Supply and demand of creative arts in regional Victoria, Australia
Creators: name: Masters, Tristan
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024

description: Creative arts can make vital contributions to both economies and communities. Moreover, these impacts can be keenly felt by smaller, regional communities, where shifts away from traditional rural industries are apparent, and in the context of the Inew economy' which emphasises the importance of knowledge industries and creative industries. This research investigates creative arts supply and demand in regional Victoria, Australia through the collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data in three target communities. Fundamentally, this thesis presents a detailed analysis of the current supply and demand environment, including the impacts of regional arts festivals, and determines the conditions, events and characteristics which could strengthen regional Victorian supply and demand of creative arts. This thesis analyses focus group data to investigate current levels of supply of creative arts in regional Victoria. Qualitative analysis of the data shows that the supply of creative arts in the target areas is limited by scarce resources, isolation, negative community attitudes towards creative arts, and a small audience or sales market and an over-reliance on volunteers. Small and micro-businesses in the regional Victorian arts sector are seen as having motivations for operating beyond making money, limited business acumen, and have difficulty in marketing themselves effectively. Best-practice strategies to strengthen the operations of small and micro-businesses include adopting a more entrepreneurial attitude towards arts business, using an agent to source new audiences or sales markets and to maximise the promotion of their product, creating art which is accessible to the local community, and to engage in skills development and business training. Using attitudes towards creative arts, participation in creative arts and expenditure on creative arts as a measure of current demand levels, this thesis applies a range of statistical and econometric tests to the data collected from the three target communities. Contrary to the view emergent from the supply data, this thesis shows that regional Victorians have strong levels of demand for creative arts. Results show higher than average levels of overall monthly arts expenditure, and strong demand for cinema, craft fairs or exhibitions, books, CDs and other music formats. Low levels of demand were noted for classical music, opera or ballet. Chi-Squared analysis and ordered probit results show that gender, age, festival attendance, education, and individual levels of overall arts expenditure are all determinants of creative arts demand. Analysis regarding impacts and key aspects of two regional arts festivals found that regional festival patrons are more likely to be female, local to the host region, have a middle income, and hold a high school or equivalent qualification. An econometric model, including two versions of an Ordinary Least Squares regression in addition to Tobit and probit estimations, was used to more accurately estimate individual expenditure characteristics, notably accounting for the zero-expenditure of attendees who are local to the host region. This thesis provides valuable contributions to knowledge regarding the supply and demand of creative arts in regional areas. It also provides practical insights for policy makers, festival organisers, and the regional arts industry. <br>