, massage and salon services on demand, and would potentially increase their incomes. </p>
<p>Countries such as <a href="https://www.suara.com/news/2015/11/05/145316/pm-australia-akan-bicarakan-industri-kreatif-dengan-jokowi">Australia</a> and <a href="https://www.antaranews.com/berita/526098/as-minati-investasi-ekonomi-kreatif-rp500-miliar">the United States</a> have expressed interest in investing in the growing digital creative industry in Indonesia. </p>
<h2>Bill on creative economy</h2>
<p>Currently, a bill on the creative economy is in the Indonesian parliament. Lawmakers should make it a priority to pass the bill into law. </p>
<p>To provide guidelines for the government, businesses and intellectuals to develop creative industries, Indonesia’s Ministry of Trade had published policy blueprints “Creative Economy Development Plan 2009-2015” and “Creative Industry Development Towards a Creative Economy 2025”. President Joko Widodo has also set up a Creative Economy Agency (BAKREF). The agency is tasked with policymaking, program planning, co-ordination and synchronisation with other government agencies, guidance and supervision.</p>
<p>But this is not enough. Without legally binding regulation of the creative economy, industries are being subjected to rigid sector-based regulations. This is creating problems for IT-based referral businesses such as Uber and Gojek, which have been facing legal hurdles as the Transport Ministry deems them illegal. </p>
<p>A law on the creative economy would support business players who are looking to create innovative ways to provide goods and services. It would provide incentives for businesses, such as tax holidays, access to financing sources and intellectual property rights (IPR) facilities. </p>
<p>The legislation will also create rules and obligations for business players. These incentives can be taken away from them if violations occur. </p>
<p>Legislating for the creative economy will bring certainty for businesses and legally bind the government to support the sector. In the end, it could create wider employment opportunities in Indonesia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52901/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Muhammad Faiz Aziz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Creative industries have the potential to provide much needed jobs in Indonesia. But, without a law on creative economy, industries are being subjected to rigid sectoral regulations.Muhammad Faiz Aziz, Researcher, Indonesian Center for Law and Policy Studies (PSHK)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/501262015-11-04T05:58:23Z2015-11-04T05:58:23ZAustralia wins at the global creative game<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100723/original/image-20151104-21203-fafvxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">lauren rushing</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I like a good index, and the University of Toronto-based American economic geographer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Florida">Richard Florida</a> has been my main supplier for a few years now. </p>
<p>His super-popular <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Creative-Class-Transforming/dp/0465024769">Creative Class</a> products are all made of the same three progressive ingredients: <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/mpian/overview-of-the-creative-class-theory-and-the-3-ts">Technology, Talent and Tolerance</a>. </p>
<p>The label on the bottle tells an uplifting story of how great American cities are not made of steel mills anymore, but of gay-friendly citizens, great universities, and bicycle paths. Like Helen of Troy, his ideas were of such inestimable beauty that some <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_curse.html">1,000 city government plans</a> were launched to create, at very least, some of these university-flavoured bicycle paths. </p>
<p>Dr Florida’s idea is that you take these policy prescriptions, then you wait (it was never actually specified how long – some say 10-15 years) for the effects to kick in. What will happen is that first you will start to feel creative, and then later prosperous.</p>
<p>So I always look forward to my latest delivery of creativity index. (Some colleagues and I sometimes even make our own, <a href="http://www.regionalstudies.org/uploads/Does_residential_diversity_attract_workers_in_creative_occupation_-_Sveta_Angelopoloulos.pdf">here</a> and <a href="http://cultural-science.org/journal/index.php/culturalscience/article/view/51">here</a>.) This year’s product (from his <a href="http://martinprosperity.org/">fine research group</a>) does not disappoint – being a <a href="http://martinprosperity.org/media/Global-Creativity-Index-2015.pdf">Global Creativity Index</a> no less! </p>
<h2>We’re #1!</h2>
<p>And guess what? Australia is number one! We win at the global creative game! Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy!</p>
<p>NZ is number three – suck that NZ and your stupid Rugby World Cup – and the USA is rather pathetically only number 2. </p>
<p>(An entirely predictable list of Canada, some bicycle path-ridden Nordic countries, Singapore, and some other overeducated quasi-Nordic countries make up the rest of the top ten. The 11-20 spots are mostly occupied by the good coffee precincts in the Eurozone.)</p>
<p>Australia wins because of its consistent performance over all of the measures. Most countries fall down on at least one.</p>
<p>Australia is 7/112 on the Technology index component. (South Korea, Japan and Israel make up the top 3.)</p>
<p>Australia is 4/136 on the global tolerance index, a mix of attitudes to gays and lesbians and racial and ethnic minorities, only just behind the world-class tolerance of the Canadians. But they also gave the world Justin Beiber, so should probably lose some points for that.</p>
<p>And get this: Australia is 1/134 on the global talent index. (This is a mixture of creative class density, and educational attainment.) That’s amazing – we win over education powerhouses of Finland, Singapore, Denmark and the US because of our proportionally higher ranking in the creative class measure, which in many ways is a reflection of the high past quality of Australia’s education.</p>
<h2>Yay! Now what?</h2>
<p>So, what would be an appropriate way to celebrate this great and deserved win? Let me suggest with a few hearty rounds of deregulation.</p>
<p>If these index findings are indeed true – and I have no reason to doubt them: the list of ingredients is clearly labelled on the bottle – then our economic and cultural performance, our overall prosperity, should be better than it is. </p>
<p>Some ingredient is missing. Australia is a world-beater at the creative game. But we don’t seem to be as good at translating that sort of winning creative on-field performance over inputs (our tolerance, our talent, our technology) to the off-field realm of deliverables, our “merchandising” if you will. </p>
<p>What’s missing from our great potential in innovation is entrepreneurship. Being creative is not enough. We also need to improve our entrepreneurial game. (This same point was also made, in specific reference to Australia, by the US think-tank <a href="http://www.kauffman.org/blogs/policy-dialogue/2015/november/australia-most-creative-country-but-what-about-entrepreneurship">the Kauffman Foundation</a>.)</p>
<p>Dom Talimanidis of the Institute of Public Affairs produced a report last year entitled <a href="http://ipa.org.au/publications/2299/where-have-all-the-entrepreneurs-gone">Where have all the entrepreneurs gone?</a>. It showed how the number of new firms created has fallen by almost 50% since 2002. A major reason for this is the <a href="http://ipa.org.au/publications/2338/innovation-strangled-by-red-tape">high and growing regulatory burden in Australia</a>, which raises the costs of entrepreneurship, inhibiting entry. This is bridling our great creative potential. </p>
<p>Maybe the Assistant Minister for Innovation <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/what-happened-at-wyatt-roys-policy-hack-20151017-gkbtpy.html">Wyatt Roy</a> will lead us through this with the tech-community’s favourite answer: start-up incubators and accelerators. </p>
<p>But a better strategy to work on our translation game is simply to increase the size of the team on the field. This doesn’t require redirecting resources, or increasing taxes, but simply giving our highly creative world-class players a bigger, freer space to run.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50126/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason Potts receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the Institute of Public Affairs. </span></em></p>‘If these index findings are indeed true then our economic and cultural performance, our overall prosperity, should be better than it is.’Jason Potts, Professor of Economics, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/392902015-03-25T16:46:56Z2015-03-25T16:46:56ZA healthy public domain generates millions in economic value – not bad for ‘free’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76003/original/image-20150325-14515-pvsstl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Usefulness and value extends far beyond the century in which they were created.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Library</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s frequently claimed that copyright law should be made more restrictive and copyright terms extended in order to provide an incentive for content creators. </p>
<p>But with growing use of works put into the <a href="http://copyrightuser.org/topics/public-domain/">public domain</a> or released under free and permissive licenses such as <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/">Creative Commons</a> or the <a href="https://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html">GPL</a> and its derivatives, it’s possible to argue the opposite – that freely available works also generate value.</p>
<p>Public domain works – those that exist without restriction on use either because their copyright term has expired or because they fall outside of the scope of copyright protection – create significant economic benefits, according to research my colleagues and I have conducted, now published in a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/copyright-and-the-value-of-the-public-domain">report</a> for the UK government’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/intellectual-property-office">Intellectual Property Office</a>.</p>
<p>We found a surprising amount of <a href="http://culturedigitally.org/2014/08/transformative-re-use-the-re-circulation-of-fair-use-materials/">transformative reuse</a> of public domain materials by commercial users – economic value that wouldn’t have been possible without access to a thriving public domain. We tried to identify precisely how and where economic value is generated from public domain works in order to establish where there’s scope for improvement.</p>
<h2>Setting the copyright term</h2>
<p>Literary and artistic works in the UK are <a href="http://www.caret.cam.ac.uk/copyright/Page171.html">protected under copyright for 70 years</a> following the death of the author. At that point, copyright expires and anybody may copy the work and make it available to others. Consumers can then enjoy the benefit of accessing the work for a lower price, and in some cases for free. For example the <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> releases digital versions of classic literary texts that are in the public domain. The British Library’s <a href="http://mechanicalcurator.tumblr.com/">Mechanical Curator</a> project digitises illustrations from printed books and makes them available on <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/">Flickr</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75979/original/image-20150325-14515-167g2j5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75979/original/image-20150325-14515-167g2j5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75979/original/image-20150325-14515-167g2j5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75979/original/image-20150325-14515-167g2j5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75979/original/image-20150325-14515-167g2j5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75979/original/image-20150325-14515-167g2j5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75979/original/image-20150325-14515-167g2j5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The public domain marque.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://openclipart.org/detail/211358/public-domain-logo">anarres</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Conversely, this means rights holders will no longer be able to restrict copying of their work and will potentially lose revenue. It’s for this reason that some rights holders have lobbied governments to extend the scope of copyright so that they can continue to extract revenue from a small number of old, popular works. The Disney Corporation is one example: Some works featuring Mickey Mouse would have fallen out of copyright in 2003 had US Congress not passed the Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998 (derided by some as the <a href="http://artlawjournal.com/mickey-mouse-keeps-changing-copyright-law/">Mickey Mouse Protection Act</a>), which extended the US copyright protection from 50 to 75 years (95 years for corporate works).</p>
<h2>Protection or obstruction?</h2>
<p>Some economic theorists <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=319321">argue</a> that long or indefinitely renewable copyright protection is an optimal solution because it creates an incentive for rights holders to keep works available. However, even in-copyright works can disappear from the market because rights holders decide that it’s not worth the effort to print or publish the work.</p>
<p>Another, perhaps more important, problem is that it’s difficult to build upon works protected by copyright to create new products. It’s costly and time-consuming to seek permission to use a work, and sometimes the original creator (or those to whom the rights have passed) cannot be located or does not wish to allow a derivative use.</p>
<p>For example, David and Stephen Dewaele, the Belgian brothers behind <a href="http://www.2manydjs.com/">2ManyDJs</a>, had to have 187 samples approved in order to release their 2002 album <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8228-as-heard-on-radio-soulwax-pt-2/">As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2</a>. Rights owners rejected 62, 11 were untraceable, and 114 were cleared – a process that took the best part of <a href="http://www.kevinenjoyce.com/soulwax/disco.php?idgr=47Gr2ac961017#39Rls2c5d41106">three years</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76005/original/image-20150325-14523-1s2lhw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76005/original/image-20150325-14523-1s2lhw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76005/original/image-20150325-14523-1s2lhw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76005/original/image-20150325-14523-1s2lhw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76005/original/image-20150325-14523-1s2lhw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76005/original/image-20150325-14523-1s2lhw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76005/original/image-20150325-14523-1s2lhw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76005/original/image-20150325-14523-1s2lhw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Creative Commons licenses allow greater flexibility.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Creative Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons</a> licenses were developed to help solve this problem. By stating terms for the attribution and use for a work but freeing it from copyright restrictions from the outset, a Creative Commons-licensed work reduces costs for those wishing to use it and allows them to make use of a work <a href="http://creativecommons.org/examples">within the bounds of the licence</a>.</p>
<h2>Use and re-use</h2>
<p>We interviewed UK media firms and found that those that had worked with public domain materials were not put off by the fact their source material could also be used by others. Many firms reported that they saw their contributions as part of an ecosystem in which the joint efforts of creators, fans and audiences enriched a narrative product not owned by a single contributor.</p>
<p>Using data from crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, we examined how products based on public domain works performed compared with entirely original products or those under copyright. We found that public domain-inspired works were more likely to succeed and raised more funding (56%) compared with untested, entirely original projects. We also found that a third of all crowdfunding pitches incorporated various sources of intellectual property and derived works into the final product.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75868/original/image-20150324-17688-1w2z6h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75868/original/image-20150324-17688-1w2z6h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75868/original/image-20150324-17688-1w2z6h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75868/original/image-20150324-17688-1w2z6h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75868/original/image-20150324-17688-1w2z6h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75868/original/image-20150324-17688-1w2z6h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75868/original/image-20150324-17688-1w2z6h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75868/original/image-20150324-17688-1w2z6h7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Public domain and other works on Kickstarter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kristofer Erickson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Finally, we looked at how the availability of public domain materials could add value to non-commercial products or services, which may in turn create a commercial benefit. For example Wikipedia relies on public domain and Creative Commons licensed images to illustrate its pages. By extrapolating from a sample of 1,700 biographical pages for notable authors, musical composers and lyricists, we arrived at an estimated value for public domain images across English language Wikipedia.</p>
<p>Based on the costs of providing replacement images from commercial sources, we estimate that public domain material contributes £138m per year for the 1,983,609 English language Wikipedia pages. Having controlled for the notoriety of certain persons or subjects on Wikipedia it’s also apparent that pages with public domain images (rather than none) attract between 17-19% more visitors. Were Wikipedia a commercial website with advertising, the increased traffic would generate an additional £22.6m a year.</p>
<p>Digital creativity and innovation are vital components of today’s economy. Any policies that encourage growth in the creative industries should not only consider the value represented in the trade of copyrighted works, but also the range of public domain material that inspires or forms the basis of new products – and the importance of protecting and nurturing a thriving public domain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39290/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristofer Erickson receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).</span></em></p>Artistic works in the public domain may be free, but they form the basis of derivative works worth millions to the economy.Kristofer Erickson, Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Fellow in Social Sciences, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/385462015-03-09T14:23:48Z2015-03-09T14:23:48ZCreativity could be the clear blue water between Labour and Tories on education<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74174/original/image-20150309-13550-1fzijnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Labour is putting creativity centre stage. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hands with pain via michaeljung/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Labour has made a move to put creativity back at the centre of the education agenda in the lead-up to the May general election. </p>
<p>In a recent speech, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/feb/23/ed-miliband-pledge-universal-entitlement-arts-education">Ed Miliband drew attention</a> to the reduction in arts education in primary and secondary schools and the lack of opportunities for creative subjects that had been squeezed out by the education reforms of the former Conservative education secretary, Michael Gove. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you believe in social justice, if you believe in a more equal society, the access to the arts and culture is not an optional extra, it is essential – not simply because of the worlds it opens up, but because of the wider impact it has.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Under Miliband’s proposal, Ofsted would look at “creativity” within its inspection regime. Schools would only be able to achieve an outstanding grade if they offered a broad and balanced curriculum, including the arts and cultural subjects. Contrast that with the Conservatives’ emphasis on expanding the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-31791485">free school</a> and academies programme and the current secretary of state Nicky Morgan’s insistence on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31079515">times tables and rote learning</a>, and there are clear positions being taken here on the election battleground. </p>
<h2>Creativity vs McDonald’s</h2>
<p>The current debate about the role of the arts, culture and creativity in schools is not new. Ken Robinson’s game-changing 2009 book <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Element.html?id=fb2YEz-oeKoC">The Element</a> begins with a story of a girl who didn’t “fit” into school. This girl goes on to become a world-renowned choreographer through the intervention of local GP who identifies her as a “dancer” and in need of a ballet school rather than her local primary school. </p>
<p>Robinson, particularly through his <a href="https://www.ted.com/speakers/sir_ken_robinson">engaging TED talks</a>, has stressed the importance of creativity in developing young children and counter-posed this against “traditional” forms of schooling. He puts forward a view of schools where the personal talents of children and young people are valued above standardised testing regimes, which he argues is a throw back to an industrial age of factory production lines and therefore inappropriate to the needs of the 21st century.</p>
<p>His argument is not unique. Organisations such as <a href="http://cprtrust.org.uk/">Cambridge Primary Review Trust</a> and the <a href="http://sloweducation.co.uk/">Slow Education movement</a> (started by a teacher at Eton School) have emphasised the importance of enabling all children to fulfil their potential (whatever that might be) and to develop their aptitudes and talents. This is often counter-posed against a system of education currently structured by exams, assessments and measurement – likened to a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/mar/08/uk-education-mimics-the-worst-aspects-of-a-mcdonalds-production-line">MacDonald’s system of schooling</a>.</p>
<h2>Value to the economy</h2>
<p>So creativity is now an important element in debates around the role that schools and the curriculum play in equipping young people for the demands of the 21st century. But also in the role of the arts and creative industries in the broader economy. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/creative-industries-economic-estimates-january-2015">government’s own statistics</a> released in January this year, while the return to job creation has been slow overall, the creative industries have bucked the trend, contributing over £76 billion to the economy while continuing to create jobs at a rate significantly above the rest of the UK. These government estimates show a rosy picture for this sector with rising employment rates, expanding exports and a significant contribution to the economy.</p>
<p>Alongside the government’s economic analysis of the role of creative industries, the University of Warwick, Ken Robinson’s alma mater, launched the report <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/research/warwickcommission/futureculture/finalreport/">Enriching Britain, Culture, Creativity and Growth</a> in February. Again, the arts in the widest sense was emphasised as being key to both the economic prosperity of the country and the way of ensuring a 21st century approach to education.</p>
<p>In an election campaign too close to call, it may be that Labour’s emphasis on the arts, creativity and culture will mark clear blue water between them and the other political parties. Labour does have a history of putting forward arts and culture as key elements of a broad and balanced curriculum for children. In the heady early days of the last Labour government, the 1997 white paper <a href="http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/wp1997/excellence-in-schools.html">Excellence in Schools</a> stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If we are to prepare successfully for the 21st century we will have to more than just improve literacy and numeracy skills. We need a broad, flexible and motivating education that recognises the different talents of all children and delivers excellence for everyone.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Creative use of creativity</h2>
<p>But we need to be wary of seeing “creativity” as an answer to all the nation’s education and economic ills. A critical article by educationalist Howard Gibson from ten years ago raised the stakes around romantic notions of bygone eras that have informed some of the debates around creativity and the arts. In <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8527.2005.00288.x/abstract">What creativity isn’t</a>, Gibson challenged the different definitions of “creative” and the way it is used to justify different and sometimes contradictory views.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Creativity, then, seems to be another of those ill-defined terms. Some use it to attack the centralising tendencies of the government. Some see it in terms of personal identity and self-expression. Others use it to describe a sort of life-style. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Given Gibson’s critique of the way “creativity” can be loosely defined and sometimes all things to all people, it’s no wonder that Miliband’s notion of creativity is one where the arts and culture act as a lever for tackling inequality. We should contrast that with the Conservatives’ emphasis on different types of schools and the expansion of academies and free schools and literacy and numeracy. But there is still time for the creativity debate to begin shaping the election campaign.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38546/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Labour has made a move to put creativity back at the centre of the education agenda in the lead-up to the May general election. In a recent speech, Ed Miliband drew attention to the reduction in arts education…Kate Reynolds, Dean of Education, School of Education and Institute for Education, Bath Spa UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/361172015-01-21T19:09:43Z2015-01-21T19:09:43ZCreativity might be playful – but it’s also work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69602/original/image-20150121-29720-fnh6k0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Creativity 'does not somehow float free of economic gravity, miraculously aloft'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fabio Zenoardo</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The view that art is essentially unworldly and creativity is play has a long history, dating back to the Romantics in the 18th century. According to this view, art must be kept separate from money, lest it be corrupted, and creativity must be unshackled from the machinery of work. The economist John Maynard Keynes perhaps expressed it best when he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everyone, I fancy, recognises that the work of the artist in all its aspects is, of its nature, individual and free, undisciplined, unregimented, uncontrolled. The artist walks where the breath of the spirit blows him. He cannot be told his direction; he does not know it himself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is an appealing construction. The artist is pictured as someone unconstrained by rules or expectations, and free too from need or want. He is pictured, that is, as the kind of gentleman artist that Keynes regularly encountered in his own life as a member of the famous <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/70024/Bloomsbury-group">Bloomsbury set</a>.</p>
<p>Yet there are important forms of creativity for which Keynes’ picture does not hold true at all.</p>
<p>There are two kinds in particular that lie almost at the other end of the spectrum, demanding focus, planning, and resources. They are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Creative works which require a sustained effort over time</p></li>
<li><p>Works whose scope exceeds the personal capacity of the individual author/artist.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Think of Marcel Proust’s seven-volume sequence, Remembrance of Things Past, or the 39 years (and counting) Robert Caro has spent researching and writing his multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, or The Hobbit trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, which employed an estimated 3,000 people over a three year period.</p>
<p>These forms of creative work are characterised by their resource intensity and the high level of collaboration required to bring them off. They are as far from the undisciplined, free-flowing Keynesian model as might be imagined.</p>
<p>They are also fundamental to the great human project of knowledge creation and expression.</p>
<h2>Economic rights in creative works</h2>
<p>Creativity may be playful but it is also work. Since it creates value and consumes resources, we must consider it as a form of economic activity.</p>
<p>Historically the value of creative work has been fixed in the form of intellectual property rights, where the creator is granted a legal right of exclusivity in the work they have created. This gives them an asset around which to organise the people and resources needed to bring the work to fruition and then to market.</p>
<p>To those who favour the Keynesian model of free, uninhibited creativity, the idea of intellectual property may be anathema – at best unnecessary and at worst a dead weight on the free expression of ideas. The American economists Michele Boldrin and David Levine have <a href="http://www.micheleboldrin.com/research/aim.html">described</a> it as “an obnoxious combination of medieval institutions” and called for its abolition.</p>
<p>They have a point. Rights such as copyright have grown far beyond their original legislated form, both in scope and duration. They have also become entrenched in global treaties that make them almost supra-national in force.</p>
<p>On The Conversation recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cash-and-copyright-are-bad-news-for-creativity-34696">Dan Hunter asked</a> what kind of law would encourage creativity, and answers his own question, saying “it wouldn’t look like copyright”.</p>
<p>He goes on to argue that copyright has negative effects for creativity, drawing on research showing artists do their worst work when they are commissioned. Humans, he says, “become creative when they’re internally motivated by curiosity or interest or desire” and become “demotivated” when money is introduced into the equation.</p>
<p>Hunter is right: money cannot describe the whole equation of creativity.</p>
<p>Yet to wish it out of the equation is surely a step too far. </p>
<p>For moneyless creativity is creativity without means. It is creativity with one hand tied behind its back. It is skimping, pulling back, and people going unpaid. It is ambition deferred and vision cut short.</p>
<p>We need to accept that creativity takes place in an economy and makes claims on its resources. It does not somehow float free of economic gravity, miraculously aloft. It may be playful and exuberant and done despite constraints – but it is still work. Very often it is hard work, and it takes time and money and many people working together to pull it off.</p>
<h2>Cashless creativity is elitist</h2>
<p>To argue for a cashless creative economy is not simply wishful thinking, benign and well meaning.</p>
<p>For if there is no money in creativity, then the kinds of creativity I have described become, by default, the privilege of the wealthy – elite pursuits from which most of the third world and many in the first world are excluded.</p>
<p>They become something that rich people do and poor people read about.</p>
<p>It’s the Bloomsbury model all over again: art as properly the province of the upper middle class.</p>
<p><br>
<em>Read other articles in our Creativity series <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/creativity-series">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36117/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Court does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The view that art is essentially unworldly and creativity is play has a long history, dating back to the Romantics in the 18th century. According to this view, art must be kept separate from money, lest…David Court, Subject Leader, Screen Business, Australian Film, Television and Radio SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/364332015-01-19T07:50:06Z2015-01-19T07:50:06ZTriple J is a rare beast, an exemplar for economic policy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69360/original/image-20150119-2756-buocdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">DJ Nina Las Vegas of Triple J, a station taking risks that benefit others. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/City of Sydney</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s a common refrain among the “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wets_and_dries">dries</a>” in any government that arts and cultural policy should set its course by the lights of economic policy, usually competition, growth and innovation policy. Sometimes this is called “neoliberalism”, intended to rally those who don’t like cost-benefit analyses. </p>
<p>Sometimes it is called “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_industries">creative industries</a>”, which was the UK’s New Labour rebranding of the cultural sector so that it might pass these cost-benefit tests. </p>
<p>But sometimes, more rarely, the argument can run the other way, and arts and cultural policy can be an exemplar for economic policy. I want to argue that the ABC youth radio program Triple J, which turns 40 today, is indeed such a rare beast.</p>
<p>Public broadcasting is usually justified by appeal to the <a href="http://www.appliedeconomics.com.au/pubs/reports/abc.htm">economics of market failure</a>, which in this case means some combination of commercial non-viability combined with what economists call “positive externalities”. In the case of radio that usually refers to regional concerns and local content. </p>
<p>Cathy Hope <a href="https://theconversation.com/happy-birthday-triple-j-australian-radios-enfant-terrible-turns-40-36254">gives a good account</a> of the origins and significance of Triple J on The Conversation, emphasising that what was really going on at Double J (what would later become Triple J) was a lot of experimentation, not just of music content, but of formats and themes.</p>
<p>What is going on here is something a bit different from the standard government-filling-in-where-the-private-sector-fails type of argument. That works to explain public broadcasting of regional sports, or Indigenous language programming, but it doesn’t explain Triple J. Instead, what Double J was providing, and Triple J continues to provide, is a peculiar sort of public good, namely: information discovery. </p>
<p>Harvard economists <a href="https://www.sss.ias.edu/files/pdfs/Rodrik/Research/economic-development-self-discovery.pdf">Dani Rodrik and Ricardo Hausmann</a> have written about this in relation to entrepreneurship and economic development, arguing the problem that entrepreneurs face is acquiring information about economic opportunities. (I’ve written about this with colleagues Hasan Bakhshi and Alan Freeman <a href="http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/state_of_uncertainty.pdf">here</a>, and in a previous column <a href="https://theconversation.com/arts-venture-capitalism-why-demand-drives-better-outcomes-31261">here</a>.) </p>
<p>By trying new things, entrepreneurs generate a public good for other entrepreneurs about whether there really is an opportunity in whatever thing they are doing. That means the first entrepreneur bears the cost of figuring out whether there really is an entrepreneurial opportunity or not. </p>
<p>In equilibrium, as we economists like to say, there will be too little entrepreneurial discovery of new ideas, and consequently too little subsequent economic growth and development. Effective economic policy will seek to underwrite that first entrepreneur. </p>
<p>Triple J – 40 years ago today – was that first entrepreneur, working as a public good for the benefit of the rest of the music industry, which could then subsequently adopt (and profit from) all the good ideas it discovered. </p>
<p>So long as Triple J keeps moving forward, continually searching that frontier, continually taking risks and reporting its findings, and not seeking to own its audience as it goes, all the while avoiding capture by internal vested interests, then it is in effect a music and radio discovery machine with spillover benefits for the rest of Australia’s music ecology, including especially the commercial radio and media market. </p>
<p>So happy 40th birthday, Triple J, may you keep doing what you do so well: taking risks and discovering new things that we all might like. And may you always resist the temptation to hold on to the good things you find, but allow them to move freely onto the wider richer plains of the market.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36433/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
It’s a common refrain among the “dries” in any government that arts and cultural policy should set its course by the lights of economic policy, usually competition, growth and innovation policy. Sometimes…Jason Potts, Professor of Economics, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/274202014-06-02T07:40:58Z2014-06-02T07:40:58ZThe internet is made of cats – and you can blame economists<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49968/original/8ym5gwrs-1401687940.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49968/original/8ym5gwrs-1401687940.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49968/original/8ym5gwrs-1401687940.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49968/original/8ym5gwrs-1401687940.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49968/original/8ym5gwrs-1401687940.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49968/original/8ym5gwrs-1401687940.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49968/original/8ym5gwrs-1401687940.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49968/original/8ym5gwrs-1401687940.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">in the bag solutions</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Economics sometimes has surprising applications. One example is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchian%E2%80%93Allen_effect">Alchian-Allen theorem</a>, an observation that came from a footnote in an economics textbook in the 1960s about how quality demand is affected by transport costs. </p>
<p>You may think this has nothing to do with you, but it does, because it explains why you consume so much internet animal hilarity and so little Shakespearean seriousness. It comes down to economics. Seriously. Smart people make these choices and it is fascinating to understand why.</p>
<p>The Allen-Alchian theorem explains why places with high-quality produce (Allen and Alchian had in mind apples in Seattle, which is where apples come from in the US) nevertheless do not always get to consume that same high quality (they pointed to the market for apples in New York city, where no apples grow) because of the relative costs faced by consumers in each case (for New York consumers, a high-quality apple, once you account for transportation costs, was actually relatively cheaper than a low-quality apple compared to relative prices in Seattle). Hence the market sent the high-quality apples to New York.</p>
<p>You’re still with me? It’s all about relative costs. When you move something, or impose any fixed cost, the higher-quality item always wins, because it now has a lower relative cost compared to the lower-quality item. </p>
<p>The interesting idea is that this also applies in reverse – namely when we remove a fixed cost. The internet does this: it removes a cost of transport, and it does so equally for high quality and low quality content. Following the Allen-Alchian theorem, this should mean the opposite. Low-quality items are now relatively cheaper and high-quality items are now relatively more expensive. This idea was first explained by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Create-Your-Own-Economy-Prosperity/dp/B007F868CO">Tyler Cowen</a>, but the upshot is that the internet is <a href="http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/779">made of cats</a>. </p>
<p>I want to give you some time to go away and read that paper, and maybe peruse the <a href="http://www.media-culture.org.au/">entire journal</a>. This video of cats and vacuum cleaners should make for perfect background music:</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YwOQKlVZZsc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Done that? OK, let’s continue. The internet isn’t really made of cats, obviously, it’s made of HTTP-HTML. But why do we choose so many cats?</p>
<p>The internet lowers the cost of “transport” for every idea, high and low quality alike. It’s the opposite of the apples situation. It means that low quality apples are now relatively cheaper. It means that cats-doing-funny-things is now relatively cheaper than say German Opera. Economics insists that when demand curves look like this we can expect more cat watching, and less German opera watching.</p>
<p>This theorem means that we expect a lower quality, “bittier” consumption to proliferate on the internet (as a technology that lowers transport costs of high-quality and low-quality ideas alike). Which is what we observe. So that’s a win for micro-economic demand theory.</p>
<p>But is that what’s just happened? Have we all just gotten dumber? </p>
<p>The case for no is because this bittier world is now the new condition for entrepreneurs to seek to discover new ideas and angles. Shorter attention plays out in particular ways and different ideas are required to capture it. This also means more concentrated attention.</p>
<p>It’s unclear what the winning formula will be for arts and cultural producers. The best bet is probably that we should try a lot of things and just see what works. It’s old school, but it’s also increasingly the cheapest option as the Allen-Alchian theorem explains.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27420/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Economics sometimes has surprising applications. One example is the Alchian-Allen theorem, an observation that came from a footnote in an economics textbook in the 1960s about how quality demand is affected…Jason Potts, Professor of Economics, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/253932014-04-09T01:38:09Z2014-04-09T01:38:09ZTaxi apps work – so why does NSW want to regulate them?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45894/original/z68swn5s-1396999783.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New models are improving the way passengers source taxis.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mugley/2204030518/in/photolist-4mLeub-daDGs3-dmKweg-a2wFSt-6zsXM-z69KX-4wbubP-7kt5U-5Mane6-7kt6B-36ddwQ-7uZtkP-jf1KX-7r7qF-7r9Qi-7r9tP-7r9uj-7r7rP-7r9si-7kt58-69wTVx-7Gn2B-7Gn6m-7Gn5A-7Gn25-7GmZM-7r7pS-7r7re-7uZrXM-7uZsDB-7Gn3N-7r9te-7r9sA-7r9Pp-6jNtJy-brK8T2-EqA1p-aLr4T2-brK8Pn-b6CMP-7kt84-7kt9N-7kt91-7r9U8-7r9wT-7r9Vv-7r9QZ-7r9Sf-7r9vJ-7kt7s">Jes</a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>I don’t know what I did, but I got a message from them saying that I could no longer use Uber to pick up passengers. They reckon I didn’t turn up to a job, but I was just late because I picked up another fare along the way (Sydney Taxi Driver, March 17, 2014).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The way we are catching taxis is changing, and mobile apps such as <a href="http://www.ingogo.mobi/">ingogo</a>, <a href="https://www.uber.com/">Uber</a> and <a href="http://gocatch.com/">goCatch</a> are driving the changes. The new taxi apps work to combat the inconsistencies of the taxi industry and bypass the centralised process of booking and paying.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.xconomy.com/new-york/2014/01/24/rideshare-app-bandwagon-gets-around-legally-in-the-nyc-battleground/">Research in the United States</a> suggests apps make the taxi industry more efficient. But <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/uber-and-gocatch-are-set-to-be-regulated-in-new-south-wales-but-what-does-that-mean-2014-4">the NSW government announced yesterday</a> that it plans to regulate this “cowboy” industry. Drivers and passengers are shaking their heads, wondering what ridesharing regulation will involve.</p>
<h2>Creative economy success stories</h2>
<p>The two Australian entrepreneurs who established goCatch, Ned Moorfield and Andrew Campbell, did so when they twigged to problems with centralised booking and payment for cabs. In 2011 they received a A$250,000 innovation grant from the NSW Government for innovative mobile phone projects to help develop goCatch. </p>
<p>They partnered with Microsoft, Nokia, Blackberry, NSW Taxi Drivers Association, PayPal and Google and in October 2012 <a href="http://www.gocatch.com/home/about/">they launched goCatch</a>. Some 16,000 of Australia’s 70,000 taxi drivers are now signed up to the service, a number that is still increasing.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45896/original/pk8qzjrh-1396999967.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45896/original/pk8qzjrh-1396999967.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45896/original/pk8qzjrh-1396999967.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45896/original/pk8qzjrh-1396999967.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45896/original/pk8qzjrh-1396999967.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45896/original/pk8qzjrh-1396999967.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45896/original/pk8qzjrh-1396999967.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45896/original/pk8qzjrh-1396999967.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kyota</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The application enables passengers to broadcast their request to nearby taxis via their geo-located position. The passenger monitors how many drivers have seen the job. If the request is not accepted because of high demand or location, the passenger can offer the driver a tip as an incentive. </p>
<p>When the job has been accepted, both passenger and driver can see each other’s location on a real-time map, and can directly communicate via their shared phone numbers. The passenger has the option to finalise payment via PayPal, and when the journey is complete, both driver and passenger rate the transaction. goCatch takes a fee to facilitate the service.</p>
<p>Recently, James Packer, SEEK co-founder Paul Bassat, along with members of the Limberman and Kahlbetzer families, <a href="http://www.afr.com/p/technology/packer_bassat_back_gocatch_app_to_ImuFchCXjuEwXr9NTQgldN">invested A$3 million</a> into the goCatch service. This investment not only strengthens goCatch’s market share, it also indicates a market shift. </p>
<p>Users benefit from a self-regulating service that operates across the existing transportation infrastructure. Apps work much more efficiently than the heavily regulated, inefficient centralised offering, that is, calling for a cab. </p>
<p>This, of course, contradicts the role of the existing taxi councils and peak body, which have lobbied to restrict and regulate ridesharing apps.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0_amLTc_zIc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Introducing goCatch.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Australian Taxi Industry Association</h2>
<p>The taxi industry is a highly centralised sector of the public transport industry. In Australia alone there are 20,658 taxis performing more than 172 million jobs each year, and moving more than 283 million passengers. <a href="http://www.atia.com.au/images/2013%20state%20%20territory%20taxi%20statistics.pdf">This adds up</a> to approximately A$3.94 billion revenue. </p>
<p>Of those jobs, Moorfield and Campbell claim that as many as 20,000 transactions are missed by either taxis failing to arrive or passengers disappearing.</p>
<p>In the recent <a href="http://www.taxiindustryinquiry.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/84094/Final-Report-Summary.pdf">Taxi Industry Inquiry</a> presided over by former ACCC chair Allan Fels, it was revealed that the taxi industry should be concentrating its efforts on improving services for people with disabilities, as well as driver quality, taxi availability, safety, fare structure, booking services, and taxi availability. </p>
<p>The inquiry also concluded that “the existing regulatory regime governing taxis … is overly complex and prescriptive, and imposes unnecessary costs on the industry”.</p>
<p>The Australian Taxi Industry consists of one federal peak body, the Australian Taxi Industry Association (ATIA), with a collection of state members including NSW Taxi Council, Victorian Taxi Association, Taxi Councils of Western Australia, South Australia, and Queensland, Canberra Taxi Industry Association, and The Taxi Council of the Northern Territory. The ATIA <a href="http://www.atia.com.au/agenda">describes</a> its agenda in the following terms:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The ATIA will continue to play a leading role in promoting the public benefits delivered by regulated taxi markets. Well regulated taxi markets have been shown by empirical research to consistently outperform their deregulated counterparts on the important metrics of safety, pricing and service. While the threat remains from interests pushing hypothetical merits of open entry markets, the ATIA will strongly pursue its industry advocacy role using facts based lobbying. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Passengers</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45899/original/ry4t9kyn-1397000330.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45899/original/ry4t9kyn-1397000330.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45899/original/ry4t9kyn-1397000330.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45899/original/ry4t9kyn-1397000330.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45899/original/ry4t9kyn-1397000330.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45899/original/ry4t9kyn-1397000330.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45899/original/ry4t9kyn-1397000330.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/45899/original/ry4t9kyn-1397000330.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rob and Stephanie Levy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Taxi apps are improving the way passengers source taxis and ensure fares are correct. Most of all, they reassure us that our taxi will arrive on time to connect us with our imminent flight. The overall experience of those who use ridesharing apps to travel in taxis is generally positive. This is the creative economy at its best: the market sorts out the supply and demand to suit the stakeholders. </p>
<p>All this raises the question: why do we need to regulate a system that is working?</p>
<p>The NSW Government was wise to the possibilities of goCatch when it gave the company an innovation grant. It’s a shame it is now moving to inhibit goCatch and other similar taxi apps through regulation. </p>
<p>With both passengers and drivers happy, surely a regulatory light touch, or even deregulation or self-regulation, is a better solution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathon Hutchinson receives funding from the Australian Research Council to conduct research on a three-year Discovery project, Moving Media: Mobile internet and new policy modes. He is affiliated with the University of Sydney.</span></em></p>I don’t know what I did, but I got a message from them saying that I could no longer use Uber to pick up passengers. They reckon I didn’t turn up to a job, but I was just late because I picked up another…Jonathon Hutchinson, Lecturer in Online Media, Researcher on ARC Discovery project, Moving Media: Mobile Internet and New Policy Modes, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/231142014-02-12T03:28:55Z2014-02-12T03:28:55ZABS data suggests ‘cultural and creative’ won’t save Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41310/original/b8vx4x3c-1392163783.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Culture is more than the subsidised arts and GDP statistics. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">red5standingby</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The release of new <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/5271.0?OpenDocument">Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data</a> on the contribution of cultural and creative activities to the Australian economy represents an ever more sophisticated grasp of employment, contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_value_added">Gross Value Added</a> (GVA) and various other economic indicators for this sector. It is the first time this data has been collected and reported by the ABS and it is to be welcomed. </p>
<p>But does it tell us anything new? Not much, I’d say.</p>
<p>First, it establishes the “cultural and creative sector” at A$65.5 billon and 5.6% of GVA in 2008-9 – a pretty respectable contributor to the Australian economy. (The contribution to GDP calculated on a satellite accounts basis is even more solid: A$86.7 billion.)</p>
<p>It is around half that of mining, financial and insurance services, and rental hiring and real estate services – the three biggest contributors. The 2008-9 National Accounts <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/allprimarymainfeatures/865EB70D488187DDCA257BEB00112BAA?opendocument">show the input of the creative and cultural sector</a> is double agriculture, forestry and fishing; a couple of points behind construction; and bigger than education and training.</p>
<p>The dollar value again highlights a message that has been sent to governments since the mid-1980s: “culture” is more than the subsidised arts – it’s growing, and it demand serious consideration from both local and national government. </p>
<p>In general, the arts get the big money (and they are part of the sector, undoubtedly) but the cultural and <a href="https://theconversation.com/go-on-then-what-are-the-creative-industries-18958">creative industries</a> (which generate wealth and jobs, as glossed by the federal government <a href="http://arts.gov.au/creative">here</a>) get the rhetoric – and the budget cuts.</p>
<p>Second, employing the term “cultural and creative sector” deals with the persistent dispute between “cultural” or “creative” industries by lumping them together (whereby the contribution is A$78.8 billion GDP) and reporting separately (the cultural sector accounts for A$50.1 billion of GDP). “Cultural” includes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>activities which communicate symbolic meaning (e.g. beliefs, values, traditions), require human creativity as an input, and potentially contain intellectual property, whereas “creative” generally refers to activities for which human creativity is a particularly significant input.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The A$30 billion difference between these two figures is mainly accounted for by the:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>creative segment containing the Computer System Design and Related Services industry, and the manufacturing, wholesaling and retailing industries for clothing and footwear products. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>That is, as has been constantly claimed since the UK government <a href="http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/42872_Flew.pdf">invented “creative industries”</a> in 1998, the inclusion of software design inflates the GDP and employment figures by a half – and is a ruse to give the creative industries sector more economic clout.</p>
<p>Equally, when the expansion to include “creative input” results in just computer design and various retail and manufacturing sectors, it also confirms what the critics have long argued: “creativity” is a term that could apply to almost any of the industries in the national classification list. </p>
<p>That it does not – information, finance and education are just some of those on separate lists – indicates the redundancy of the term “creative” as a reliable descriptor of the sector.</p>
<p>It is also worth bearing in mind that the contribution of the cultural and creative sectors to the economy is just over half that of manufacturing. Central to the narrative around the creative industries is that they represent the new knowledge-based economy set to replace the utilitarian, material-processing industries of the past. </p>
<p>Not on this count: manufacture and mining represent a fifth of GVA as opposed to a twentieth for the creative industries. Don’t give up your day job, Australia. (Further comparisons are made under the header “Industry Comparisons” <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/5271.0Main%20Features32008-09?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=5271.0&issue=2008-09&num=&view=">here</a>.)</p>
<p>The ABS report also counts volunteers and non-market activities, which contribute A$800 million – or 10% to the GDP figures of the cultural and creative sector. This is a welcome addition but fails to grasp the extent and importance of this kind of free labour for the creative and cultural economy. </p>
<p>In Australia, the <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6281.0/">2007 ABS survey of Work in Selected Cultural and Leisure Activities</a> found that between 2004 and 2007 there had been a 30.2% increase in the total number of Australians engaged in cultural work; but the percentage increase in the number involved in “unpaid work” was more than three-times that of those involved in “some paid work”. That is, though it does not show up on the statistics, unpaid work is now more or less a structural condition of creative labour.</p>
<p>The report uses <a href="http://www.businessandeconomics.mq.edu.au/contact_the_faculty/all_fbe_staff/david_throsby">Australian economist David Throsby</a>’s key distinguishing characteristic of the cultural sector as “communicating symbolic meaning”. It is crucial to know how much this sector contributes in dollars; but the increasing sophistication of collection only comes up with levels of GVA and employment established over 15 years ago. </p>
<p>I’d suggest that the line of argumentation so dear to many in the creative industries lobby – that these are the industries of the future, driving innovation and global competitive advantage – has now run out of steam. </p>
<p>These industries deliver culture, meaning, pleasure and knowledge about ourselves and the world in ways that are never going to be captured by GDP statistics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23114/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin O'Connor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The release of new Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data on the contribution of cultural and creative activities to the Australian economy represents an ever more sophisticated grasp of employment…Justin O'Connor, Professor of Communications and Cultural Economy, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/217492014-02-09T19:06:15Z2014-02-09T19:06:15ZHigh rents aren’t hip: the contradictions of the ‘creative city’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40996/original/bscyy23b-1391746392.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The doubling and tripling of rents is not "hip", it’s a problem.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">tayser82</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent <a href="http://thempreport.com.au/2014/01/23/australian-homes-among-worlds-most-dear-fitch-report/">reports</a> have confirmed what many already know: the cost of housing in Australian cities is among the highest in the world. </p>
<p>The growth rate in Australian property prices over the last 15 years is the biggest sustained increase recorded anywhere. Australia also has the highest debt-to-income ratio – <a href="https://theconversation.com/renting-for-life-housing-shift-requires-rethink-of-renters-rights-20538">encouraged by generous tax incentives to the middle and upwards classes to invest in property</a> – meaning that as more households commit more of their incomes to mortgage repayments, so prices continue to rise.</p>
<h2>High prices push out the arts</h2>
<p>Sydney is <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/sydney-melbourne-house-prices-lead-strong-growth-in-january-20140203-31w0u.html#ixzz2sQTNrouT">most expensive</a>, with a median dwelling price of A$660,000, followed by Melbourne with a median of A$553,000. </p>
<p>That these two cities lead the field is not surprising: Sydney is Australia’s financial capital, and Melbourne is commonly positioned as <a href="https://theconversation.com/melbourne-the-worlds-most-liveable-city-not-exactly-17677">the nation’s most liveable</a> and cultural capital. </p>
<p>Melbourne’s arts and live music scenes are indeed internationally renowned, and Sydney is now trying to revive its long-gone music scene, having taken guidance from Melbourne researchers on <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-live-music-scene-needs-a-live-music-policy-20140">the development of a Live Music Action Plan</a>.</p>
<p>Melbourne is not quite the exemplar it could be, however, and is already falling victim to its own success. In recognition of this, the Victorian state government has established <a href="http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/4417-live-music-roundtable-established.html">a live music roundtable</a>; and the inner-city councils of Yarra, Port Phillip and Melbourne have set up their own live music taskforces. Each is attempting to respond to the effects of the increasing property prices and residential population on local arts and cultural activities.</p>
<p>My research team has tracked the location of Melbourne’s arts and music scenes over the past 20 years. </p>
<p>The two maps below show the location of independent and community-based (ie. non-commercial) cinema, visual arts, performance and live music (for elaboration on these definitions see our recent paper <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10286632.2013.788162#.UvQXhWS1aIg">here</a>) in 1991 and 2011. </p>
<p>The pattern they show is the pattern of gentrifying cities all over the world: low-yielding land uses get pushed into areas where land values are lower, as high-end residential and office buildings – the “highest and best” uses in most market economies – proliferate.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40988/original/nzxgkscw-1391743480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40988/original/nzxgkscw-1391743480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40988/original/nzxgkscw-1391743480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40988/original/nzxgkscw-1391743480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40988/original/nzxgkscw-1391743480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40988/original/nzxgkscw-1391743480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40988/original/nzxgkscw-1391743480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40988/original/nzxgkscw-1391743480.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 1.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41003/original/h4h7bnpm-1391747974.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41003/original/h4h7bnpm-1391747974.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41003/original/h4h7bnpm-1391747974.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41003/original/h4h7bnpm-1391747974.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41003/original/h4h7bnpm-1391747974.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41003/original/h4h7bnpm-1391747974.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41003/original/h4h7bnpm-1391747974.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41003/original/h4h7bnpm-1391747974.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Figure 2.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The displacement of the venues that host these activities from the wealthier south-eastern suburbs is expected. Interestingly, they are not fleeing to the city fringe where prices are much lower, but clustering where they can in the inner-city or heading north. The two intense clusters on the 2011 Melbourne map are in the CBD and Collingwood/Fitzroy, and the northward trajectories are in Brunswick/Coburg and Northcote/Preston. </p>
<p>It is these areas that have the greatest diversity in property prices in inner-Melbourne – some of the most expensive, to be sure, but also some of the cheapest and, importantly, smallest spaces available in the inner-city. The fact that these venues are not (yet) relocating to the outskirts is due partly to the need for centrality and good public transport for their audiences, and partly to the residential populations in these areas that largely support the presence of sometimes loud and messy activities.</p>
<p>The arts and live music scenes in Melbourne in 2011 (and now) are still strong and the number of small venues is increasing, but they are also increasingly precarious. At their core are the independent artists and musicians whose relative freedom to experiment – and to continue to feed more commercial or mainstream culture – has been sustained by low rents and the capacity to live relatively cheaply. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/79108/Do_you_really_expect_to_get_paid.pdf">2010 report</a> by the Australia Council for the Arts shows that the financial position of practicing artists over the last 20 years has worsened. Titled <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/79108/Do_you_really_expect_to_get_paid.pdf">Do you really expect to get paid?</a>, the report shows that very few artists in Australia earn high incomes and most earn very low incomes. Most earn from their chosen profession less than A$10,000 a year.</p>
<h2>The pressures of gentrification</h2>
<p>Gentrification is placing all sorts of pressures on arts and cultural venues, and on the people who work and play in, and live around and support them. </p>
<p>Those inner south and eastern areas on the 2011 map of Melbourne that are being emptied of their arts and music scenes, and areas such as Docklands that never had (recognised) cultural activity and still don’t, were subject to urban regeneration strategies – those market or state-led economic development strategies so often inspired by notions of the “creative city”. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40993/original/ygy8r672-1391744760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40993/original/ygy8r672-1391744760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40993/original/ygy8r672-1391744760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40993/original/ygy8r672-1391744760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40993/original/ygy8r672-1391744760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40993/original/ygy8r672-1391744760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40993/original/ygy8r672-1391744760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">1llustr4t0r.com/Flickr</span></span>
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<p>Intended to decrease vacancy rates and increase land values, these strategies bring revenue to local governments and capital gains to landowners, essentially by displacing lower than best economic uses – including low-cost housing and low- and non-profit cultural uses.</p>
<p>While lifestyle and property media features gush over the “hipness” of the latest district discovery, the scene tries to hang on or moves on. The doubling and tripling of rents is not “hip”, it’s a problem.</p>
<p>The “creative city” is a contradiction other cities have been grappling with for years. Local governments in San Francisco, New York, Portland, Amsterdam, Berlin and Hamburg, among others, unable or unwilling to curb gentrification, are at least ensuring that some of the financial returns are invested in rent controls, capital works and purchases for (sub)cultural uses, and more cautious and egalitarian urban regeneration programs.</p>
<p>Few Australian governments have come to terms with the depth of the dilemma, but some in Melbourne and Sydney are making a good start. </p>
<p>Now they must accord a place to independent arts and cultural uses in their planning policies, their zoning designations and their regeneration strategies. </p>
<p>Most importantly, they must make investment decisions not just in the interests of culture, but of those low-income people who put the social, cultural and economic diversity into gentrifying cities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21749/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The project from which this piece comes was ARC-funded.</span></em></p>Recent reports have confirmed what many already know: the cost of housing in Australian cities is among the highest in the world. The growth rate in Australian property prices over the last 15 years is…Kate Shaw, Future Fellow, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/217822014-01-09T19:07:09Z2014-01-09T19:07:09ZFrom manufacturing’s ashes a creative economy could rise<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38575/original/5rrhmsjj-1389074547.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The right policy settings will drive Australia toward a creative economy that produces knowledge and information.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Gorbould</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>General Motors Holden’s decision to pull the pin on its Melbourne manufacturing plant spurred renewed <a href="http://theconversation.com/moving-on-holden-closure-shows-we-need-a-new-growth-agenda-21360">debate</a> around government-subsidised industry sectors.</p>
<p>But instead of throwing money into a flailing Australian manufacturing industry that simply cannot compete with its economically lean Asian neighbours, the Australian government needs to implement a long-term creative economy plan. </p>
<p>That means directing subsidies toward technology design and development in the manufacturing industry, and building a creative economy that generates knowledge useful to the manufacturing efforts of other nations.</p>
<p>The demise of manufacturing in developed economies like Australia also questions the impending changes in the labour industry, as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/04/robots-future-society-drones">“the robots take over”</a>. But what if Australia’s industry subsidies and research priorities were fashioned to help us become a world leader not in car manufacturing, but in the design of the computer systems inside the cars?</p>
<p>Some economists, like The Conversation columnist Jason Potts, are <a href="https://theconversation.com/youve-got-7-billion-so-how-will-you-fund-the-arts-18839">calling for</a> industry funding from the government to “be more like venture capital” and “fund the demand and not the supply”, to promote innovative market thinking and outcomes. In this capacity, government funding should not take the shape of bailout packages for dying industries, but should instead concentrate on the development of <em>new</em> skills and industries.</p>
<p>So: how can the Australian government invest money post-haste into developing the careers of those who will be on the front line in ten to 20 years time?</p>
<h2>Funding the future</h2>
<p>Recently, <a href="http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=752502&ticker=NSANY">Carlos Ghosn</a>, the French-Lebanese-Brazilian CEO of Renault-Nissan, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/21/business/renault-nissan-ceo-wants-driverless/">predicted</a> that driverless cars will be on our roads by 2020, making the science fiction <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrxyr1CjiSM">driving scenes</a> of the film Minority Report a not-too-distant reality.</p>
<p>We already have the beginnings of driverless car technology available now, beyond the cruise control fitted in all new cars. Some more expensive models have highway assist that not only controls our speed, but also our road position through a combination of GPS, radar and camera sensors. It has also been suggested cars will be able to perform lane changes by the year 2017, with some cars already gossipping with each other to alert your car of a sudden stop by another automobile three or four cars ahead.</p>
<p>Google is investing enormous amounts of time and money into developing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car">driverless car technology</a>. (Some say their aim to help us integrate our home, travel and office lives into the same activity; others argue it is to free up hours that could be spent using Google products).</p>
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<p>Australian policy controls should be set to allow Australia to benefit from this new wave of technology. General Motors Holden’s pull out follows the recent Mitsubishi and Nissan plant closures and places pressure on Toyota as the remaining manufacturer within Australia. A bailout package from the Australian government would not have made any difference.</p>
<p>It is time we move the Australian manufacturing debate beyond, as Labor leader Bill Shorten probed, whether the Prime Minister knew Holden planned to close. We should instead be holding a more nuanced discussion of how can Australia look towards a more prosperous relationship with these international conglomerate manufacturing entities.</p>
<h2>Local talent</h2>
<p>In November last year, Ford Australia hosted an <a href="http://mobileinternetresearch.net/?p=244">Applink Hackathon</a> in Melbourne, where software developers came from all over the nation to hack the latest operating system to be launched in the entire Ford range over the coming years.</p>
<p>The hackathon was an impressive two-day display of Australia’s information ecology, as amateur enthusiasts through to professional software programmers came together to advance the safety and functionality of the forthcoming Ford range, which uses the <a href="http://www.ford.com/technology/sync/">Microsoft Sync</a> operating system.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38633/original/3bkwv95s-1389144691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38633/original/3bkwv95s-1389144691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38633/original/3bkwv95s-1389144691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38633/original/3bkwv95s-1389144691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38633/original/3bkwv95s-1389144691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38633/original/3bkwv95s-1389144691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38633/original/3bkwv95s-1389144691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Ford invited software developers to hack their car computer operating system to make it more useful.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris H</span></span>
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<p>Ideas presented on the day included an integration with the MYOB accounting software system for tradespeople, a fire detection and communication application, and a locative application that enabled the user to find service stations and monitor fuel pricing.</p>
<p>The concept of a hack is not new in any regard. However, the idea of a hack for a car operating system could tell us something about a possible future role for Australia in car manufacturing that does not revolve around factory workers on Henry Ford assembly lines. Rather, a potential collaboration exists in the knowledge economy for the design and development of the systems that control automobiles.</p>
<p>A healthy political discussion then, should be focused on how an Australian education system could be bolstered to accommodate more creative designers and developers.</p>
<p>Sadly, this discussion does not help the families and communities of those affected by the jobs lost as part of General Motors Holden global restructure, and our deepest sympathies go out to those individuals, families and communities.</p>
<p>What this discussion may promote is an avenue for policy makers and creative economy thinkers to pursue, and is a sobering reminder in the prevention of future hardships of manufacturing workers as the Australian market evolves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21782/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathon Hutchinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>General Motors Holden’s decision to pull the pin on its Melbourne manufacturing plant spurred renewed debate around government-subsidised industry sectors. But instead of throwing money into a flailing…Jonathon Hutchinson, Lecturer in Online Media, Researcher on ARC Discovery project, Moving Media: Mobile Internet and New Policy Modes, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.