"The Unreliability of Cultural Management Information: Defining the Visual Arts"

48-65
This research examines the definitional and quantification dynamics of the New Labour Creative Industries policy from 1998 to 2004 which replaced earlier Labour Party cultural industry interests articulated in the 1980s. It focuses attention on the lack of a reliable empirical understanding of the sector and specifically sub-sectors such as designer fashion and graphics. It considers the New Labour Creative Industries policy definitional framework and economic claims and finds that there is conceptual confusion at sectoral and sub-sectoral levels. Consideration is given to the sources of data collection which underpin the policy, its reliability, and relevance to local and regional economic, cultural policy and practice. It then demonstrates that collecting primary data at local and regional levels employing a practitioner/business led definitional framework is an alternative means of building a realistic analysis of the sector.

This paper traces the models of the cultural industries used by the Labour Government during the timeframe and the work of organisations including the DCMS and argues for the systematic approach to modelling currently in development in the Creative Industries Observatory led by the researcher. It also suggests, that the creative industry policy is exclusive and not inclusive, that the definition is pragmatic with no justifiable rationale, and that the data used as evidence to support the policy is unreliable and flawed when placed in the context of sub-sectors, locality and regions. It finds that the introduction of a creative industries policy has inadvertently encouraged an emerging reconceptualisation of the cultural industries. Specifically, culture as business, not the ‘Tate` effect, of aesthetic peer group determined public culture.

The work has contributed for the research to be invited to become an Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology, and advisor on creative industries to the Australian Research Council.