Academy of Social Sciences in Australia
Creative Australia: the arts and culture in australian work and leisure
Professor David Throsby
March 2008
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Introduction
Professor David Throsby
This is the first in a series of essays based on data from the 2006 Census, produced in cooperation with the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
One of the ten working groups assembled at the Federal Government's 2020 Summit held in Canberra in April 2008 to discuss ideas for Australia's future was that brought together under the heading 'Creative Australia'. Under the chairmanship of Cate Blanchett and Julianne Schultz, one hundred selected individuals from the arts, film, the media, architecture and design spent the weekend tossing around ideas for the future of creativity in this country in an age of rapid technological and social change. An important aspect of the group's task was to put forward a clear vision of exactly what a Creative Australia might look like.
The idea of Australia as a creative country sounds attractive. Yet identifying what such a proposition entails is no easy matter. Creativity is an elusive concept - one of those notions that seems obvious enough until we try to pin it down with a rigorous and unambiguous definition. Even psychologists who study creative thinking and behaviour are uncertain as to whether creativity is a trait of individuals or a process by which problems are solved and original ideas are generated and applied. There is also no consensus as to whether, if it is a characteristic that people possess, it is something that is innate or something that can be taught.
Nevertheless we hear the word 'creative' used quite widely nowadays. In education, of course, the development of creative skills in children has long been recognised as an essential element of the learning process from the earliest years of childhood onwards. In turn it is generally understood that exposure to the arts and other creative activities at school lays the foundation for people to pursue what is called 'creative leisure' in adult life. In policy circles too, there is increasing interest in what is coming to be called 'the creative economy', whilst urban planners frequently use the term 'creative cities' to describe dynamic urban centres with a vibrant artistic and cultural life.
Thus, since creativity is a concept that reaches into many aspects of our lives, including the arts, the sciences, the economy and the education of our children, the notion of 'Creative Australia' must be one with multiple dimensions. At least three distinct aspects can be identified and each raises a series of questions as to the role of creativity in contemporary Australian life.
- Creative work: Significant numbers of people work in jobs that involve the exercise of creative skills. Is it possible to identify a creative workforce and to assess its contribution to the Australian economy? And are these workers employed in sectors of the economy that could be thought of as the creative industries?
- Creative class: A lot of attention has been focused recently on the proposition that creative people tend to cluster in particular urban environments, stimulating economic growth and social interaction. Such people have been referred to as a 'creative class'. Does this concept have any relevance to cities in Australia? And can we describe any of the State or Territory capitals as a 'creative city'?
- Creative participation: Australians spend their leisure time in a variety of ways, many of which could be referred to as creative. Active involvement in the arts, through painting, singing, playing a musical instrument, writing, dancing and so on all involve the development and application of creative skills. Moreover, participation in the arts as a consumer-visiting art galleries, reading novels, going to the theatre-all involve a form of creative engagement. How important are such activities in Australian life today?
This paper addresses all three of these aspects of creativity in Australian society at the present time. The central proposition to be explored is that the somewhat vague idea of Creative Australia can indeed be given conceptual and empirical substance, thanks particularly to the rich sources of data provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Quite a lot is already known about many statistical aspects of the arts and culture in Australia as a result of the longstanding efforts of the Statistics Working Group of the Cultural Ministers' Council and the dedicated work of the National Centre for Culture and Recreation Statistics of the ABS located in Adelaide. But in addition to these sources, access to the Census results provides a unique opportunity to shed light on aspects of our topic that can only be effectively studied using data collected under the rigorous methodology and comprehensive coverage of the Australian Census.
The Census data are especially valuable in analysing the first two aspects of Creative Australia referred to above. As we shall see below, the detailed occupational and industry classifications used in compiling the Census returns mean that the creative workforce can be examined at a depth and with an accuracy impossible by any other means. Moreover, the fine-grained locational data available from the Census enable pin-point accuracy in identification of clusters of creative people, as a means of exploring hypotheses concerning the creative class and the structure of creative cities.
Nevertheless, the Census data cannot tell us everything we need know. For example, they do not provide information about the consumption habits of individuals or the ways in which people spend their time. Thus for the last aspect listed above we turn to other data sources, including other ABS collections and a recent random sample survey of the Australian population.
About the author
David Throsby is Professor of Economics at Macquarie University in Sydney. He has published widely in the economics of the arts and culture, as well as in the economics of the environment and the economics of education. His current research areas icultural policy, the creative industries, the economics of cultural heritage, culture in sustainable development and the economic circumstances of creative artists. His book Economics and Culture, published by Cambridge University Press in 2001, has been translated into five languages. David Throsby is co-editor, with Victor Ginsburgh, othe Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture (Elsevier/North Holland, 2006), of which a second volume is now in preparation.
Last modified: 2 November 2009.