Capital Cities and Local government more broadly, use the Cultural and Creative Satellite Accounts to help balance the needs of the cultural and creative sectors alongside other stakeholders during policy development.
For local government, this is particularly relevant with respect to land use planning. For example, City of Sydney’s Floor Space and Employment Survey, which audits all buildings in the LGA, illustrates just how extreme the impact of urban planning can be on the cultural sector. Changes from industrial to residential zoning during the early 2000s, for example, caused large scale loss of production space and declining employment in fields such as film, fashion, and the visual arts.
While noting stakeholder concerns regarding the inclusion of industries such as “clothing retailing and wholesaling” as “not typically associated with the arts”, it is also important to note that the satellite account has relevance beyond the arts sector.
It is vital that local governments can articulate broader cultural values to retain the necessary supply of land for things like fashion manufacture and warehousing, newspaper and book publishing, industrial design industries such as furniture and ceramic production, and the workspaces used by more traditional arts spheres, such as visual art and ceramic studios.
A satellite account fully encompassing the ‘cultural and creative’ sphere is extremely important to local government policy makers.
Submission to review of Cultural and Creative activity satellite accounts submission FINAL MAY 2023