ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY
• Is your region a creative industries hotspot?
• What are your intended industry development
outcomes?
A strong driver for many creative
professionals is lifestyle, wanting
to be their own boss, and to
manage their work around their
lifestyle interests and personal/
family commitments without
other challenges that come with
owning a larger business.
WHAT ARE THE POTENTIAL
PITFALLS?
Producing a campaign or initiative pre-emptively
could thwart the opportunity. By overlooking the
factors that influence the potential success of the
project, critical attributes of your unique community
could detract from its success.
One threat to such a project is lack of engagement
by local creative community – you only get one
shot at engaging the local creative professionals to
become active participants and advocates for your
initiative.
For example, without knowing the needs of your
community’s creative professionals, you may be
unintentionally overstating the entrepreneurialism
and desires of the creative industries in your LGA to
grow their business.
A strong driver for many creative professionals
is lifestyle, wanting to be their own boss, and to
manage their work around their lifestyle interests
and personal/family commitments without other
challenges that come with owning a larger business.
Numerous artisans in the Blue Mountains LGA have
a business life cycle that follow a particular pattern:
HOW TO MITIGATE AGAINST
PITFALLS?
Determine whether your approach is to support
a particular sector of the creative industries, or
whether it is to promote the creative industries as a
whole. A creative industries, place based marketing
campaign should not be approached as a stand-
alone short term project – it ought to be a long term
project with a multi-faceted approach to contribute
to growth community and economy.
Other Local Governments looking at similar
initiatives should take into account:
• Ensuring creative community buy-in to the
initiative
• Possible lack of entrepreneurial spirit in the
creative business community
• Finding a champion for your movement is key to
its success.
• Know your creative community and their needs
• If undertaking this approach to economic
development, incorporate place-based
branding into a broader long term strategy for
development not as a stand alone solution
• Enjoy making a product • start a small business • grow to be a successful sole trader • explore options of hiring help – potentially
not enough skilled help or don’t want to be a
business owner managing other people • realise they just want to create • Fold the business or cap its capacity and keep it
as a side hustle alongside other work and family
commitments. • Creative Place-Making approach to new
developments and/or redevelopments in town
centres to mitigate against the “So-Ho effect”
On the opposite end of the scale, measures may
not be in place to support rapid growth, and creative
professionals may be pushed to the outskirts of the
city centres. • Empower local creative arts organisations and
chambers of commerce to support pre-existing
activities that may already serve this purpose
• Support a grass-roots approach to growth and
collaboration in the sector
VOL.12 NO.3 2019 | 10