Year: 2004
Type: article
Abstract: Development, Industry, Distribution', issue editors Lisanne Gibson and Tom O'Regan identified 'a shift in the underlying principles governingcontemporaryculturalpolicy'.Of 'particular importancein this refocusing', they argued, were 'the two distinct but related notions of "cultural development" and the "creative industries'" (Gibson and O'Regan, 2002: 5).That issue interrogated the then emerging creative industries policy discourses and assayed some of their consequences for existing formulations of cultural and media policy.This issue, edited by Tom O'Regan, Lisanne Gibson and Paul Jeffcutt, is MIA's second 'creative industries' issue.It begins where the previous issue left off, with its tantalising suggestion that 'effective cultural policy-making needs to be premised on a dual engagementwith the global conditionsof cultural practice and consumption and the actual conditions of local cultural production and consumption' (Gibson and O'Regan, 2002: 8).Concepts of 'cultural cluster' and 'cultural network' have been the conceptual tools through which policy-makers and theorists have sought to manage and account for creative practice and industry in ways which encompass both local and global conditions of production and consumption.The articles in this volume analyse, account for, describe, advocate and critique a variety of articulations and applications of 'cultural cluster' and 'cultural network', and in so doing both provide a current snapshot of contemporary policy and theory on the creative industries, and suggest future directions.A number of things have changed in the time which has passed between these two issues.First, the discursive relations between culture and the economy have become more ensconced and have been operationalised in particular ways.Creative city frameworks have been adopted by local, city and state governmentsparticularly in the development of cultural precincts which aim both to be economically successful (as tourist precincts and/or creative industrial hotspots, for instance), and to provide enhanced cultural access and effect social cohesion.Creative cluster developmenthas become an explicitpolicy of economicdevelopment portfolios at the regional, state and national levels, as well as a grail for planners.Cultural and media policy studies have had to play catch-up with analytical frameworks and vocabulary, stressing 'value chains', 'inputs' and 'outputs', and the like.In short, creative industries have become a 'dominant' configuration in regional and national economic development.Our position in assembling this issue is to describe, analyse and in some cases challenge the cluster development and creative industries frameworks currently being advanced.Our aim in doing so is not to posit a principled criticism of them for confusing culture and economics (or selling out culture to economics).Rather, No.
Source: Media International Australia
Authors: Tom O'Regan, Lisanne Gibson, Paul Jeffcutt
Language: English
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4237787205