Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

The Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation

Excerpt from the Director's Report

Professor Stuart Cunningham
Director
March 2008

Download this report in full   [PDF file size: 1.82 MB]   REF: PAP20071201CC

In our application for the Centre of Excellence in 2004, we argued that Australia is well known for cultural inventiveness and creative talent, and for being a fast follower or early adopter of new technologies. It has upgraded its national policy commitment to research and development in science, engineering and technology, and its links to international research networks in those areas. It has had export success in global cultural and education markets.

Despite these many positive characteristics, we claimed that serious problems are emerging in securing for Australia the maximum benefi t from innovation in both the creative economy and the broader service economy. Obstacles to creative innovation may handicap Australia's future development as a knowledge economy. We identifi ed several bottlenecks and missing links in the innovation 'chain' in Australia. Our empirical knowledge of the creative sector is substantially defi cient. There are major gaps in our policy frameworks. There are costly market and planning failures, such as skill mismatches in the creative industries' labour market. The legal and regulatory structures controlling cultural and informational products embody conceptual obstacles to innovation.

We claimed that, over a five-year period, we would contribute to a demonstrable improvement in Australia's national innovation system. We broke this claim down into several outcome areas:

1. improved understanding and recognition of the nature and extent of the creative industries and 'creative economy';
2. improved understanding and recognition of the value of education and training for a 'creative workforce';
3. demonstrations of the social, economic and cultural value of digital literacy, digital content innovation, and user-led innovation in diverse settings;
4. improved understanding and demonstrations of models for sustainable enterprises in the creative sector;
5. influence and impact on understanding and policy around digital content and the legal and regulatory impediments to growth;
6. international leadership in broadening and extending the innovation system and the place within it of digital content and the creative industries.

These outcome areas map to the Centre's program areas, which are structured as a set of activities that address key bottlenecks or gaps in the national innovation system. The Centre's research

• identifies the dimensions and dynamics of the creative economy;
• promotes workforce education and training suitable for a creative economy;
• theorises and demonstrates ways of addressing bottlenecks in content generation and dissemination;
• assists in improving the business structures and practices of creative enterprises;
• examines policy settings and regulatory regimes and advocates better outcomes for creators and consumers; and
• engages at depth with Australia's place in the region and with crucial export markets and cultural partners.

The programs

We need to develop a better understanding of the dimensions, trends and dynamics of the creative economy (Crisis in Innovation Program). The Centre will address shortcomings in statistical assessments of the digital content and broader creative industries; at the same time, it will trace the way creative inputs (whether human, economic or technological) are becoming more deeply embedded in the wider economy. There will be focused policy research around international innovation systems, the policy frameworks that support them, and targeted evidence-building to support advocacy for a more comprehensive approach to innovation.

A creative workforce is a key longer-term investment in a creative economy and society. The Centre will model and test how both formal education and less formal learning environments can be assisted to respond to challenges of rapid innovation and risk. These arise in particular from the increasing impact of knowledge and creativity on the economy, together with the infl uence of globalisation and new technologies across key areas of work and experience (Creative Workforce Program).

Over the coming years, the conditions for content creation and dissemination encountered by the creative workforce will continue to undergo profound changes. Distinctions between consumption and production, labour and citizenship have blurred, allowing new commercial and public opportunities in such areas as user-led and 'pro-am' (professional-amateur) innovation, open source, and broad-based consumer creativity as a basis for lower-cost content generation and dissemination. The Citizen Consumer Program addresses this issue.

Content and communication with impact and lasting significance will not form simply from a Procrustean bed of generic human creativity. Mechanisms to improve the formation and sustainability of creative enterprises and the business and regulatory environment in which they work are crucial to an effective innovation system. A vast amount of content is locked up in legacy formats and content management systems, or sequestered by copyright regimes skewed toward powerful aggregators rather than creators, or stored in 'silos' because of a lack of interoperability between data and metadata systems. The Centre will research and assist the wider adoption of common suites of metadata standards that enable discovery, licensing and delivery of material which is so critical to lowering the infrastructure costs of the sector. This is captured in the Enterprise Formation and Sustainability Program.

The Legal and Regulatory Impasses and Innovations Program explores a legal and technological environment that is increasingly beset by differing approaches to the problem of intellectual property. On the one hand, formidable efforts are being made to sequester and control IP through stronger copyright regimes and technological fixes such as digital rights management; on the other, a groundswell of support for open content licensing approaches is now beginning to make its mark. Without progress in fashioning a better balance between these two forces, the future of Australia's creative economy and society will be measurably compromised.

It might appear from the foregoing that the challenges can be met with minimal reference outside the nation state. On the contrary, Centres of Excellence must benchmark themselves against international best practice and give premium-quality Australian research an international profi le. Moreover, an Australian creative economy and society is inextricably and increasingly implicated in our immediate region and with major vectors of trade, interchange and research. Our sixth Program, International Creative Content Cultures and Australian Advantage, is dedicated to advancing these imperatives.

It is becoming increasingly clear that progress in meeting the aims of the Centre would not have been possible without the strategic decision to build an unusual degree of collaboration into our work, enlisting input from a range of compelling research perspectives in the humanities, creative arts, and technical and social sciences. CCI has research and industry partners in six Australian states and territories and a 'necklace' of active, prestigious international collaborations ranging across the UK, US, China, southern and Southeast Asia, Germany, and New Zealand. Outcomes and outputs are being achieved which would have been unlikely or impossible without the creation of the Centre.

 

Professor Stuart Cunningham
Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
March 2008

 

 

For more information, please contact:

Toss Gascoigne

Executive Director

Council of the Humanties, Arts and Social Sciences

Phone: +61 2 6201 2740

director [at] chass.org.au