Arts Value-Creating Ecology

This research project conducted research with seven culturally diverse artists in order to understand how they generate value.

View the arts value-creating ecologies for Christos Tsiolkas, Massive Fam, and, Empat Lima.

Value is generally defined in narrow terms for each sector of the arts:

1. Elite arts - Value has traditionally been defined as artistic excellence. However, the notion of 'excellence' has been critiqued for being a potentially elitist and monocultural lens through which to assess the value of an artist or artwork. While there have been efforts to develop more flexible modes of artistic excellence, it remains a limited framework for evaluating multicultural art.

2. Community cultural development - Arts and cultural production in this sector tends to be informed by objectives of social inclusion, access and wellbeing.

3. Creative industries - Commercial cultural sectors such as film, media, fashion and music focus on economic outcomes. However, there has been insufficient attention to how such creative innovation might other kinds of social and cultural value.

Existing understandings of value do not consider the reality of many artists who move between these sectors. This research shows that multicultural artists are not confined to any one of these sectors but often move flexibly between these different forms of value.

Traditional Arts Value Chain diagram: