CCI media backgrounder

Since it began in early 2006, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) has rapidly developed an international reputation as a research hub humming with bright ideas about Australia’s digital future.

CCI recognises the importance of creativity and the creative industries to Australia’s innovation economy and society. It is currently leading investigations into the legal, regulatory and policy issues raised by new communication technologies like online games, blogs, iPods, and social networking sites like FaceBook, as well as undertaking a comprehensive mapping project of the employment and business characteristics of Australia’s creative workforce.

It is working with screen production companies to better address complex information flow management in real time and with cultural institutions to embrace the dynamics of social media. It seeks reform in intellectual property law to reflect better what drives the network society.

CCI has a strong interdisciplinary commitment, both disciplinary (linking research in creative innovation and digital media with law, education, business and IT) and applied (linking creative practitioners with business leaders, policymakers and scholars).

Headed by Director Stuart Cunningham, current President of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, CCI – as the first Centre of Excellence whose lead disciplines are based outside the science, engineering and technology sectors – brings together an integrated team of researchers from media, communication and cultural studies, education, IT, economics, business and law whose research focus is building Australia’s creative innovation system to maximise the economic and cultural potential of the digital revolution.

As Cunningham explains:
“Our research is having a real impact on the future direction of Australia because we’re responding to very real questions raised by the current crisis in the national innovation system. The CCI offers a coherent plan to address a set of definable gaps and problems in the national innovation system.”

CCI’s Research Director John Hartley agrees that the issues being addressed by researchers will have important implications for how we understand the value creativity in Australia’s Knowledge Economy:
“The innovation system needs a creative make-over.

The creative industries are a living laboratory in which creativity is tested, extended socially and developed from a human attribute to an economic sector and ultimately a cultural resource available to all,” he says. “Without a creative population any innovation policy will be severely limited.”

The Centre is hosting an international conference from June 23 – 27 to showcase some of its own research projects, and will include presentations by academic, business, creative or public policy specialists on many aspects of value-creation in the context of creative industries and innovation.

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CCI media backgrounder