Beyond the temporal

According to one study cited in Stuart Cunningham’s book, there are two opposing groups of people: ‘Political Junkies (PJs)’ and ‘Big Brother fans (BBs)’. PJs think that it beggars belief that anyone could think Big Brother was useful. BBs say that politicians are unapproachable and out of touch. As an MP who used to quite enjoy watching Big Brother, I found myself torn. Am I a BB or a PJ? A PJ in BBs? Or a BB in PJs? The reference to Big Brother is just one of a myriad of cultural touchstones in this fascinating book. Stuart Cunningham romps through Survivor and Go Back to Where You Came From, Korean bloggers and Fat Cow Motel, the Australian iTunes game Fruit Ninja and Nigeria’s ‘Nollywood’. Cunningham has also read a plethora of OECD and overseas government reports on creativity and innovation. What is striking about many of the OECD reports is how uncreative and un-innovative their titles are (‘Content as a New Growth Industry’, ‘Innovation and Knowledge-Intensive Service Activities’, ‘Demanding Innovation’, ‘Creativity, Design and Business Performance’). Naturally, the very readable and pithily titled Creative Australia, the Australian government’s 2013 national cultural policy, is an exception to this general rule. One thing that I enjoy about such reports (and Cunningham’s book itself) is that they point out the increasing role that creativity is playing in the jobs of the future. The pace of change is so rapid that many of today’s school leavers will spend the bulk of their career doing a job that hasn’t yet been invented. We cannot forecast the future, but, as MIT economists David Autor and David Dorn said of the US job market in an essay titled ‘“This Job Is Getting Old”: Measuring Changes in Job Opportunities Using Occupational Age Structure’ (American Economic Review, 1999), we can make some predictions about the impacts of trade and technology: Technical change, augmented by offshoring, is eroding demand for middle-skilled ‘routine’ cognitive and manual activities, such as bookkeeping, clerical work, and repetitive production tasks ... This displacement of routine job tasks raises relative demand for non-routine tasks in which workers hold a comparative advantage over current technology, in particular ‘abstract’ tasks requiring problem-solving, creativity, or complex interpersonal interactions (e.g., attorneys, scientists, managers) and ‘manual’ tasks requiring, variously, situational adaptability, visual and language recognition, and in-person interactions (e.g., janitors and cleaners, home health aides, beauticians, construction laborers, security personnel, and motor vehicle operators). This hollowing out of the middle of US wage distribution has important implications for Australian workers. As technology improves, one of the worst places to be is in a job where you’redoing a task that a computer program can substitute for. One of the best places to be is in a job where your skills complement what a computer can do. Cunningham rightly focuses on digital design, from computer-game designers to creative workers who are using animation to convey health information to remote Indigenous communities. If there is a single idea at the heart of this engaging book, it’s that it is not just scientists who ‘do’ innovation. As Cunningham puts it, ‘the concept of innovation has been virtually soldered to science’. He draws on C.P. Snow’s splendid ‘two cultures’ notion to highlight the disconnect in Australian public life between scientists and creative people. I agree that this is a real divide, but it’s important not to infer that science is in the inner circle and the arts on the outer. As part of last year’s ‘Science Meets Parliament’ campaign, each Australian parliamentarian was given a copy of Mark Henderson’s The Geek Manifesto: Why Science Matters (2012), a book that frets about the lack of scientific knowledge and engagement by politicians. After citing Snow, Henderson argues that the real problem is that parliamentarians understand less about thermodynamics than they do about Shakespeare. If you are a creative type, don’t assume that you are any less ‘plugged in’ to the policy process than any other group. 'Many of today’s school leavers will spend the bulk of their career doing a job that hasn’t yet been invented' What should parliamentarians be doing to promote creativity? Cunningham discusses the Convergence Review and the recognition that media laws may need to change as technology transforms the industry. For media outlets, attempting to hang on to what Jay Rosen referred to as ‘the people formerly known as the audience’ is no easy task. Another oft-proposed solution is to make intellectual property laws stricter, but as Cunningham points out, many parts of the creative sector have thrived through open innovation (e.g., via creative commons licenses). Indeed, given that sensible critics are now arguing that the United States has gone too far in protecting IP, it seems that a much smaller country like Australia should carefully assess any claims that toughening up IP laws would boost innovation. A major feature of the book is its recognition that the creative industries aren’t just good for GDP. Interestingly, claims about why particular things are good for GDP aren’t typically made by economists. If you have taken an introductory economics course, you will know that economics is about the concept of utility, which encompasses happiness, fulfilment, and pleasure. Standard economics recognises that a Carl Vine piano concerto or a new novel by Tim Winton has a benefit that goes well beyond the price of the concert tickets or book purchases. Indeed, it is no coincidence that one of our great economic reformers, Paul Keating, was also a deep lover of the arts for their own sake. When Keating was asked by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra to introduce Mahler’s Second Symphony, he didn’t talk about how the purchase of trombones and timpanis raises economic output. Instead, he quoted Kant: ‘Only artistic genius discloses a new path to us’, and described the way in which the symphony melded biblical themes, folk songs, and Mahler’s experience of seeing a children’s choir sing a resurrection chorale. Similarly, when Keating spoke at the funeral of the distinguished pianist Geoffrey Tozer, he didn’t discuss the way in which government investment in Tozer’s training had been more than repaid in CD sales. Instead, he talked about how someone of Tozer’s ability only comes along once a century, and observed that ‘When one has been touched by the stellar power and ethereal playing of a sublime musician, one is lifted, if only briefly, to a place beyond the realm of the temporal.’ Understanding that creative output matters for its own sake is good for a number of reasons. First, it is a more sensible way of viewing the world, since none of us wakes up believing that maximising GDP is the only thing that matters. Second, it is useful because – as Cunningham notes – the literature on creativity and economic growth is notoriously fragile. Sure, countries, cities, and companies that are more creative also have more output, but it doesn’t follow from this that the relationship is causal. It might run in the opposite direction (when you get rich, you get creative), or it might be the case that a third factor drives both creativity and growth. Dropping the more fragile reasons for caring about creativity brings us back to the basics. We want a more creative Australia because culture enriches our lives and soothes our souls. As Cunningham points out, creativity and innovation are closely intertwined, and dynamic developments in both help make Australia a more interesting place in which to live. Focusing on culture in its own right also helps concentrate the mind on how we should be measuring the success of government programs. The most interesting question to be asked about a government grants scheme isn’t ‘What did it do to GDP?’, but ‘What did it do for creativity?’. We need more rigorous impact assessments of the various ways in which government might boost creativity. Which is more effective: reducing venue-hire costs (as Marcus Westbury advocates) or providing scholarships to young artists? Should we focus on the regions with the highest levels of creative output, or the lowest? The better we understand the answers to these questions, the more effective we will be in boosting what Stuart Cunningham calls the ‘hidden’ innovation of the creative sector.

Andrew Leigh

From the New Issue

Rogue Corporations: Inside Australia’s biggest business scandals by Quentin Beresford

The New World Disorder: How the West is destroying itself by Peter R. Neumann, translated by David Shaw

Expanding Mindscapes: A global history of psychedelics by Erika Dyck and Chris Elcock

Vincent Namatjira edited by Vincent Namatjira

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