Creative Hotspot Analysis: Methodologies for Analysing Cultural and Creative Activity in Regional Australia.

This paper sets out the methodologies employed for a regional Hotspot analysis conducted for an ARC Linkage project with industry partners including Arts Queensland, Create NSW, Creative Victoria, Culture, Arts South Australia and the Western Australian Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries. It provides a brief set of insights into relevant creative economies and creative industries research as well as some detail on the pilot project for this larger national study. The paper supplies an overview of the Creative Hotspots project’s design and execution before setting out its basic aims and the mechanism of selection for each of the regional hotspots. The subsequent discussion elucidates the comprehensive quantitative aspects of the project, the intention of their use and some of the limitations and benefits these methods presented. It expands on why these quantitative foundations leant a solid basis to the qualitative aspects of the project which themselves revealed a very different yet complementary set of data. The paper then offers a comprehensive account of the methodologies and what this collection of mixed methods revealed. In conclusion, we suggest that the amalgamation of the economic figures with the key informant’s personal lived experiences provides the most comprehensive way yet to make sense of Australia’s regional creative industries and each of the specific hotspot studied in this project