Christy Collis

Making Connections: creative industries networks in outer-suburban locations

Abstract The role of networks and their contribution to sustaining and developing creative industries is well documented. This article argues that although networks operate across geographical boundaries, particularly through the use of communication technologies, the majority of studies have focused on the ways in which networks operate in (a) specific inner-urban metropolitan regions or (b) specific industries. Such studies are informed by the geographical mindset of creative city proponents in which inner-urban precincts are seen as the prime location for creative industries activity, business development and opportunity. But what of those creative industries situated beyond the inner city? Evidence in Australia suggests there is increasing creative industries activity beyond the inner city, in outer-suburban and ex-urban areas. This article identifies characteristics of creative industries networks in outer-suburban locations in Melbourne and Brisbane drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork. It argues that supporting and sustaining creative industries networks in these locations may require different strategies than those applied to inner-city networks.

Beyond the Inner City: Real and Imagined Places in Creative Place Policy and Practice

As the economic and social benefits of creative industries development become increasingly visible, policymakers worldwide are working to create policy drivers to ensure that certain places become or remain “creative places.” Richard Floridas work has become particularly influential among policymakers, as has Charles Landrys. But as the first wave of creative industrial policy development and implementation wanes, important questions are emerging. It is by now clear that an “ideal creative place” has arisen from creative industries policy and planning literature and that this ideal place is located in inner cities. In this article, the authors shift focus away from the inner city to where most Australians live: the outer suburbs. They report on a qualitative research study into the practices of outer-suburban creative industries workers in Redcliffe, Australia, arguing that the accepted geography of creative places requires some recalibration once the material and experiential aspects of creative places are taken into account.

Creativity and the Australian suburbs: the appeal of suburban localities for the creative industries workforce

Abstract The locus of creative inspiration and production is commonly associated with either the dynamism of the inner city or with the natural landscape, with its Arcadian transformative associations. This article considers the spatiality of creative work in an in-between site: the outer suburbs in Australia. The outer suburbs occupy a conflicted status in the national imaginary: frequently regarded as the locus of consumption and materialism, they are localities which few associate with creativity or creative industries. Creative city discourse further instils the idea that all things creative occur only in the inner city. Yet Australia is a highly suburbanised country: the middle and outer suburbs are where most Australians live and work. This article challenges the perception that creativity is spatially clustered in the inner city. It is based on empirical and qualitative research that maps and investigates the experience of creative industries workers in outer-suburban localities of Brisbane and Melbourne. One of the key findings is the significance of the relationship between work and place for creative workers located in outer-suburban localities, rupturing assumptions about suburbia and “creative” inner-city enclaves.

Cold colonies: Antarctic spatialities at Mawson and McMurdo stations

In 1954, a small team of Australian men landed at Horseshoe Harbor and began constructing Mawson Station: the permanent colonization of Antarctica was initiated. Two years later, Americans began the construction of their major Antarctic base, McMurdo. Although Antarctica is routinely represented as an empty wilderness, over the last 50 years tens of thousands of humans have occupied the continent, most of them living in Antarcticas 40 national bases. What kinds of spaces are these Antarctican colonial settlements? How do they function materially, ideologically, legally and spatially? This article explores the anatomy of two of the oldest and most populous of these spaces, Mawson and McMurdo stations. It attends to their physical environments and to the geopolitical epistemologies that shape them. It is thus a study of two distinct Antarctican spatialities. This article is part of a larger endeavour to account for the heterogeneous cultural geographies of the polar south. It works towards a definition of contemporary colonialism in its Antarctican context. In a previously-uninhabited continent governed by scientific internationalism, yet subject to disputed territorial claims and conflicting geopolitical spaces, colonialism takes on specific localized forms. This article attends to the unique colonial spatialities of two key Antarctican settlements.

The Australian Antarctic Territory: A Man’s World?

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Entertainment Industries at University: Designing a Curriculum

Universities have not traditionally trained students to work as producers in the entertainment industries. This key entertainment role involves balancing creativity, business and legal skills in order to generate and run entertainment projects. Queensland University of Technology has recently introduced a program to train students for these jobs. The program is interdisciplinary, drawing on expertise from the Creative Industries, Law and Business faculties. This Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) article details the course learning outcomes developed from extensive industry and academic consultation, and addresses some of the difficulties involved in developing such an interdisciplinary teaching program.

‘Grounding the Internet’: Categorising the Geographies of Locative Media

The advent of mobile internet and GPS led some to predict ‘the death of geography’. With information no longer anchored to specific locations, there were concerns that geography would simply dissolve into a placeless, global ‘Space of flows’. However, locative media is now shifting the focus away from placeless flows and back to geography. By equipping many mobile phones with GPS, locative media are now ‘grounding the internet’. This article provides an overview of existing literature and research in this field in order to develop a synthetic overview of the various types of locative media, and the geographies arising from them.

Mawson and Mirnyy Stations: the spatiality of the Australian Antarctic Territory, 1954–61

Abstract This article focuses on the spatiality of the Australian Antarctic Territory in the important 1954–61 period. Attending particularly to three key components of polar spatiality—geopolitics, international territorial law, and the built environment—the article analyses the development of the Territory as a unique Australian space. The 1954–61 period is particularly significant: during this period, the International Geophysical Year brought an unprecedented number of people to Antarctica; the continents first permanent colonies were constructed; and, despite Cold War tensions, the 1961 Antarctic Treaty established the spatial configurations and rules which continue to govern the continent today. The article focuses particularly on two key stations in the Territory constructed during this period: Australias Mawson Station and the Soviet Mirnyy Station. Mawson is a legal colony, designed to cement Australias claim to 42 per cent of the Antarctic continent; Mirnyy, in contrast, is an anti-colony, designed to reject Australias claim. How the individual spatialities of these two stations articulate to the broader politics of Antarctic territoriality—and particularly Australias claim to the Australian Antarctic Territory—is the focus of this article.

Creative suburbia : cultural research and suburban geographies

Suburbanisation today is not necessarily what it used to be: rather than suburbs being outer urban commuter zones for people who work in the central business district, people living in new suburbs are increasingly likely to work in those suburbs, or to commute to other outer suburbs as their places of work. At one level, such trends affirm the analyses of the ‘Los Angeles School’ of urban geographers about the shift from the classical modernist city, with radial zones spreading out from a city centre where core businesses were located, to a more decentralised, ‘postmodern’ city. But they increasingly move beyond this postmodern perspective, in that the many suburbs are themselves centres of work and industry, and not simply centres of lifestyle and consumption. This article critically reflects upon the contemporary dynamics of the suburbs, and the public discourses that surround their development, in the context of the rise of the creative industries.

Defining entertainment: an approach

Entertainment is a key cultural category. Yet the definition of entertainment can differ depending upon whom one asks. This article maps out understandings of entertainment in three key areas. Within industrial discourses, entertainment is defined by a commercial business model. Within evaluative discourses used by consumers and critics, it is understood through an aesthetic system that privileges emotional engagement, story, speed and vulgarity. Within academia, entertainment has not been a key organizing concept within the humanities, despite the fact that it is one of the central categories used by producers and consumers of culture. It has been important within psychology, where entertainment is understood in a solipsistic sense as being anything that an individual finds entertaining. Synthesizing these approaches, the authors propose a cross-sectoral definition of entertainment as ‘audience-centred commercial culture’.