Creative industries mapping: Where have we come from and where are we going?

Attempts to measure the bundle of activities termed the creative industries commenced with the UK's Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) release in 1998 of its 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. Since then, there have been mapping exercises in several countries, based to a greater or lesser extent on the 1998 UK exercise. This paper proposes that there have been three iterations of creative industries mapping to date. It outlines the issues faced, the methodologies applied and the findings produced by representative projects in each iteration.

Research on which this article is based was supported by an Australian Research Council Linkage-Project grant administered by Queensland University of Technology in partnership with the Australian Government Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts and the Australian Film Commission.