Global aspirations and local talent: the development of creative higher education in Singapore

Abstract

This paper explores higher education development and policy shifts in Singapore over the last decade, within a landscape of an increasingly globalised creative economy and international cultural policy transfer. Using qualitative interviews with key players in policy and higher education institutions, the paper aims to explain the push and pull factors behind investment in creative higher education. It considers the emerging dynamics and diverse patterns, embedded in a society where higher education interactions with economic development have a long history and pragmatic rationale. While still in the early days of these investments, the paper argues that there are some global policy lessons to be learnt from the case of Singapore and the role that higher education can play in developing a creative economy, while striving to overcome issues of over-supply and innate vulnerability of creative careers.

The promises of creative industry higher education: an analysis of university prospectuses in Malaysia

“…Recent work by Gilmore and Comunian (2014;2016) has highlighted the importance of considering the 'crossroads' between creative industries, HE institutions and public policies (2016: 6). This journal recently presented studies of the career trajectories of creative industry graduates (Bridgstock and Cunningham, 2016), accounts of the problem with art schools (Brook, 2016;Banks and Oakley, 2016) and, most usefully for us, considered CI policy and practice in Singapore (Comunian and Ooi, 2016). Our work complements this emergent field of research with its focus on how CI degrees are promoted in the context of economic growth policies.…”

“…Whilst researchers increasingly, and rightly, look beyond Western Europe, there is comparatively little English-language research into creative industries in Asia (with exceptions including Ross 2006; Driscoll and Morris 2014). Florida's (2002) "creative city" ideas have been adopted and adapted for the different political and social environments in Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere in Asia (Yue, 2006;Kong and O'Connor, 2009;Comunian and Ooi, 2016). However, there remain important questions to be asked about the relationship between creative industries and HE in Asia, about the interplay between economic, educational and cultural policies in different national contexts, and about how students are persuaded to study for creative industry degrees:…”

Creative artists, career patterns and career theory: insights from the Australian context

“…There is now a considerable body of literature that explores the careers of artists, in terms of recognition that they are very different to typical mainstream careers in other disciplines (Comunian & Ooi, 2015). Stohs (1990, p. 213) refers to the fine artist as ‘atypical and … one who persists with an unconventional lifestyle and career pattern [which] requires an unusual person’.…”

“…Throsby (2007) evidences the now well-established fact that many artists undertake non-creative work in order to sustain their preferred creative work, while it is also evidenced in the literature that jobs are relatively scarce in the arts and many practitioners are required to undertake multiple job holdings and create their own employment opportunities. For example, Comunian and Ooi (2015, p. 69) discuss the recent situation in Singapore and how graduates must create their own jobs rather than expect to find them, citing negative connotations of a creative career in Singapore and the fact ‘jobs are scarce and are not always lucrative’. Bridgstock and Cunningham (2015) also refer to general underemployment and the precariousness of creative degrees, as well as a significant oversupply of creative labour compared to market opportunities, the latter also endorsed recently by Banks and Oakley (2016).…”

Higher Education and the Creative Economy: Creative Graduates, Knowledge Transfer and Regional Impact Debates

“…While this paper has only sketched the key dynamics between HE and emerging creative economies, further qualitative research is needed to depict detailed talent attraction and retention processes that allow us to reaffirm the importance of creative HE for nurturing city creativity. Further international comparisons and understanding, especially as the CCIs discourse becomes increasingly globalised, are also needed (Comunian and Ooi ). In conclusion, we highlight the following three key policy issues and areas for further research to move this debate forward: the importance of communities of practice and the repositioning of practitioners and students at their core, the importance of (local) stakeholder management and engagement within the dispersed bottom–up approach to shared/third spaces and the emergence of a community agenda within the HE and creative economy debate.…”