ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY
SKETCHING
AUSTRALIA’S
ARTISTIC
LANDSCAPE
ASHTON DE SILVA, SVETA ANGELOPOULOS
AND JONATHAN BOYMAL
Planners and policy makers worldwide have long
been focussed on the concept of creativity and its
contributions to local economic development. It is
widely accepted that creativity is a driver of innovation
and entrepreneurship. Notably, creative activity (of
which Artistic production is one special type) is believed
to contribute to more than just economic output;
providing valuable social benefits resulting, in part, from
its role in establishing local identity and character.
Recently, we set about to sketch the Australian
artistic landscape, in particular, we set ourselves the
task to unveil the distribution of artists across the
nation 1 . We used 2016 census data to identify each
person who declared themselves as working in one
of eleven types of artistic occupations as defined in
the 2016 census:
1. Actors, Dancers and Other Entertainers
2. Music Professionals
3. Photographers
4. Visual Arts and Crafts Professionals
5. Art Directors, Media Producers & Presenters
6. Film, TV, Radio & Stage Directors
7. Authors, Book & Script Editors
8. Journalists & Other Writers
9. Fashion, Industrial & Jewellery Designers
10. Graphic, Web Designers, & Illustrators
11. Interior Designers
This analysis provides insight into the character
of the distribution artists residential choices (as
a proxy for artistic human capital) at the local
government level (LGA), beyond the traditionally
known hubs of creative economic activity.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
Many academic studies indicate that the presence
of creative human capital impacts local prosperity,
promotes community cohesion, wellbeing, and has
the potential to attract industries of all types. To get
an in depth understanding of the distribution and
density of creative capacity in Australia we require
specificity and attention to the uniqueness of the
type of art and the place itself which can shed light
on common assumptions about artistic location
patterns. This analysis helps inform arts policy
makers about the appropriate mix between targeted
place-specific programs and broader initiatives.
CLUSTER ANALYSIS AND
STRATIFICATION
To do this we first employed a well-known statistical
grouping procedure called Hierarchical Cluster
Analysis where LGAs were grouped together
according to the degree of their similarity. The
process essentially forms groups by collecting
together LGAs that are most similar (in terms of
artists living in the area) whilst simultaneously
maximising the differences between groups.
Interestingly this procedure did not identify patterns of
artists concentrating together across regions. In other
words no conclusive results emerged in this stage.
The results however did lead us to construct our
own grouping algorithm. In contrast to the formal
clustering approach which attempted to group LGAs
according to the type of artist, we constructed a simple
mathematical stratification classification system based
on the presence of the relative extent to which the
number of types of artists residing in an area. The
analysis, in both applications were performed on what
economists refer to as location quotients – these can
be defined as the share residing artists in an area
relative to the national average.
Our constructed stratification of LGAs are based on
five classifications:
1. No residing artists
2. Negligible levels of residing artists
3. Some types of artists residing en masse in the
local community.
4. A majority number of types of artists are residing
in the local community.
5. All artist types on mass are residing in the local
community
VOL.12 NO.1 2019 | 10