Regional Cultures, Economies, and Creativity

Drawing on Australian and comparative case studies, this volume reconceptualises non-metropolitan creative economies through the 'qualities of place'.
This book examines the agricultural and gastronomic cultures surrounding 'native' foods, coastal sculpture festivals, universities and regional communities, wine in regional Australia and Canada, the creative systems of the Hunter Valley, musicians in 'outback' settings, Fab Labs as alternatives to clusters, cinema and the cultivation of 'authentic' landscapes, and tensions between the 'representational' and 'non-representational' in the cultural economies of the Blue Mountains. What emerges is a picture of rural and regional places as more than the 'other' of metropolitan creative cities. Place itself is shown to embody affordances, unique institutional structures and the invisible threads that 'hold communities together'.
If, in the wake of the publication of Florida's Rise of the Creative Class, creative industries models tended to emphasize 'big cities' and the spatial-cum-cultural imaginaries of the 'Global North', recent research and policy discourses - especially, in the Australian context - have paid greater attention to 'small cities', rural and remote creativity. This collection will be of interest to scholars, students and practitioners in creative industries, urban and regional studies, sociology, geography and cultural planning.

Ariella Van Luyn is a lecturer in writing at the University of New England, Armidale. Her research interests include practice-led research, historical fiction, community narratives and regional creativity. Eduardo de la Fuente is an adjunct fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong. His research interests include culture, economy, creativity and place.

List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Problematising regional creativity and innovation in Australia and beyond: landscapes, economies, identities, imaginaries EDUARDO DE LA FUENTE AND ARIELLA VAN LUYN SECTION 1 Landscapes, tastescapes and sensescapes: Creatively responding to place 1 Fruit forward? Wine regions as geographies of innovation in Australia and Canada JULIE MCINTYRE, DONNA SENESE AND JOHN S. HULL 2 There's no taste like home: Histories of native food on the changing tastescape of the Northern Rivers ADELE WESSEL 3 Terraform and Terra Firma: Transnational economies of image, landscape and location in screen production in Queensland ALLISON CRAVEN 4 Landscape as tension: The Blue Mountains and cultural economies of place EDUARDO DE LA FUENTE 5 Deck-chair innovation: Innovation within arm's reach for regional Australian architecture: A little of what we found when we rode the Grand Section across Australia's girth in 2017 BOBBIE BAYLEY AND OWEN KELLY, INSPIRED BY AND CO-AUTHORED WITH JOHN ROBERTS SECTION 2 Placing knowledge and innovation economies: Regional universities, ecosystems and Fab Labs 6 The troubling third tier: Small cities, small universities and an ambivalent knowledge economy TARA BRABAZON 7 Locating knowledge in Australian cities: The Knowledge City Index LAWRENCE PRATCHETT, MICHAEL JAMES WALSH, RICHARD HU AND SAJEDA TULI 8 Universities and regional creative economies DONNA HANCOX, TERRY FLEW, SASHA MACKAY AND YI WANG 9 The role of Fab Labs and Living Labs for economic development of regional Australia ANA BILANDZIC, MARCUS FOTH AND GREG HEARN SECTION 3 Regional creative industries and their potentials: Case studies and comparative perspectives 10 The Hunter Region: A creative system at work PHILLIP MCINTYRE, SUSAN KERRIGAN, EVELYN KING AND CLAIRE WILLIAMS 11 "Anything that's not in London": Regions, mobility and spatial politics in contemporary visual art EMMA COFFIELD 12 Sculptural coastlines: Site-specific artworks, beachscapes, and regional identities ELIZABETH ELLISON AND MICHELLE THOMPSON 13 One piece blokes: On being a performing musician in regional Queensland ANDY BENNETT, DAVID CASHMAN AND NATALIE LEWANDOWSKI 14 Positive deviance: Stories of regional social innovations from the Big Stories, Small Towns project MARTIN POTTER Index