Australia's Creative Economy: Mapping Methodologies

Attempts to measure the bundle of activities termed the creative industries commenced with the UK¹s Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) release in 1998 of the Creative Industries Mapping Study. Like many earlier attempts to study the size and impact of the cultural industries, these focused on the employment and business activities (within selected industrial classifications) of either census of industry employment or surveys of businesses within industries. The Creative Digital Industries National Mapping Project undertaken at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation has examined the methodologies and metrics of a cultural and creative industry mapping studies and have built a robust approach for measuring the employment based impact of cultural and creative based activities across the economy. The results of the QUT methodology reveals that previous studies have underestimated the employment impact of some creative sectors by up to 50%. This paper examines the CCI methodologies, the metrics that have been identified as useful for seeing the patterns in the data and the first measurements from the application of the new ruler to the creative and related industries.