What Price a Creative Economy?

A creative economy is about much more than culture and the arts. It embraces the nation’s great writers, filmmakers and artists, but it's equally about the interaction designers who have contributed to the revolution in banking and finance, the technical writers who help make our export industry strong, and the legions of amateur bloggers and animators who are triggering the explosion of digital content. What sets creative industries apart in the economy is the fact that 'creativity' is their primary source of value, something that is increasingly recognised as important for growth in contemporary knowledge-based societies. It's time to rethink the view that creativity is a cost to the economy and pursue instead the sector's economic potential, making the creative industries the 'sparkplugs' of next-generation, post-industrial growth. What Price a Creative Economy? offers fresh reasons and evidence for renewing the case for public investment. STUART CUNNINGHAM is Professor of Media and Communications, Queensland University of Technology, and Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation. He is a key figure in cultural policy studies and is well known for his contributions to media, communications and cultural studies and their relevance to industry practice and government policy. His writings include Framing Culture (1992), a critique of the limits of cultural studies as applied to cultural policy. He has co-written or co-edited a number of studies of the global dimensions of audiovisual culture