Creating cities by reinventing them – ‘Creating Cities’ reviewed

‘At first glance Marcus Westbury’s ‘Creating Cities’ book looks small, but it’s far bigger than it looks. The book is about re-energising cities by reinventing them but it’s starting point is a deep appreciation of the particular regional city of Newcastle. The revival of Newcastle is a reflection of the more general trend towards the revival of regional centres in Australia. Cities are crucial to the innovation and creativity that interaction and partnerships based on physical proximity can produce – whether major capital cities or regional cities. The efforts at revival all reflected the critical importance of cities. Each in its own way draws upon creativity and innovation and the cultural diversity which underpins it to create places which are pleasant and interesting to live in and to drive economic prosperity’.

At first glance Marcus Westbury’s ‘Creating Cities’ book looks small, but it’s far bigger than it looks. Perhaps it’s like Doctor Who’s cosmic transportation, the TARDIS – coming from a universe of it’s own, in this case the world of Newcastle, and larger inside than outside. There’s a great deal packed into it’s tiny frame – and the compressed ideas it will generate are even bigger in reach and relevance.

It’s hard to imagine a more timely moment for a book such as this to appear. A new Prime Minister has underlined the importance of cities for Australia’s well-being and prosperity and there is a renewed focus on innovation. What this means in practice and whether it will last will be fascinating to watch.

Cargo ship leaving Newcastle Harbour, 2005

There have been moments in the past where government has been interested in cities. During the production of the still recent National Cultural Policy, the Department of Infrastructure, under various names, had a focus on cities, and there have been other attempts to address the importance of this issue. Perhaps we will see a resurgence of Australian Government interest.

The book is about re-energising cities by reinventing them but it’s starting point is a deep appreciation of the particular regional city of Newcastle. In a strange way understanding the particular story of Newcastle helps us better grasp the huge general lessons about cities nation-wide – and indeed world-wide.

The clever business of creativity: the experience of supporting Australia's industries of the future

‘The swan song of the Creative Industries Innovation Centre, ‘Creative Business in Australia’, outlines the experience of five years supporting Australia’s creative industries. Case studies and wide-ranging analysis explain the critical importance of these industries to Australia’s future. The knowledge economy of the future, with its core of creative industries and its links to our cultural landscape is both clever and clean. Where the creative industries differ completely from other knowledge economy sectors is that, because they are based on content, they draw on, intersect with and contribute to Australia’s national and local culture'.

Art critic and cultural writer, John Berger, in one of his less well-known articles, tells a story about the French-Russian sculptor Zadkine. At the very beginning of his career Zadkine was trying to establish himself as an artist in England but was not known and spoke little English. An old craftsman to whom he was briefly apprenticed to learn wood carving suggested he carve a wooden rose – but such a beautiful rose that whenever he showed it to prospective but sceptical employers they would always understand what he was capable of and give him the job. Zadkine took the advice and it laid the basis for his later success as an artist.

I thought of this old story about an old artist when I was reading the newly released publication Creative Business in Australia, the swansong of the recently departed and much missed Creative Industries Innovation Centre. In the same way as Zadkine’s rose, the example of the Centre is something that can be held in your hand and pointed at to show what is possible. It demonstrates some important ways that we can support our newly emerging creative industries – if only we have the imagination and foresight to understand their potential and their unique and distinctive place in the broader knowledge economy. Those associated with the Centre in its all-too-brief but productive life can point to the publication and say ‘This is what we did in such a short time. This is what is possible.’ It is proof of concept writ smaller than it needed to be.

'Creative Business in Australia' - getting serious, but not serious enough about one of the values of creativity

I use the old-fashioned example of an artist deliberately because while the creative industries are first and foremost about running businesses, they are businesses of a very particular kind.

Increasingly the new industries in the knowledge economy of the future, with its core of creative industries and its links to our cultural landscape are both clever and clean. They are mainly service industries that make up the knowledge economy, based on intellectual enquiry and research and exhibiting both innovative services or products and also often new and innovative ways of doing business (though to what degree is a matter this publication considers closely).

Notes from a steadily shrinking universe

‘Following the Big Bang the universe may have been steadily expanding but in the world of Australian Government arts and culture the universe has definitely been heading the other way. In the end does government of any shade really think at heart that Australian arts and culture is important? Why should it when it’s a vexed question for our society as a whole and we are ambivalent about its worth? Yet this part of the Australian Government’s public service is incredibly important. To have a real impact though, it needs to be refocused and reinvigorated to operate once again across the broader government landscape’

Following the Big Bang the universe may have been steadily expanding but in the world of Australian Government arts and culture the universe has definitely been heading the other way.

In fact over the last five years the unit with overall responsibility for the Australian Government’s arts and culture support, small by public service standards, has been shrinking faster than light vanishes into a black hole. It started with drastic reductions in the process of moving from the Department of the Environment to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet from late 2010 onwards and seems to have just kept on, like a bad habit, through the Department of Regional and then Attorney-General’s.

The arts and culture unit circles the public service universe moving from department to department after each election or change in government. It’s like a comet wandering off into the cold distant reaches of space and then reappearing in the same location centuries later, once again unsettling the local inhabitants. When they run out of departments to host Arts the comet reappears. Now it has reappeared above the Department of Communications, which it was with for so long and which it left after the election of the Rudd Government in 2007.

The Commonwealth's arts and culture division - even as its numbers continued to shrink, its title kept on growing

Only a minor increase due to the transfer of a few positions from the Australia Council to the Ministry as part of the establishment of the new National Program(me) for Excellence in the Arts seems to have slowed the downwards trend. Hopefully the process will now have stabilised and we won’t see yet more reductions as part of the move back to Communications.

Oddly the initial contraction happened just as the unit was starting the long haul to finally produce the much awaited National Cultural Policy, back on track after a few false starts.

In the process, the unit has gone through various names, including the Office for the Arts and now, the Ministry for the Arts. Ironically, even as its numbers continued to shrink, its title kept on growing.

Full circle – where next for Australian national arts and culture support in the 21st Century?

With a Coalition Government which now stands a far better chance of being re-elected for a second term, the transfer of the Commonwealth’s Arts Ministry to Communications helps get arts and culture back onto larger and more contemporary agendas. This move reflects that fact that the new industries in the knowledge economy of the future, with its core of creative industries and its links to our cultural landscape, are both clever and clean. Where they differ completely from other knowledge economy sectors is that, because they are based on content, they draw on, intersect with and contribute to Australia’s national and local culture and are a central part of projecting Australia’s story to ourselves and to the world. In that sense they have a strategic importance that other sectors do not.

I used to joke that in my almost 15 years working in the Commonwealth Arts Ministry, without ever deliberately changing jobs, I managed to move around the national public service like a comet roaming the far reaches of space. Just as comets reappear at regular extended intervals to terrify the inhabitants on the planet below, the Arts Ministry has reappeared in the sky above the Department of Communications to re-establish Communications and the Arts after nearly eight years of absence.

Leadership challenge over breakfast with 'The Age'

I started with Arts in the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts in late 2000 and then, with the election of the Rudd Labor Government in 2007, began a series of moves to four different departments over the next six years. Arts traveled from Communications to Environment, then to Prime Minister and Cabinet, on to Regional and finally to Attorney-General's. Now, Arts has returned to where I first started.

Land of hope

There were times in our past when Australia was seen as the great hope of the world – when it offered a vision of a new democratic life free from the failures of the past and the old world. It seems we have turned from our history, from the bright vision of the nineteenth century and the great nation-building vision of the period after World War 2, with its sense of optimism and fairness, towards something much more pinched and narrow – mean and weak-willed. For such an optimistic nation we seem to have developed a ‘half empty’ rather than ‘half full’ view of the glass – and the world. If we want to live in a land to be proud of, a fair country that truly inherits the best of Australia’s traditions, while consciously abandoning the less desirable ones, we need to change course – otherwise we will have to rebadge Australia not as the land of hope but instead as the land without hope.

There were times in our past when Australia was seen as the great hope of the world – when it offered a vision of a new democratic life free from the failures of the past and the old world.

There were two such times, when Australia had the chance and rose to the occasion. The first was in the 19th Century when it was seen as the land of opportunity unshackled by the limitations of the ageing, ossified, constricted world of Britain and Europe. The second opportunity was in the late 1940s and the 1950s when thousands of migrants flocked here to build a new life after the carnage and devastation of World War 2.

Pine Tier Dam was one of the earliest dams in the vast network of infrastructure in the Central Highlands of Tasmania, setting the scene for its modern equivalent, the National Broadband Network. The parallel network of social, educational and cultural infrastructure was even more important in giving direction for a modern Australia in troubled times.

It seems we have turned from our history, from the bright vision of the nineteenth century and the great nation-building vision of the period after World War 2, with its sense of optimism and fairness, towards something much more pinched and narrow – mean and weak-willed.

My nephew just got a job with Weta – the long road of the interconnected world

My nephew just got a job in Wellington New Zealand with Weta Digital, which makes the digital effects for Peter Jackson’s epics. Expertise, specialist skills and industry pockets can occur just about anywhere, as long as you have connectivity, talent and a framework of support that makes it possible. This is part of the new knowledge economy of the future, with its core of creative industries and its links to our cultural landscape. Increasingly the industries of the future are both clever and clean. At their heart are the developing creative industries which are based on the power of creativity and are a critical part of Australia’s future – innovative, in most cases centred on small business and closely linked to the profile of Australia as a clever country, both domestically and internationally. This is transforming the political landscape of Australia, challenging old political franchises and upping the stakes in the offerings department.

A while back, when my nephew connected with me on Linked In, I said, ‘this will give me far more street cred than it will ever give you.’ He’s a visual effects artist, one of the new internationally sought after labour aristocracy of the digital universe. He’s currently head of Visual Effects at Resin in Adelaide and has worked for Image Engine Design in Vancouver.

‘In the new digital industries of the future, work is international and workers travel the world looking for opportunities to develop their skills and expand their experience’

I don’t even understand exactly what he does but I know he’s described himself as a character rigger, someone who ensures that the figures in digital animations actually move as though they are real. He’s worked on Hollywood blockbusters like ‘Elysium’, the remake of ‘The Thing’ and ‘Battleship’. I’ve never seen any of them but ‘Elysium’ was made by the South African director of the quirky ‘District 9’, produced by Peter Jackson, which I haven’t seen either but it sounds cool.

Australia, the largest island, is just the start of the island kingdom of the Greater Pacific. Compared to the tiny isles further East, New Zealand rises from the ocean like a large lost world.

Nowadays he’s like so many of us, someone who manages other people to help them do better what he used to do and would still probably really like to do himself.

The neighbouring world of Weta Digital
Now he has got himself a job at Weta Digital. You may ask what Weta Digital is but when I heard the news, my response was ‘wow’. Weta Digital is part of a stable of companies, including Weta Workshop, and makes the digital effects for Peter Jackson’s epics. If you’ve seen ‘Lord of the Rings’ or the remake of ‘King Kong’ you’ve been watching Weta at work. It’s named after a New Zealand insect, supposedly one of the largest on the planet, reflecting I presume Peter Jackson’s fascination with all things insect – so strangely evident in ‘King Kong’.

Getting wild out West – Western Sydney's long unhappiness at arts funding neglect

‘Western Sydney has long been unhappy with the tiny share of arts funding – both national and state – it receives. Across Australia there are many hundreds of small to medium arts and cultural organisations that play a pivotal role in supporting Australia’s cultural life. They need to be seen as every bit as important a part of Australia’s cultural infrastructure as the major performing arts companies or the major art galleries and museums. They are essential infrastructure for our arts and culture and they are the level of arts and cultural infrastructure closest to the very grassroots of our country – the Australians who vote, who get unhappy and who change governments. They rarely do it because of matters related to arts and culture but sometimes matters related to arts and culture, added to other concerns, can help tip things over the edge. More than a few of these organisations are based in the great mixed expanse of urban, suburban and outer-suburban Australia which is Western Sydney’.

When I finally left the public service 16 months ago there were a couple of things I had been working on that I thought were really important and would have loved to have progressed further. At the time I was responsible in the ACT, NSW and Queensland for funding from the suite of Indigenous culture programs that supported languages, culture and visual arts (and indirectly Indigenous broadcasting).

One of the projects I considered so important was consolidating and expanding funding support for Indigenous languages maintenance and revival in Western NSW, which was already well underway because of its strong community base.

Indigenous cultural funding in Western Sydney
The other, which was not underway at all, was getting more funding from the Indigenous cultural programs of the Australian Government into Western Sydney. This has one of the most dense concentrations of Aboriginal population in Australia but not a matching level of funding from these national programs, which would be ideal for this. There had been a history of not many applications coming from the region – or of the few applications there were not meeting the funding guidelines.

Beyond the obvious sights like the Harbour Bridge lies a whole world - the great mixed expanse of urban, suburban and outer-suburban Australia which is Western Sydney.

There had been some initial informal discussion with Blacktown Arts Centre and with some of the Ministry for the Arts regional staff about how to help make this happen but at that point the Indigenous Culture branch of the Ministry was disbanded and programs disbursed across the Ministry. Coupled with the continued steady dismantling of the network of regional staff in the Indigenous Culture Branch, much of the work ground to a halt.

With the unravelling of national arts funding which has produced the #freethearts response this has probably become less and less likely. It's one of my great regrets that national support couldn't have been focused on what was happening in Western Sydney.