What is it about?
The loss of this creative talent is a challenge for both nations and regions. The dominance of cities as the centres of Australia’s knowledge-based economy, for example, leads also to migration of creative workers from regional centres and beta cities, lessening the potential for those regions to attract and retain creative and innovative people. Given the globalised nature of the cultural industries and the emergence of new technologies, this study of Western Australian creative artists asked whether migration loss could be repositioned as cultural gain.
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Why is it important?
Initial results suggest that spatial separation due to geographic isolation is problematic for both metropolitan and regional creative workers. Despite participants’ strong personal connections with Western Australia, artistic connections were tenuous and artistic involvement was negligible. Implications include the need to actively engage with creative migrants by fostering their continued involvement in the cultural life of cities and regions.
Perspectives
The findings strongly suggest the need to actively engage with creative migrants, fostering their continued involvement as active agents in the cultural life and image of our cities and regions. A targeted program of virtual collaborations could go a long way towards connecting artists and community regardless of artists’ locations, repositioning creative migration as a positive element of local identities. It is hoped that further empirical research into the geography of artistic talent will shed more light on this fascinating area of research.
Professor Dawn Bennett
Curtin University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Creative Migration: a Western Australian case study of creative artists, Australian Geographer, March 2010, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/00049180903535626.
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