What is Cultural Infrastructure?
Cultural infrastructure development models are “‘diverse, responding to the social, economic, cultural, and environmental capacities and to changes within communities’ (Creative City Network of Canada 2008), such as agents and partnerships, cultural-creative enterprise trends and funding frameworks” (Ang et al. 2016: 38).
Culture is fluid and cultural activities can take place in any context. Limiting the concept of culture to a predetermined set of infrastructural resources and venues is, therefore, problematic. Music, for example, can be performed and heard in concert halls, businesses, hotels, bars, community halls, schools and on streets. To focus on a single aspect of physical infrastructure, such as a concert hall, privileges professional or commercial musical activities, and overlooks leisure or amateur musical practices that are integral parts of the cultural ‘system’ or ‘ecology’ of music (Potts 2007). ICS research broadens cultural mapping to include cultural venues and different types of cultural enterprise and organisation. Being overly focused on physical venues (fixity or materiality of culture) can result in the neglect of the flows and relations that are part of the ecology of culture (Bavinton 2011).
Our expertise
ICS is a dedicated qualitative research facility, with strong capability in urban, geospatial and social media statistical methods. This expertise can help to supplement findings developed through workshops, interviews, policy analysis and desk research by analysing, correlating and summarising key trends relating to patterns of cultural production and consumption from key sources such as the ABS, AURIN, social media (Twitter, Instagram, etc), and council-owned GIS databases and other data sets. The “Mapping Culture” project for the City of Sydney is an example of such detailed and largely quantitative research with a significant qualitative dimension.
Our research approach
Research into cultural infrastructure must take these factors into account. It must further consider varying definitions of ‘culture’ and ‘cultural activity’, and design appropriate parameters to classify different types of cultural activity. To address this challenge, ICS uses a classification framework that identifies five types of cultural activity and their associated spaces: Performance and Exhibition such as concert halls and museums; Commercial and Enterprise such as creative businesses; Community and Participation Practice, such as community centres and libraries; Practice, Education and Development, such as art schools and rehearsal facilities and Practice and Festival, Event and Public Space such as parks (Ang et al. 2016: 40-7).
The researchers have adapted the conventional industry supply-chain model to create a more appropriate set of value chain roles—conceived as a series of interlinked processes—that draw on the concepts of the ‘culture cycle’ or ‘creative chain’ as used in major international frameworks. This creative value chain dimension encompasses the five roles of creation, production, dissemination, use and education that is deployed in this research with local government.
References
Ang, I, Rowe, D, Magee, L, Wong, A, Swist, T, Rouillard, D & Polio, A 2016, Mapping culture: venues and infrastructure in the City of Sydney. Western Sydney University, Penrith.
Bavinton, N 2011, ‘To Socialise with Random Strangers’: Cultures of Consumption in Night-Time Urban Space. PhD thesis, University of Western Sydney.
Creative City Network of Canada 2008, Cultural Infrastructure: An Integral Component of Canadian Communities. Creative City News, available from https://www.creativecity.ca/database/files/library/News_5_E.pdf
Potts, J 2007, Art & Innovation: An Evolutionary Economic View of the Creative Industries. UNESCO Observatory e-journal. http://education.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/1105721/artinnovation. pdf (accessed on 26 June 2016).