‘Creative Nation,’ the policy initiative that sparked the creative economy movement
REDIT for the policy vision that sparked global interest in the creative economy as a development option properly belongs to Prime Minister Paul Keating of Australia (PM 1991-1996). It was Keating and his Labor government who first articulated the vision and saw the possibilities.
In October 1994, then PM Keating released a federal policy document called ‘Creative Nation: Commonwealth cultural policy.’
Creative Nation was the first time an Australian federal government formally developed a cultural policy; AU$250 million in additional funding was promised to cultural institutions.
The report emphasized culture’s importance to national identity, and defined culture more broadly than earlier conceptions by including film, radio, libraries and more. It also stressed the economic potential of cultural activity and arts, by stating that:
“This cultural policy is also an economic policy. Culture creates wealth. Broadly defined, our cultural industries generate AU$13 billion a year. Around 336,000 Australians are employed in culture-related industries. Culture adds value, it makes an essential contribution to innovation, marketing and design. It is a badge of our industry. The level of our creativity substantially determines our ability to adapt to new economic imperatives. It is a valuable export in itself and an essential accompaniment to the export of other commodities. It attracts tourists and students. It is essential to our economic success.”
Policy document changed Australia
On the 20th anniversary of the Creative Nation project in October 2014, Rebecca Hawkings of the Department of Modern History at Macquarie University wrote a paper on the profound impact of Creative Nation on Australia. She described it as a document that changed Australia and Australians. Her words are a fitting memorial to a most impressive document. I reproduce below substantive passages from her report:
“Today marks 20 years since the publication of Creative Nation. An ambitious and expansive project by Paul Keating’s Labor government, it was the first Commonwealth cultural policy document in Australia’s history. Its initial impact was significant, with Keating committing AU$252 million of additional spending over four years to the arts and cultural industries in Australia.
But Creative Nation’s legacy in Australian life since 1994 has been nothing short of profound.
Creative Nation changed the way Australians saw themselves, and their place in the world. It defined “culture,” broadening out the concept beyond the confines of the high art elite. Most notably, the policy document reframed the cultural industries in economic terms. It changed the very language used to talk about Australia, its culture, its artistic expressions.
Creative Nation emerged at a time of broader re-imaginings of what it meant to be Australian.
Six years prior to its publication, the 1988 Bicentenary prompted discussions in public and political life about the place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the narrative of Australia’s history. The dismantling of the White Australia policy in the mid-1970s and the emergence of multiculturalism had similarly shifted perceptions of Australian identity.
Creative Nation reflected those shifts. The opening preamble to the document described Australian culture as “now an exotic hybrid,” and Creative Nation made repeated reference to the importance of indigenous and migrant cultures in creating a national cultural identity . ...
The Keating policy document sought to fund cultural projects that represented “the nation’s diversity.” Though subsequent federal governments would continue this mission to varying degrees, the legacy of Creative Nation was one of a changing narrative of Australian identity, one which sought to include non-white Australians in the national project.
Creative Nation defined “culture” as “that which gives us a sense of ourselves.” This broad sweep encompassed not only the traditional high arts institutions (Opera Australia, the Australian Ballet, and state and national symphony orchestras, to name a few), but also television and film, regional community festivals, radio, school programs, libraries and information technology.
In a single policy document, Creative Nation placed new modes of cultural engagement alongside older forms of cultural expression, rendering them equally legitimate and equally constituting “arts” in Australia…
From Creative Nation onwards, art was for everyone, and cultural engagement was a national concern.
Culture and economics
Most remarkably, Creative Nation was an economic policy.
It justified its existence in financial terms — the AU$13 billion generated by the arts sector and the 336,000 jobs created by the cultural industries were the primary rationalizations for the document’s funding initiatives. Increases in arts spending were directed to projects and institutions from whom a return on the investment could be expected. Culture, noted Creative Nation, was “essential to our economic success.”
The cultural industries were reframed in Creative Nation as a commercial project. No longer merely “arts for art’s sake,” Keating shifted the political debate on funding the cultural industries to focus on ideas of cost-benefit analysis and financial outcomes…
Creative Nation created a discourse which stipulated that culture could — and should — be exported to the global market, and the role of government was to protect and promote the work of Australian artists in this economic marketplace . ...
As Australia’s first Commonwealth cultural policy document, Creative Nation forever changed the way that Australians saw themselves. Culture was now an economic concern, the arts were for all Australians, and the nation could no longer so rigidly define its national identity through its British colonial past.”
A template for other countries
It is a testament to the power of Keating’s policy vision that Creative Nation since then became for other nations a template in mapping and developing their own creative economies.
In 1997, inspired chiefly by Australia’s bold precedent, the Tony Blair government established in the United Kingdom its Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS). The term “creative industries” gained wider exposure when UK policymakers set up the Creative Industries Task Force and published the creative industries mapping documents in 1998 and 2001.
On the basis of its initial findings, the UK government stated that the creative industries were bringing in 8 percent of national income and employing 5 percent of the workforce. Since 1997, these industries grew by up to 20 percent a year.
The Blair government repositioned the British economy as an economy driven by creativity and innovation in a globally competitive world.
Creative industries are described by the UK as “those requiring creativity, skill and talent, with potential for the creation of rights to intellectual property.”
In March 2000, the EU heads of state and governments meeting in Lisbon agreed on an ambitious goal to make the EU “by 2010 the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.” They called for a study and strategy of a creative Europe to achieve Lisbon goals.
This study produced a volume entitled “The Economy of Culture in Europe” that was published in October 2006. The study used the French approach through “cultural industries” instead of “creative industries.” It reported one by one on the cultural and creative sectors in the 27 EU countries,
Elsewhere, other countries were also astir, eager to jumpstart the development of their own creative economies.
In the developing world, some took the lead in studying the creative economy, particularly in Asia and Africa. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) took a leading role in studying the creative economy and assessing its benefits for developing countries.
In the Asia-Pacific region, it was soon found that the creative industries were integral to the development of mature economies, and the development of fast-growing economies.
Developed and developing countries alike have formulated their economic strategies and policies based on creativity and creative enterprise as a strategy for economic growth and competitive advantage.
Unctad defines creative industries
At the Unctad 11th ministerial conference in 2004, the subject of creative industries was introduced into the economic and development agenda.
Unctad classified creative industries into four broad groups: heritage, arts, media and functional creations. These groups were in turn divided into nine subgroups.
Unctad came up with its own definition of the creative industries, to wit, “The creative industries are:
– The cycles of creation, production and distribution of goods and services that use creativity and intellectual capital as primary inputs;
– They constitute a set of knowledge-based activities, focused on but not limited to arts, potentially generating revenues from trade and intellectual property rights;
– They comprise tangible products and intangible intellectual or artistic services with creative content, economic value and market objectives;
– They stand at the crossroads of the artisan, services and industrial sectors; and
– They constitute a new dynamic sector in world trade.
Based on the record, the Philippines has not been proactive or attentive while the world was churning in activities to raise up the world’s creative economies. Successive administrations during the past three decades barely noticed what was going on in this highly competitive front.
Creative Philippines needs a visionary and zealot.