Artists and policy: a case study of the creative industries in north-eastern Australia

Abstract

Artists play a major role in the cultural fabric of society. They operate within the creative industries, a sector of activity widely accepted as significant to developed and developing economies. While there is a substantive body of literature relevant to the nature of policy-making as applied to the arts, research that explores the views of practitioners at the grass roots level is limited, and particularly so in regional north-eastern Australia, an area with significant challenges caused by isolation and distance. This article contextualises the issues of relevance in relation to artists' engagement with policy, after which it presents survey and interview data obtained from those working in the field. The findings reveal the influence of isolation in north-eastern Australia, not only in a geographic sense, but in terms of the number of artists who see themselves as disconnected from policy, arts and cultural strategy.

Building the northern Australia vision through creative industries: the case of Cairns in far north Queensland

“…The majority of these various data, reported elsewhere (Daniel 2013a(Daniel , 2013b, reveal the following general principles about the creative industries sector in Cairns:…”

“…While Cairns' reputation and economy is heavily influenced by its tourism sector, there is also significant creative industries activity and output, although there is minimal extant research on the sector's contribution to the regional economy and hence a significant gap in knowledge (Daniel 2013a(Daniel , 2013b. In a recent study, Welters et al (2011) identified that in 2006, 17.7% of the Cairns population were members of the creative class, which was comparable with other similar-sized regional centres in Australia including Townsville, Geelong and Wollongong.…”

The role of institutional relationships in shaping the career development of emerging artists

“…Publications exist on artists' support in general, including the need for assistance; for example, financial aid to help them to sustain their careers (e.g. Cliché et al , 2001; Arts Council England, 2006; Hellmanzik, 2009; Throsby and Zednik, 2011; Glinkowski, 2012; Daniel, 2014; UNESCO, 1980). Portfolio working, where artists combine working in the sector with paid employment elsewhere, is often the reality for many artists (Fenwick, 2006).…”

‘Demand’ for culture and ‘allied’ industries: policy insights from multi-site creative economy research

“…Foundational studies based in sociology and cultural geography focused on single sites -including for example Waitt and Gibson's (2009) ground-breaking work on the importance of conceptualising the creative economy in place, using their home city of Wollongong as a case study. This expanding literature base is beginning to build in comparative and sub-sectoral studies, including for example on the role of the creative industries in the development of remote far northern Australia (Daniel, Fleischmann, and Welters 2016;Daniel 2014;2016) and the creative systems at play in the Hunter region north of Sydney (McIntyre et al 2020), and an emerging body of literature on how music and other festivals galvanise communities, supporting social cohesion and creative economy development (Derrett 2009;Duruz, Luckman, and Bishop 2011;Edwards 2012;Gibson and Connell 2012;Gibson and Gordon 2018;Gibson and Connell 2015;Luckman et al 2008;Ward and O'Regan 2014). In quantitative studies of the creative industries in Australian regions, results point to higher creative employment precariousness outside of capital cities -creative employment is a predictor of business numbers but not of job creation in southeastern regional Australia (Argent et al 2013), and the relationship between creative employment and economic growth is weaker and creative incomes are lower in regional Australia than in its capital cities .…”