Creative Industries and Innovation Policy

Congratulations to Mark Ryan for winning a Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) Creative Industries Career Fund grant to attend the 2010 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Los Angeles CA, March 17-21.

Media International Australia December issue: 'The Globalisation of Advertising in Asia' has just been published. The issue includes feature articles by CCI's Director Stuart Cunningham, and Terry Flew on the history of SBS, and researcher Mark Ryan on horror films and cultural policy, as well as a special section looking at advertising in Asia.

Access to this issue is subscription only - details available at Media International Australia

The results of the CCI RHD Jam and Mainstreaming Jam are in. View or download the 2009 Mainstreaming Jam summary results or the Research higher degree student summary results.

CCI would like to thank everyone who participated for your time and valued comments. Each idea is being addressed seriously over the coming months.

Youdecide2007, an experiment in collaborative, citizen journalism run during the 2007 election, has been selected as a case study in a major new report.

Australia’s digital economy: future directions discusses the key initiatives being undertaken by government, industry and the community to develop the digital economy along with case studies of successful individuals and industries engaged in the area.

The case study is based on an interview with CCI researcher, Professor Terry Flew, about the Youdecide2007 website which ran during the 2007 Australian Federal election campaign, from early September 2007 up to and shortly after the November 23, 2007 election date. It is one of only 12 studies selected for inclusion in the report.

The Government 2.0 Taskforce is being formed against a backdrop of increased interest by governments worldwide in the potential uses of public sector information and online engagement. CCI's Brian Fitzgerald is one of the fifteen member panel that make up the Government 2.0 Taskforce.

The Taskforce will advise Government on structural barriers that prevent, and policies to promote, greater information disclosure, digital innovation and online engagement including the division of responsibilities for, and overall coordination of, these issues within government.

The Taskforce will work with the public, private, cultural and not for profit sectors to fund and develop seed projects that demonstrate the potential of proactive information disclosure and digital engagement for government.

The Taskforce will provide a final report on its activities to the Minister for Finance and Deregulation and the Cabinet Secretary by the end of 2009. The Taskforce will disband on completion of its final report.

Read more about the taskforce.

UNSW’s Journalism and Media Research Centre (JMRC) has become a key partner in Australia's only Centre of Excellence in the humanities - the Creative Industries and Innovation Centre (CCI).

The JMRC was invited to be part of a successful re-bid for the Centre of Excellence, which has since received $6 million in funding from the Australian Research Council.

Professor Catharine Lumby, UNSW’s designated Chief Investigator in the Centre, says the research synergies are in the areas of young people and media consumption.

Australian Research Council (ARC) Chief Executive Officer, Professor Margaret Sheil, yesterday announced that the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) will receive almost $6 million in further funding. The announcement confirms CCI's status as Australia's premier research centre into the impact on the broader economy of the emerging creative sector.

As 2008 draws to a close, I wish to thank all of our readers, contributors and partners for your support for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.

It is a cliche, but it has been a busy year for the Centre. The ARC conducted its mid term review coincident with an extension bid in October. We held what is planned to be our biggest event of our five year funding cycle - a large international conference Creating Value: between Commerce and Commons - in June. Many major publications came out this year, showing the maturation of several research projects. Our public profile was high, especially around the interest created by themes and speakers at Creating Value. The work on open content licensing was prominently taken up in venturous australia, the report of the Review of the National Innovation System (chaired by CCI's Chairperson Dr Terry Cutler). Our first international node was established and launched - at City University in London.

On behalf of all Centre investigators and staff, I wish you a restful break and renewed energy for the coming year!

Stuart Cunningham, Director CCI

Applications are now open for the OII Summer Doctoral Programme 2009, to be hosted this year by CCI and the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia.

The programme aims to stretch the thinking of all students on a range of issues, to provide valuable advice and support for students' thesis research, and to establish a peer network of excellent young researchers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the thematic focus this year will be on 'Creativity, Innovation and the Internet': our partners on the SDP since 2003, CCI and the Creative Industries Faculty are at the forefront of pioneering international research initiatives in creative industries policy, applied creative industries research, digital media design, and the creative and performing arts.

UQP has now made available to CCI readers the first chapter of Stuart Cunningham's recently published book In the Vernacular. The book brings together important works, written over a twenty-year period by one of Australia's leading scholars of media, culture and policy. In this chapter Stuart takes an historical perspective on Australian cinema, looking the "decades of survival" from 1930–70.

A paper by Professor Stuart Cunningham, President of the Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, highlighting the issues to be discussed during HASS in the Capital, is now available from the CHASS website. At the meeting on 3 September, speakers and member breakout groups will respond to the paper’s topics and raise new issues they see as relevant to the role and future of CHASS. The outcomes of the event will establish the foundations to guide CHASS into its next phase of development.

Innovation: management, policy and practice is the international journal for innovation research, commercialization, policy analysis and best practice. The forthcoming issue on 'Innovation policy in the creative Industries' is being guest edited by CCI's Jason Potts based at the School of Economics, The University of Queensland.

A new report, Between a hard rock and a soft space: design, creative practice and innovation, argues that Australian innovation can be enhanced by bringing design into the mainstream of policy and industry thinking. It calls for the formation of a National Council for Design and Creative Practice, as a body where industry, research and government can work together to contribute to innovation policy.

A book series is being negotiated with the University of Queensland Press. ‘Creative Culture + Innovation Economy’, co-edited by Stuart Cunningham and John Hartley, will publish works by a variety of authors which will advance the Centre’s broad agenda.

A freelance journalist was contracted to assist the Centre; her work will begin to produce results in 2008.

Partly in synergy with his role as President of the Council for Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Stuart Cunningham continued to publish articles on the creative industries and innovation in journals and the press. Apart from media coverage, CCI principals made a number of submissions to inquiries. Trevor Barr’s ‘Re-Thinking Universal Service Obligation (USO) Policy’ submission went to the Telecommunications Universal Service Obligation (USO) Review in October, 2007.