An excellent colleague picked up a copy and paste mistake in one of the tables of the report. Here is the updated version and here is what we corrected:
ERROR in the original report page 4:
Correction in the updated report, page 4:
An excellent colleague picked up a copy and paste mistake in one of the tables of the report. Here is the updated version and here is what we corrected:
ERROR in the original report page 4:
Correction in the updated report, page 4:
I was just reading some of Dr Ann Markusen's work (Dr Markusen is the Director of the Arts Economy Initiative at the University of Minnesota), as you do. A few things cropped up which I wanted to flag here as interesting which I would love to hear others' thoughts about.
In her recent work on the Californian creative economy, Markusen uses the same terminology that arts policy types in Australia have also been using for the last few years - 'ecology' rather than 'economy.' Since at least 2009 (and probably before), people working in arts policy and strategy in Australia have called the arts an 'ecology' or 'ecosystem', as a way to try to capture the the nature of the arts as a system of fluctuating relationships, and the primacy of authentic connection - between artists, organisations, audiences - the list goes on.
This is kind of like my Artistic Vibrancy Onion, so named because I think of the arts as a web of relationships across different layers of society and culture (perhaps Artistic Vibrancy Spiderweb might be more apposite?)
Here is how I tried to conceptualise the arts ecosystem for the Australia Council for the Arts when they asked me to, last year.
I drew it like this because a) I am a pretty crap drawer and b) it seemed a better way to describe the slightly miasmic soup in which artists operate, as opposed to the more traditional supply or value chain diagram of arts production.
The ecology concept allows us to think of arts happening in non-linear ways - as innovation does too. Arts happens in relationships and conversations, as does most human interaction and the fruits of human creativity. Rather than talking about it as an economy, or an industry, the arts is this space, a field (if we are going to get Bourdieuian, and why not?) in which people commune with each other and what's going on inside and outside their heads, hearts and bodies.
Naturally artists also operate as economic actors. And some parts of the arts are industrial and could be described as an industry, which implies the making of stuff and selling it and creating economic value and employment. These terms are used interchangeably, but really depend on the political goal of the conversation. For example, we talk about creative economies when we want to make the point that arts make money and contribute to GDP. We talk about the arts industry for a similar reason - to be able to talk about it in the same breath as the car manufacturing industry, or the pharmaceutical industry.
And so we talk about creative and cultural ecologies and ecosystems when we want to make a different point. When I use the term arts ecology, I am trying to convey quite a lot in that one word:
Contact
Jackie Bailey (NSW) jackie@bypgroup.com
Sarah Penhall (VIC) sarah@bypgroup.com
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