Creative Workforce 2.0

The CCI annual report for 2009 is now available to download as a PDF.

If you would like to receive a hard copy, please email infocci@qut.edu.au to request a copy.

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.

CCI's Creative Workforce Program has launched the Games Industry Skills Project website. The site provides an opportunity for interested researchers and other stakeholders to participate in a dialogue about the current and future state of Australia's Digital Games Industry.

Creating Innovators is a research project which builds and tests theory about the development and deployment of ‘innovative career capabilities’ in professionals working in the key sectors of science & technology, and the creative industries. The theory will then be used to inform curriculum development in university and professional education programs.

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.

Erica McWilliam has recently been appointed as an Adjunct Professor for the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT and will be based at the National Education Institute in Singapore from the 1 December 2008. This node is being established to focus on the creative workforce, education and digital literacy, and urban narrative. More details to follow soon.

Creativity has become the economic engine of the 21st century. No longer the preserve of creative industries, 'creative capital' – in the form of novel thinking, navigation, interactivity and border-crossing – has become crucial to success and productivity. But are young people being equipped for a work future in which creativity is the defining feature of economic life? In an important new book, Erica McWilliam argues that young people’s creative capacities are not being properly developed and that education, particularly in Australia, demands a massive pedagogical shift. Using both Australian and overseas examples, Creative Workforce describes what creative capacities are, why they've become important to our work futures, and what can be done to optimise the creative capacities of young people.

In 2008, the Creative Workforce Program will continue to build links and partnerships with key stakeholders, expand the Learning Lab Coalition, attract funding of benefit to the Creative Workforce Program, and disseminate Program findings and activities. Planned activities include:

• contributing to the development and promotion of an online repository of creative teaching practices. The repository will consist of exemplars of practice, key themes, recommendations, future collaborations, nodes of contact, and a short film of Creativity Showcase presentations and highlights;

The National Creativity Showcase