Creative Industries and Innovation Policy

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.