Gold Coast Queensland - Australian Cultural and Creative Activity: A Population and Hotspot Analysis - QUT
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Australian Cultural and Creative Activity: A Population and Hotspot Analysis Gold Coast Queensland
Australian Cultural and Creative Activity:
A Population and Hotspot Analysis
Gold Coast
This report is an output of an Australian Research Council Linkage project (LP160101724) led by Queensland University of Technology in partnership with
the University of Newcastle, Arts Queensland, Create NSW, Creative Victoria, Arts South Australia and the WA Department of Local Government, Sport and
Cultural Industries.
Suggested citation: Cunningham, S., McCutcheon, M., Hearn, G., Ryan, M. D. and Collis, C. (2019). Australian Cultural and Creative Activity: A Population and
Hotspot Analysis: Gold Coast. Brisbane. Digital Media Research Centre. Available: https://research.qut.edu.au/creativehotspots/wp-
content/uploads/sites/258/2020/05/Creative-Hotspots-Qld-Gold-Coast-Report-FINAL-v3-20200316.pdf
Strategic Summary
City of Gold Coast: built on creativity, transformed by imagination (City of Gold Coast Council, 2020a).
The Gold Coast has one of the strongest and most resilient city brands in Australia. Monikers such as the
‘glitter strip’, ‘Sin City’, ‘Australia’s playground’ and ‘famous for fun’ have variously been applied to brand
the Gold Coast, with its identity long touted as revolving around ‘sun, surf and sand’. Belinda McKay (2005,
p. 68) observes that the Gold Coast is often seen as a place to escape to, ‘where new possibilities can be
imagined and enacted’: this sense of escape from the ordinary remains a strong element of the Gold Coast’s
place identity.
But so much about the Gold Coast no longer aligns readily with this image. The Gold Coast now attracts the
media treatment a big city gets (crime, transport snarls and huge pressure to address major infrastructure
deficits, socio-economic divides between the glitter strip amenity and affluence and ‘pram city’ in the new
estates off the coast). And well it might. The Gold Coast is Australia’s largest non-capital city, has the second-
largest municipal Council in the country (after Brisbane), and enjoys the benefits and challenges of a large
and rapidly growing population, currently more than 600,000 and increasing by 2.9 per cent each year (see
the background and data sources referenced in the appendices to this report). The Gold Coast is much bigger
than two of Australia’s capital cities (Hobart, Darwin), is bigger than national capital Canberra, and is much
bigger than the ‘second’ cities of the two most populous states (Geelong, Newcastle). Across the Old Gold
Coast Highway, which runs parallel to the ocean and defines the beach strip that marks the Gold Coast as a
pre-eminent international and domestic tourist destination, the rapidly growing estates, major shopping
centres and industrial parks that accommodate the majority of the residential population growth look and
feel like core suburbia in any Australian capital city.
Technically a ‘major regional city’ but sometimes excluded from public programs because of its sheer size,
the Gold Coast is Australia’s largest non-capital city international tourism destination (Tourism Research
1
Version 1 16 March 2020
Australia, 2019b). It has an increasingly busy international airport that receives direct flights from key
tourism markets, and often outcompetes major metropolitan centres on convention/conference business
(including in the creative industries—examples include the 2019 TV Week Logies Awards, Screen Producers
Australia’s Screen Forever 2020 conference, and academic conferences such as the International
Communication Association 2020). It also attracts large international sporting events, with a particular
highlight being the first non-capital city to host the Commonwealth Games 2018 (CG2018). This latter
achievement was meticulously planned to deliver game changing long-term benefits and they definitely
show.
The strength and resilience of its pleasure-focussed brand has been both blessing and a curse for cultural
and creative activity on the Gold Coast. The curse has been that the brand has historically never included
cultural and creative activity, and cultural elites have treated the Gold Coast as stereotypically superficial.
The blessing is apparent in that being the place to escape to, ‘where new possibilities can be imagined and
enacted’, the Gold Coast offers a Richard Florida-style sense of attractive amenity and opportunity.
Interviewees often referred to a reverse brain drain, with creatives choosing to relocate or return home.
A main through-line of this report is the extent to which the cultural and creative identity of the Gold Coast
is rapidly evolving and adapting to incorporate edgy arts precincts, a signature cultural precinct HOTA, world
leading entertainment attractions, two leading Indigenous cultural tourism centres, and sophisticated public
art and music industry development strategies, even as it remains Australia’s traditional tourism-dedicated
city, ‘famous for fun’. There is standout commercial practice at scale in international film production and
cultural tourism, and outstanding Indigenous cultural tourism in Dreamworld Corroboree. Befitting a place
that is in many respects a metro more than a regional city, the Gold Coast stands out amongst our regional
hotspots, having higher growth across its economy and in the creative industries, with the total workforce
growing at an average rate of 5.0 per cent per annum, and employment in the creative industries increasing
at 4.0 per cent per annum. There is also less of a sense of separation of the cultural and commercial,
business-to-consumer and business-to-business, analogue and digital creative activity, than may be in
evidence in other hotspots. Leveraging this identity as a positive and evolving aspect of the Gold Coast’s DNA
remains an important cultural driver across the region’s creative industries.
Key findings:
1. The Gold Coast’s grass roots and highly entrepreneurial arts scene is professionalising strongly, aided by
some quality leadership attracted to the opportunities on the Gold Coast, and strong Gold Coast Council and
Queensland State Government investment radically boosted by the CG2018. Similar to Cairns, the Gold Coast
Mayor Tom Tate ‘gets’ culture, re-siting the Council Chambers and a mayoral office to the HOTA site at
Evandale. The councillors are very involved in arts on the Gold Coast, attending events of their own volition,
and their engagement is valued by practitioners and facilitators.
Like all regional centres, the Gold Coast has had to bootstrap itself, working against the dominant image of
the region, with no company funded as a Major Performing Arts Group in receipt of virtually locked-in multi-
year funding. (Adelaide, the city one up in size to the Gold Coast, for example, has three such groups.) Arts
and culture on the Gold Coast has drawn on strong traditions of entrepreneurialism, which has seen artists
and arts organisations not presume on public funding, and prepared to work with anyone (for example surf
festivals and breweries) and anywhere (including shopping centres and light industrial estates). The Gold
Coast arts and culture community has the confidence to try new things, for example Blank magazine and the
Swell Sculpture Festival were initiated by locals for locals. It also draws on a marginalised Gold Coast history,
for example, of highly successful pop music venues such as the Playroom at Tallebudgera, and Bombay Rock.
The Bleach* Festival brings this kind of history back to life. For these reasons, the largest university presence
2
Version 1 16 March 2020
on the Gold Coast, Griffith University, decided to theme its creative industries curriculum initiative around
arts entrepreneurship.
Quality leadership is another result of the Gold Coast’s ability to attract and retain talent. With Creina
Gehrke and her team at HOTA, and Leigh Tabrett as Chair of the Bleach* Festival, strategies are thorough,
highly professional and seek to build methodically nationally competitive arts entities which can compete
with the metros for national prizes, national recognition and perhaps such prizes as Major Performing Arts
Group status. The Council’s Culture Strategy 2023, first published in 2014, is an impressive and engaging
document, and is treated by those we interviewed, such as Creina Gehrke and Libby Lincoln, as very much a
live benchmark against which there is a rigorous evaluation of everything. Their KPIs are not growth at any
cost, but are diverse and specific, around reach, engagement, community participation, vibrancy, advertising
and media reach, centrally including social media.
The effect of the CG2018 certainly involved super boosting this evolving professionalisation. The essential
legacy of CG2018 for creative endeavour was a genuine step change in the recognition of and respect for
arts and culture as a key contributor to the rebranded Gold Coast, led by a significant injection of arts
funding by the Council, $7.3 million over four years, now extended. Together with this were the significant
embedding of Indigenous cultural and creative contributions and the successful delivery of the state-wide
lead-in Festival 2018, Queensland’s largest-ever arts and culture festival. Over the five or more years in the
lead up to, and movement on from the Games, Gold Coast arts and culture have gone from piecemeal,
underfunded and scattergun with little to no national reputation, to solidified, professionalised structures,
solidified sector governance, where quality delivery was more certain.
2. Village Roadshow a national leader in both tourism and cultural production. Village Roadshow Limited’s
achievements in running the nation’s leading example of a conglomerate operating as broker and facilitator
of international screen production and its lead role in and commitment to tourism need to be acknowledged
far more than they often are. Village Roadshow has a very significant presence on the Gold Coast, where its
theme parks and movie studios are important attractors for both tourists and screen productions, local and
international. It is a key instance, albeit without the official moniker, of a regional creative innovation cluster
of businesses sitting under a conglomerate umbrella. Internationally, Village Roadshow holds a diversified
portfolio of interests including a marketing services division and cinema exhibition and film distribution
businesses. Its theme park business (which includes Warner Bros. Movie World, Sea World, Wet’n’Wild Gold
Coast, Paradise Country, Australian Outback Spectacular, Topgold Gold Coast and Sea World Resort, all on
the Gold Coast, and a developing presence in China and the United States) is one of its most profitable
investments, generating earnings before tax and depreciation for the company of $73.0 million in 2018-19,
up from $41.9 million in the previous year (Village Roadshow Ltd, 2019).
Village Roadshow’s theme parks are a key element of the region’s tourism infrastructure and the Gold Coast
economy. They host millions of visitors each year, and employ 4000 people, including apprenticeships in
food, retail, accommodation and event management, and creative practitioners working in both creative
services and cultural production roles (providing a direct conduit to the Gold Coast’s creative economy) and
generate $50 million in construction work on the Gold Coast each year (Bhatia, 2019). Village Roadshow’s
Warner Bros. Movie World Studios, situated adjacent to its Warner Bros. Movie World theme park, provides
world-class film production facilities used by major international productions and by local producers as well.
The Studio’s partnership with the New York Film Academy Gold Coast provides students with opportunities
to participate in production work, where NYFA has its own production workshop studios, and through
monthly film production hot-sets at the theme park, where students can practice their skills in a real-world
environment while engaging theme park guests in a movie-making experience (Mortimer, 2020; New York
Film Academy, 2019; PRWeb, 2019). Village Roadshow also invests directly itself in Australian screen content
3
Version 1 16 March 2020
through Roadshow Rough Diamond, BlinkTV and FilmNation, although this activity is not confined to the
Gold Coast (Village Roadshow Ltd, 2019).
Sea World’s General Manager Sanjay Bhatia places the Gold Coast as a tourism destination in a global
context. There is constant pressure to invest: ‘Everything in the visitor experience to the Gold Coast from the
airport, including the drive to the hotel as well as the actual product experiences must be first class’, echoing
Destination Gold Coast’s view that ‘There is a significant risk to our local economy if the Gold Coast fails to
match or exceed the pace of global tourism experience development’ (Weston, 2020). In line with this, Sea
World is planning an expansion of its theme park concept at The Spit, including an Indigenous cultural
tourism attraction.
3. Digital creative services: The degree of embedding of digital skills and practices marks out a threshold of
the strength of creative services not seen to the same extent in other Queensland hotspots and represents
a high point amongst our national hotspots. The Gold Coast has a stronger creative services profile than any
other Queensland hotspot in this study, with a high proportion of workers in advertising and marketing,
architecture and design, and software and digital content occupations and industries. Its creative services
occupation intensity, at 2.1 per cent of the workforce, is greater than any of the other hotspots, with more
than half of the people employed in these roles working outside the creative industries themselves.
We saw three types of digital creative services enterprises on the Gold Coast: numerous freelancers/sole
traders, three-to-four person collectives, and larger organisations which can compete for large public sector
tenders. These latter include Gold Coast offices of Sydney and Melbourne-based services firms. Growth in
the freelance/sole trader category is outstripping that of the large businesses: between the census years of
2011 and 2016 the numbers of creative services businesses not registered for GST (and therefore earning
less than $75,000 per annum) increased by an annual average of 8.0 per cent, much higher than business
count growth for larger businesses at 4.7 per cent. Over the same period, the numbers of people working in
creative services occupations also grew strongly, at an annual average of 5.0 per cent (Australian Bureau of
Statistics, 2016; Australian Business Register, 2019). These new businesses and jobs can be seen in the
clientele of the co-working spaces located around the Gold Coast, which tend to host digital businesses.
Digital content is definitely mainstreamed into tourism offerings in the Gold Coast, something not seen in on
the Sunshine Coast or in Cairns: the maturity and international competitiveness of the tourism industry
demands a strong digital base. To meet user expectations, tourism businesses source digital content services
in a variety of places, from overseas suppliers through to providing training to develop skills locally. One
example is Village Roadshow’s reliance on its own in-house marketing services team. Another was provided
by the Council’s Business and Investment Attraction Officer Derek Cheung, who spoke of local businesses
considering licensing augmented reality software from British and Canadian companies (rather than
commissioning AR content development locally) to meet tourists’ expectations for AR experiences, including,
for instance, the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary Gruffalo Trail, which provides visitors with a guided and safe
way to explore the coastal forests of the Gold Coast. With its entrepreneurial remit to support the music
industry on the Gold Coast, Blank’s Sam Morris and Chloe Popa provide digital media training, after seeing
that musicians ‘all need social media skills’.
The Gold Coast Council established itself as a regional digital infrastructure policy leader with its 2016 Digital
City Program. The Council was the first in Australia to invest in its own fibre optic network, in free WiFi
networks and in a Low Power Wide Area Network. But how much has creative digital application
development been embedded in the Council’s Digital Plan and in Lumina (the new name for the Gold Coast
Health and Knowledge Precinct development)?. The Digital Plan seems mostly focused on large-scale
enabling infrastructure developments and the health precinct at Southport. Private sector investment is
beginning to fill this space, with the COHORT co-working space and innovation hub offering Regional
4
Version 1 16 March 2020
Development Australia’s digital business, social media, small business software and security courses for
SMEs and a mentorship program for young women wanting to pursue a career in artificial intelligence
(COHORT, 2020). Is there scope for the Council to further enhance the profile and contribution of digital
creative services to the Gold Coast economy?
4. The Gold Coast offers some outstanding examples of Indigenous tourism innovation. Perhaps most
prominent as it is located within the Dreamworld theme park, Dreamworld Corroboree, is undoubtedly
ground-breaking and unique. It not only connects Indigenous culture with the environment and wildlife
conservation, but it also engages in serious reconciliation work. Established in consultation with local
indigenous people, it is run according to a non-hierarchical cultural framework. Tourists come to
Dreamworld Corroboree to cuddle a koala, but to get there they traverse authentic curated Indigenous
experiences enlivened by trained (and trainee) Indigenous guides. The manager of Dreamworld Corroboree ,
Al Mucci, has gained the trust of the local Aboriginal community and it is keen to be involved: ‘Our Aboriginal
staff, when I have one position come up, I have a hundred people go for that job. Everyone wants to work
here’. Non-Indigenous himself, Mucci was nominated by local families to work on CG2018 as Indigenous
Relationships Manager. He refutes strongly the Alan Jones view that the Indigenous profile at CG2018 was
too much, arguing that white Australia needs to deal with the hurt, ‘to understand the past. Because then
you're start embracing how good Aboriginal culture is’.
The Queensland State Government is also contributing $2.7 million to the University of Queensland Future
Lab at Dreamworld Corroboree, an ‘integrated indigenous research facility’, which aims to leverage the Asian
education market, tourists who want to be educated about Australia (Mucci, 2019).
Other long-standing attractions featuring Australian Aboriginal culture include Jellurgal Aboriginal Cultural
Centre and the Yugambeh Museum. Jellurgal Aboriginal Cultural Centre at Burleigh Heads has undergone a
significant upgrade and is certified under Tourism and Events Queensland’s Best of Queensland Experiences
Program, which assesses an attraction’s online reviews and presence, and connections to local tourism
agencies (Thomas, 2019).
5. Cultural tourism is multifaceted and seriously engaged on the Gold Coast, while creative industries
tourism on the Gold Coast has scale. The Gold Coast is one of Australia’s most popular tourism destinations,
with tourism a crucial driver of the local economy, responsible for 90 per cent of the more than 11 million
people that visit each year. The beach and the theme parks are not the only attractions that lure domestic
and international tourists to the region. An expanding schedule of carefully curated arts and cultural events
mean the Gold Coast is increasingly being recognised as a significant cultural tourism—and creative
industries tourism—destination.
Cultural tourism on the Gold Coast encompasses many different forms and experiences, from intimate
performances and exhibitions to large-scale community events. It includes the Indigenous tourism
attractions, arts festivals (Bleach*, the Swell Sculpture Festival) and performing arts events (at venues
ranging from the HOTA outdoor stage, to the Star Casino to small private venues across the region). The
Council is merging its promotional agencies to form the new Major Events Gold Coast which, funded by a
tourism levy, is tasked with extending the Gold Coast’s sun-and-surf brand. The new culture offer is
vernacular, embodying a casual and modern surf culture, that picks up on Gold Coast heritage architecture
and its history of alternative but commercial venues, and strives to deliver a sophisticated tourism offering
that connects with the region’s reputation for fun. The new Home of the Arts, HOTA, is intended to evolve as
a well-curated representation of how the high-rise Gold Coast perceives itself, a Gotham City on the Beach.
Partly driven by a ‘Richard Florida-type phenomenon,’ the creative talent that is migrating to the Gold Coast
enhances events coordinated through the Council’s promotional agencies, encouraging people to come to
5
Version 1 16 March 2020
the region, stay longer and spend more. This strategy is delivering results: the Gold Coast is the seventh-
most visited region in Australia by domestic travellers staying overnight to attend a performing arts event,
ahead of Adelaide and Canberra (Australia Council for the Arts, 2020).
While cultural tourism on the Gold Coast is big, creative industries tourism is even bigger. People holidaying
on the Gold Coast flock to its theme parks, where they immerse themselves in a film-based fantasy land at
Warner Bros Movie World and engage with the founding myths of settler Australiana at Australian Outback
Spectacular. Film location tourism is also part of creative industries tourism in the region, with the Gold
Coast Film Festival offering location tours in tandem with its ten days of festival programming.
The challenge for cultural and creative industries tourism on the Gold Coast is striking a balance between its
skyscraper post-modernity and jet setter affluence on the one hand, and its demotic, grass roots surf and
sand communities on the other. Interviewees spoke about the heritage of the Gold Coast, about the value of
preserving the heritage kitsch that was associated with its sun-and-surf branding, but there is little evidence
of any targeted attempt to preserve its actual built environment.
Opportunities and challenges
1. A strip city connecting beaches and villages with their own unique identities, the Gold Coast does not have
one central CBD, although Southport is nominally the City Centre. Consequently, there is no central point to
go for cultural and entertainment experiences in the city. While the construction of HOTA is in part an
attempt to establish a major and centralised entertainment precinct, there are several rather dispersed
clusters of creative activity across the city, from connected arts communities and the much-loved Swell
Sculpture and Bleach* festivals to the screen production cluster at the Village Roadshow Studios and the
various performance-based and cultural tourism offerings of the themes parks. Realising the full potential of
the centralising role of HOTA while not detracting from the decentralised village-like cultural specificities is a
challenge for its integration in the Gold Coast’s creative economy.
2. The extended linear nature of the city’s geography that provides for strong hyper-local identity and
responsiveness can inhibit the success of citywide initiatives. City-wide coordination could be enhanced by
festivals sharing resources. Festivals do not all happen at the same time, they could develop efficiencies and
synergies by sharing full-time management and marketing personnel for example.
3. There is a challenge to maintain the degree of focus and rate of progress in marrying professionalisation
and entrepreneurship after the major funding injection of the Commonwealth Games’ Festival 2018 and
associated infrastructure build. The Council’s multiyear funding is a substantial response, and ongoing
commitment will be necessary to maintain momentum.
4. The Gold Coast Council’s Digital Plan seems mostly focused on large-scale enabling infrastructure
developments, and the development of the health precinct at Southport. Although there are incubator
services in place that provide access to some support to emerging creative business, there is scope for them
to further enhance the profile and contribution of digital creative services to the Gold Coast economy.
5. Access and participation—audience development investments to help local productions reach new
audiences and building organisational capacity to stay connected with audiences. Among others, Professor
of Architecture at Bond University Adrian Carter raised with us the view there is no culture reaching to the
‘westies’. How affordable, accessible and attractive is the range of cultural activities to people living in the
rapidly growing suburbs that accommodate the majority of residential population growth and are being built
further and further away from all that makes the Gold Coast a pre-eminent international and domestic
tourist destination?
6
Version 1 16 March 2020
Contents
Strategic Summary ........................................................................................................................................1
Contents ........................................................................................................................................................7
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................................8
Strategic theme 1 What are the interrelationships across the sub sectors of the creative industries? .......9
Strategic theme 2: The relationship of cultural and creative activity to the wider economy.....................18
Strategic theme 3: Hotspot Comparisons ...................................................................................................26
Appendix 1: Background and context .........................................................................................................28
Appendix B: Data resources ........................................................................................................................37
References ...................................................................................................................................................38
7
Version 1 16 March 2020
Acknowledgements
The research team gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the following people and organisations for
providing the information and insights that made this report possible:
Raith Anderson, DBI Architects
Rob Bare, Guerrilla (Digital Agency)
Lynne Benzie, Village Roadshow Theme Parks
Sanjay Bhatia, Sea World
Steven Caldwell, Caldwell Entertainment
Emma Calverley, City of Gold Coast Council
Professor Adrian Carter, Bond University
Derek Cheung, City of Gold Coast
Natasha Edwards, Swell Sculpture
Lucy Fisher, Gold Coast Film Festival
Creina Gehrke, Home of the Arts
Alicia Jones, Gold Coast Historical Society and Museum
Gabrielle Jones, City of Gold Coast Council
Chris Klopper, Griffith University
David Leitch, Gold Coast Historical Society and Museum
Adam Lewczuk, City of Gold Coast Council
Libby Lincoln, City of Gold Coast Council
Samantha Morris, Blank and Gold Coast Music Awards
Al Mucci, Dreamworld Corroboree and GC2018 Legacy
Chloe Popa, Blank and Gold Coast Music Awards
Lynn Porter, New York Film Academy Australia
Brendan Sinclair, Tailored Media
Julia Solomon, Bleach Festival
Dan Stevenson, Bordertown Films
Jason Thomas, Tourism and Events Queensland
Mark Walsh, Lightwave Architectural Firm
Kelly Zirilli, LMG Digital Media
8
Version 1 16 March 2020
Strategic theme 1
What are the interrelationships across the sub sectors of the creative
industries?
The Gold Coast’s coastal lifestyle and forward-thinking entrepreneurial spirit is attracting talented people
who want to stay. Its creative economy is supported by the largest population and the largest agglomeration
of cultural and creative professionals outside Australia’s capital cities, with interviewees pointing to a
Richard Florida-style attraction dynamic of lifestyle amenity and opportunity, and a reverse brain wherein
creative practitioners return to balance lifestyle and work. With employment and gross regional product
growth outstripping population growth—at respective annual averages of 5.0 and 4.0 per cent compared
with 2.9 per cent and all amongst the highest in regional Australia (The Vice President of the Gold Coast
Chamber of Commerce told us the strength of the Gold Coast for doing business is the skilled workforce
that has been attracted by its lifestyle. Her observation that there is an abundance of workforce in the Gold
Coast is supported by Census employment data, which shows that employment on the Gold Coast increased
by an annual average of 5.0 per cent, more than twice the rate of growth it its population overall (Error! Not
a valid bookmark self-reference.). On the other hand, there are also challenges for business on the Gold
Coast, including the NBN, which is patchy, a lack of infrastructure, sometimes parking and traffic, a lack of
knowledge about running business for start-ups—for example human relations and legal requirements,
liabilities, basic business skills, business planning and succession planning (Zirilli, 2019).
Table 5)—both the creative services and cultural production sectors are expanding, with employment in
creative occupations growing at an annual averages of 4.7 per cent, as creative professionals connect and
integrate across the economy, with more than half of people working in creative roles employed outside the
creative industries themselves (Appendix B.1). There is less of a sense of separation between business-to-
business oriented creative service businesses and consumption-oriented cultural production, or between
physical and digital creative activity, than may be in evidence elsewhere.
A flourishing creative economy has contributed to the Gold Coast having achieved the turnaround in its
image from a fun-and-sun stereotype to that of a sophisticated city. The symbiotic development of the
creative industries and the City itself is at the fore in considering the relationships across the subsectors of
the creative industries on the Gold Coast. For example, the Gold Coast is home to nearly half of the
architects and landscape designers in regional Queensland (Appendix B.6). Architecture and Design is one
of the pillars of the Gold Coast’s rapidly strengthening creative services sector, and one inexorably
connected to its sense of place. The Gold Coast’s architects draw confidently on the region’s cultural
heritage, with its built heritage extending from beach shack to skyscraper, and are critically aware of how
their buildings sit within their environment: ‘Where else do you have a 35km beach plus high rise along a
good part of it?’ (Anderson, 2019). Lightwave Director Mark Walsh described Gold Coast architecture as a
response to Brisbane: subtropical but not colonial, conscious of its proximity to the beach (including sand
wash down areas) and referencing 1950s architecture and the Gold Coast holiday (Walsh, 2019). Its public
architecture, on the other hand, is designed to open space to foster public life, rather than connect with
heritage. The outdoor stage at the City of Gold Coast HOTA project, is ‘a significant drawcard for local,
national and international visitors’ (AILA National Awards jury report quoted in ARM Architecture, 2018; City
of Gold Coast, 2020)
Professionalisation of the cultural sector, based on deep-seated entrepreneurialism, quality
leadership and strong public investments
There has always been a strong entrepreneurial spirit on the Gold Coast, which has long differentiated its
economy from those of other regions in Australia. One example cited by the Council Film Attraction Office’s
9
Version 1 16 March 2020Business Development Officer Gabrielle Jones was Keith Williams’ Sea World in the 1970s, which was very
different for its time and became an important and successful tourist attraction (Jones, 2019). Interviewees
told that that there are many opportunities to build a business on the Gold Coast, and that it is easier than
ever ‘to get in front of an audience to sell creative outputs’ (Sinclair, 2019). Businesses are young and
dynamic, with 50 per cent of the Chamber of Commerce members being SMEs, including university
graduates starting businesses or who are trying to get their own freelance work (Zirilli, 2019).
A number of interviewees connected the ideas of the creative DNA of the Gold Coast and arts
entrepreneurship. They pointed to a Florida-like system with practitioners investing in enterprises that are
attracting more creatives to the Gold Coast. There is an appetite for risk, a renegade and maverick spirit,
nurtured by the casual surf culture and outdoors performances and an emphasis on experimentation and
play, with changes over the last seven years accumulating so that the creative industries are much more
prominent (Fisher, 2019). The emphasis on experimentation, play and development of work, means art
often connects with specific sites. Outdoor work is a distinguishing strength. Associate Director of the Gold
Coast Film Festival, Lucy Fisher, for example, described the arts community as highly entrepreneurial and
flexible, with artists developing partnerships and finding collaborative and low-cost opportunities to
showcase their work (for example, in shopping centres and film festival screenings at the Burleigh Brewery).
Gold Coast Council’s Libby Lincoln and Adam Lewczuk highlighted how the distinctive entrepreneurialism of
local artists is helping them win national attention, noting The Farm dance company as an example.
This culture of arts entrepreneurship is overlaid by the cultural heritage of the villages that make up the
Gold Coast, so its arts scenes are hyper local (Anderson, 2019; Edwards, 2019; Solomon, 2019). Right
through the Gold Coast, ‘pockets’ of arts scenes have developed around particular locations, with vibrant
creative hubs emerging, in some cases festivals developed with the support of local activation groups, and in
others with emerging and sustainable business entities, cottage experiences inspired by talented people
driving creative start-ups. Architect Adrian Carter told us that the ‘cultural underground’ that has developed
within these pockets is important for attracting creative talent, citing Currumbin’s Dust Temple and The
Walls at Miami. Interviewees described creative enterprises in connection with the villages of the Gold Coast
where they had emerged, including:
Oxenford/Coomera. Village Roadshow theme parks including Warner Bros Movie World Studios,
Australian Outback Spectacular’s Heartland.
Southport. Southport Parklands host music festivals. Gold Coast Chinatown is part of the revitalisation of
the Southport CBD. Old theatre is slated for redevelopment.
Surfers Paradise. Events designed around the location, including the SeaFire fireworks competition, Sand
Safari Arts Festival sandcastle building competition, lots of music events.
Broadbeach. Blues on Broadbeach Music Festival, the Convention Centre and structured entertainment,
with Kurruwa Terrace being the city’s first dedicated beach-front event space, hosting, for example, the
Art and Craft Sunday Market and the annual Crafted Festival (beer and cider).
Palm Beach. Gritty, graffiti art, some trendy cafes. The Collective is a collaborative restaurant complex
with five businesses under one roof.
Currumbin. Family friendly, supportive community. Dust Temple, grunge artistic locale in small light
industrial district in back of Currumbin, run as a commercial enterprise but procures not-for-profit
artists. The Baltar Brewery is collaborating with a prominent southern chef on a food experience – an
example of talent attraction driving growth (Thomas, 2019). Home of the Swell Sculpture Festival.
Miami. Miami Marketta is a laneway dining experience that has evolved as an arts and live music hub
has attracted creative services companies, co-working spaces, and start-ups to the area (Fisher, 2019).
The Walls is a small contemporary art space located here. The Farm dance studio, a collective of dance
and theatre artists returned from Berlin to the Gold Coast, and musicians the Hanlon Bros.
10
Version 1 16 March 2020 Burleigh Heads. Arts and craft, the head land and self-expression, flame twirlers. Mo’s Desert Clubhouse,
a ‘community hub’ and ‘safe haven’ for collaboration and creation, located in a light industrial area.
Coolangatta. Coolly Rocks On, a 50s, 60s, 70s nostalgia festival, which has emerged as a national event.
Cafes are evolving as little art galleries right up the coast.
Mt Tamborine. Art studios and galleries.
A strong and growing festival sector. The Gold Coast’s arts and cultural festival scene has evolved
significantly over the past 20 years, and now is an important part of the events schedule that attracts visitors
to the region (Table 2). In many cases emerging as entrepreneurial offerings by local arts groups and the
Council’s marketing and promotion vehicles, the biggest festivals on the Gold Coast are now regular fixtures,
with Bleach* and the Swell Sculpture Festivals attracting multi-year funding from Arts Queensland as well as
Council.
Bleach* Festival. Launched as an event to lead into the Quicksilver Pro surfing competition, the Beach*
Festival is now making an impact on the national stage. Running over ten days in March/April, its charter
as a not-for-profit organisation is to change perceptions of the Gold Coast and advance the arts sector.
The Bleach* Festival has grown from an initial $40,000 investment to running on an annual budget of
$3 million. The Festival attracted 107,100 attendees in 2017, 217,600 in 2018 and 116,100 in 2019.
Accelerated Commonwealth Games funding from the City of Gold Coast allowed the festival to go out on
its own in 2015 and it now receives core funding through Arts Queensland’s Organisations Fund. Festival
organisers are based in premises owned by the Currumbin RSL, and programs music for the RSL: ‘It is
quite a partnership!’ (Lincoln, 2019; Solomon, 2019).
Swell Sculpture Festival. A ten-day open-air art and sculpture exhibition on Currumbin beach showing
local and national artists, the Swell Sculpture Festival was conceived in 2002 before the Council had an
arts policy. It attracts 275,000 visitors annually, with activities including master classes, art activities for
children, sculpture workshops and a music stage showcasing the local music scene. Festival Director
Natasha Edwards told us that, in 2019, 30 of approximately 55 artists exhibited were either Gold Coast
locals or from Queensland and that the festival resulted in $27,000 going to artists in awards and
acquisitions. It also receives core funding through Arts Queensland’s Organisations Fund, and it runs
satellite projects through the year similar to the Gold Coast Film Festival.
Blues on Broadbeach Music Festival. Run for 19 years by the local activation group Broadbeach Alliance,
Blues on Broadbeach is held on the beachfront and through the streets of Broadbeach. It has developed
as a highlight of the Queensland music calendar—in 2018 it attracted 171,000 visitors, 64 per cent from
outside the Gold Coast (Klopper, 2019).
11
Version 1 16 March 2020Figure 1 Broadbeach Blues Festival attendance statistics
Source: City of Gold Coast Council (2019a)
Government investments are supporting culture to stimulate the economy and build the reputation of the
Gold Coast as a cultural destination. Although many interviewees were keen to point out that visitors are
often amazed by the extent of cultural activity on the Gold Coast (for example, Sinclair, 2019), there was a
contrasting view that something was missing; festivals and venues were still not at sufficient a critical mass
to change the way the Gold Coast perceives itself, and cultural enterprises were yet to achieve the success
being achieved by emerging food and manufacturing start-ups (Carter, 2019; Zirilli, 2019). The Council’s
Executive Coordinator of Arts and Culture, Libby Lincoln, pointed out that where a creative hub has
developed without development planning in place, ventures can struggle with council planning permissions.
This can be particularly problematic for music venues. According to Blank music magazine publishers Sam
Morris and Chloe Popa, at the time of our interview, two major venues had recently closed and another was
expected in the following month. They spoke about needing to create a buzz with their magazine, to talk up
the industry—not to keep people attending events but to change hubris around the profitability of music
venues (Morris & Popa, 2019). As articulated in its Music Action Plan 2021 (and its Corporate Plan Gold
Coast 2022), Council has identified music as a key driver for building and enhancing the arts and culture
sector, building relationships across the sector, generating economic benefits through increased
international and domestic tourism, and that it has a role in building capacity, and the reputation of the Gold
Coast as a leading music destination. To this end, it has committed to ‘support the development of live music
in the city through artist and industry development to create a vibrant music sector, commissioning a Live
Music Taskforce and setting up a funding program within RADF to assist musicians develop their careers and
markets.
12
Version 1 16 March 2020Case study: Blank Magazine and the Gold Coast Music Awards, music activism and entrepreneurship
Blank, launched in 2013 and the Gold Coast’s Magazine of the Year for two years running, exemplifies how
collaboration among cultural production workers on the Gold Coast is strengthening the region’s creative economy.
Sam Morris and Chloe Popa had been working together for years when they decided to set up a magazine to tell the
cultural stories of the Gold Coast, challenging the misconception that the Gold Coast has no culture. Neither were
musicians or had experience working in the music industry. Rather, they were fans of live music with skillsets honed
managing not-for-profit organisations—including facilitation, community development, group development and
counselling—which are often lacking in the arts sector. Initially imagining their primary audience as ‘Gold Coasters,
because they are the worst detractors of the city’, Blank is now a major mouthpiece of the arts, servicing the Northern
Rivers region of NSW as well as the Gold Coast. The magazine retains its independence, with the Gold Coast Council its
only government funding partner, and is set up as a corporation rather than a not-for-profit, with goals to being
financially viable and to avoid the complex obligations of a not-for-profit organisation.
The role of Blank on the Gold Coast has expanded, in 2015 founding the Gold Coast Music Awards and in 2018
supporting the development of the local music industry, with $20,000 annual funding through the Council’s Arts
Organisations Triennial Funding Program, adopting an advocacy role. Examples of its advocacy include responding to
the Council’s Music Action Plan to ensure it provided opportunities for local musicians and organisations, and
attachments and training for local artists to help them understand how to promote their work. Blank has also
developed relationships with all of the city’s major cultural events, including the Bleach* Festival, Swell Sculpture
Festival, the Gold Coast Film Festival and Blues on Broadbeach, which all allocate a large proportion of their advertising
budgets to Blank. Blank and the Gold Coast Music Awards also receive Council funding tied to its events: $30,000
sponsorship for the Music Awards, $20,000 for the Music Awards to raise the national profile of the awards in line with
the Music Action Plan, a fee for service to deliver aspects of the City’s showcase program at the annual Big Sound and a
$10,000 fee for service to deliver music networking events in line with the Music Action Plan (Morris & Popa, 2019).
Strength of digital marketing services
The Gold Coast has a stronger creative services profile than any other Queensland hotspot in this study, with
a high proportion of workers in advertising and marketing, architecture and design, and software and digital
content occupations and industries. Its creative services occupation intensity, at 2.1 per cent of the
workforce, is greater than any of the other hotspots, with more than half of the people employed in these
roles working outside the creative industries themselves.
We saw three tiers of digital creative services on the Gold Coast: numerous freelancers/sole traders, three-
to-four person collectives, and larger organisations who can carry off large public sector tenders. These
latter include Gold Coast offices of Sydney and Melbourne-based services firms. Growth in the
freelance/sole trader category is outstripping that of the large businesses: between the census years of 2011
and 2016 the numbers of creative services businesses not registered for GST (and therefore earning less than
$75,000 per annum) increased by an annual average of 8.0 per cent, much higher than business count
growth for larger businesses at 4.7 per cent. Growth in the numbers of people working in creative services
occupations also grew strongly, at an annual average of 5.0 per cent between 2011 and 2016 (Australian
Bureau of Statistics, 2016; Australian Business Register, 2019). These new businesses and jobs can be seen in
the clientele of the co-working spaces located around the Gold Coast, which tend to host digital businesses.
LMG Digital Media, for example, is located at WOTSO in Varsity Lakes, which hosts lifestyle business,
architects, web development, accountants, finance/business brokers and operates as an informal incubator
(Zirilli, 2019). The growth in creative services is also in the sights of the Gold Coast Innovation Hub, privately
run with the support of the Queensland State Government ($500,000 over three years from 2017) and the
Council ($125,000 per year for three years from 2018-19) and which operates an incubator where ‘startups
13
Version 1 16 March 2020and scale-ups can connect, collaborate, grow, raise investment and expand into global markets’ (Gold Coast
Innovation Hub, 2020; Ogg & Simmons, 2020).
Digital content is mainstreamed into tourism offerings in the Gold Coast, something not seen in on the
Sunshine Coast or in Cairns, for example. The maturity and international competitiveness of the tourism
industry demands a strong digital base, and tourism businesses source digital content services in a variety of
places, from overseas suppliers through to providing training to develop skills locally. For example, the
Village Roadshow theme parks source marketing services in house: in interview General Manager of Sea
World, Sanjay Bhatia, praised the professionalism and scale of Village Roadshow’s in-house marketing team.
In another example, the Council’s Business and Investment Attraction Officer Derek Cheung spoke of local
businesses exploring licensing augmented reality software from British and Canadian companies (rather than
commissioning AR content development locally) to meet tourists’ expectations for AR experiences, including
the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary Gruffalo Trail, which provides a guided and safe way to explore the coastal
forests of the Gold Coast. With its self-adopted remit to support the music industry on the Gold Coast,
Blank’s Sam Morris and Chloe Popa, provide digital media training, after seeing that ‘they all need social
media skills’.
The Gold Coast’s digital creative agencies exemplify how creative services leadership connects with and
facilitates cultural production. With social and digital media a growing market, as high as 80 per cent of
business for Bordertown Films (Stevenson, 2019), these companies are building in economic strength,
providing impetus for talent to return and stay:
Guerrilla, described as ‘one of the biggest indie’ digital creative brand agencies by Strategy Director Rob
Bare, exemplifies the state of digital creative services on the Gold Coast and the economic strength of
creative services. In business for 20 years, it is fully digital, works in global as well as local and national
markets, and employs specialist creatives. Its client base stretches across sectors and includes BBC
Studios, Village Roadshow, Mirvac, Daifuku, Norco, Destination Gold Coast and Queensland Airports
Limited. Despite its profile, Guerrilla doesn’t operate out of a corporate high-rise in Surfers or
Broadbeach, but next to a big tyre retailer in a nondescript light industry estate on the main drag into
Burleigh. Rob Bare is fully invested in culture on the Gold Coast: he sponsors the Bleach* Festival,
established the Soundlounge and is on the board of start-ups that have been created out of Guerrilla.
LMG Digital Media is another representative digital creative services company which exemplifies these
points. General Manager Kelly Zirilli (2019) told us of a content creation business with a relatively stable
50 per cent of its business on the Gold Coast, with the rest from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. LMG
creates digital content for tourism and health, and promotional, collateral and management media for
big events such as interstate and international business conferences, for example KFC international
manager training.
Tailored Media’s Chief Executive Officer Brendan Sinclair told us that demand for its social media service
is very strong, and that the work can be high yield. A full-service advertising and marketing agency,
Tailored Media will, for example, host their website, manage their content, optimise search results, do
social media advertising and produce content.
The Gold Coast Council established itself as a regional digital infrastructure policy leader with its 2016 Digital
City Program. The Council was the first in Australia to invest in its own fibre optic network, in free WiFi
networks and in a Low Power Wide Area Network. But how much has creative digital application
development been embedded in the Gold Coast Council’s Digital Plan and Lumina, the new name for the
Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct development. The Digital Plan seems mostly focused on large-
scale enabling infrastructure developments and the health precinct at Southport. Private sector investment
is beginning to fill this space, with the COHORT Space co-working and innovation hub offering Regional
14
Version 1 16 March 2020Development Australia’s digital business, social media, small business software and security courses for
SMEs and a mentorship program for young women wanting to pursue a career in artificial intelligence
(COHORT, 2020). Is there any scope for the Council to further enhance the profile and contribution of digital
creative services to the Gold Coast economy?
Screen production is growing and nurtured, a major contributor to the Gold Coast economy
The Gold Coast’s screen industry is a major, growing and valued contributor to the Gold Coast economy. It
encompasses independent screen producers creating film, television and small screen content and the
Village Roadshow Studios, world-class production facilities servicing large-scale international and domestic
screen production. At the time of the 2016 Census the screen industry provided direct employment to 1274
people, with its workforce growing at an annual average of 5.3 per cent between 2011 and 2016. In terms of
employment intensity, the Gold Coast is home to the highest concentration of screen industry workers in
Australia outside Greater Sydney (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016; Ryan, Macrossan, & Cunningham,
2020). The industry is a significant production hub for South East Queensland, with nearly two thirds of
screen industry workers in regional Queensland are employed on the Gold Coast (Australian Bureau of
Statistics, 2016). Screen workers from the Northern Rivers, Mount Tamborine, the outer-suburbs of Brisbane
and even Brisbane, regard the Gold Coast as their primary place of work, and over the last decade a large
number of independent feature films from Brisbane and interstate have filmed on the Gold Coast outside of
the Village studio system. There is also a growing number of SMEs specialising in commercial/corporate
production and creative content production.
The emergence of a significant screen industry presence on the Gold Coast is the result of a confluence of
unique factors including: the presence of Village Roadshow Studios, the Studios’ proximity to the Warner
Bros. Movie World theme park and related flow-on effects, a strong local education sector producing film
graduates, and access to the South East Queensland market. With a the steady flow of Hollywood movies
filming on the Gold Coast, a large specialised talent base of nationally and internationally recognised screen
technicians is based in the region, while the presence of the theme parks provides employment for a range
of screen-based practitioners from actors and camera operators to make-up and special effects artists.
According to Lynn Porter, the Domestic Outreach and Enrolment Manager for the New York Film Academy
Australia, technical staff at the film school also work in special effects at Movie World and graduates of its
diploma of VFX have gone on to work at the theme parks, including Movie World. The university system also
plays an important role in the broader ecosystem in sustaining creative screen production careers. The film
department at Bond University, for example, largely comprises active filmmakers including writer/producer
Chris Finchett (The Fear of Darkness 2015) and writer/director Darren Fisher (Frequencies 2013).
Village Roadshow Studios brings big-budget Hollywood to the Gold Coast. Located in Oxenford and
adjacent to Village Roadshow’s Warner Bros. Movie World theme park, the Village Roadshow Studios is one
of three major international film and television production studios in Australia servicing high-end foreign
‘footloose’ Hollywood and international productions, as well as larger scale domestic production. Large-scale
Hollywood blockbusters filmed at the Studios include Aquaman (2018), Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and Kong:
Skull Island (2017), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and San Andreas, larger-scale
Australian productions include The Railway Man (2013), Bait 3D (2012) and Sanctum 3D (2011). The Studios
are a ‘local Hollywood’ (Goldsmith, Ward, & O'Regan, 2010), a local node of a global system competing for
international production, that exemplifies the axiom of acting local and thinking global.
According to Village Roadshow’s Lynne Benzie, between 2004 and 2019, 55 feature film and television series
filmed at the Studios, the majority of which have been international productions, with the Gold Coast
Council estimating that production at the studios has contributed $1.8 billion to the Queensland and Gold
Coast economies. Production at the studios and their ongoing maintenance support and sustain screen
15
Version 1 16 March 2020businesses and services companies, during major productions and ongoing through the year, generating
significant flow-on benefits to the local economy. As well as employing locally-based below-the line screen
professionals, including extras, camera operators, lighting and sound specialists, and production designers,
large-budget films also generate employment for a multitude of other skilled professionals, including
carpenters, painters, caterers, landscapers, security and medical practitioners. For the US productions
Unbroken (2014) and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010), for example, both
productions hired local companies to build their life-size plane and boat film sets. The studio complex also
generates ongoing employment, including for trade suppliers, fibreglass fitters and suppliers, electrical
services and IT network installation, specialists who maintain oxygen tanks, ‘then I have to get the dye for
the pool, then the crane hire, companies who manage the tanks filtration system, the company that does
facilities maintenance, security and so on’ (Benzie, 2019). Available data demonstrates the scale and impact
of individual films on the Queensland economy:
An unnamed US project spent $190 million in Queensland, employing 2,100 crew of which 80 per cent
were from Queensland. It contracted services from approximately 1500 suppliers as well as 425 vendors
from across mainland Australia (Benzie, 2019).
Thor: Ragnarok (2017) injected $142 million into the Queensland economy and employed more than
1,000 Queensland cast and crew, while Aquaman (2018), spent more than $100 million in Queensland
on production and created approximately 750 jobs (Screen Queensland, 2018, p. 18).
Attracting films of this scale has required significant investments in the studio’s facilities. Over half of the
sound stages have been funded through foreign investment from international studios or major
international productions filming at the studios. For the Brad Pitt film, Last Man, Warner Bros. financed the
building of sound stages 7 and 8, three offices, one workshop and four lock-ups at a cost of $11 million
(Table 1) . The studio behind Fool’s Gold (2008) paid $2.3 million to build the studio’s water tank, with the
Queensland State Government contributing $500,000: ten productions have since filmed at the studios
Table 1 Village Roadshow: sound stage investments
Stages 1 to 4: Built by Dino De Laurentiis in 1986.
Stage 5: Built by Village in 1990.
Stage 6: Built by the studio in 1994.
Studios 7 and 8: Built by Warner Bros. for the Brad Pitt movie Last Man
Stage 9: Built for and largely paid for by the 2018 Commonwealth Games
specifically to use the tank. Lynne Benzie told us that smaller-budget domestic productions cannot afford to
invest in the expansion of the facilities at this scale. The Studios do provide discounts to support the filming
of low-budget independent and domestic productions, by as much as 80 per cent, the vast majority of
productions are international or large-scale interstate productions.
Independent producers are entrepreneurial and flexible, balancing market demands and passion projects.
Over the last seven to ten years the Gold Coast has evolved into an independent production hub in its own
right, from a region where the screen industry was in boom or bust, reliant on big foreign and interstate
productions and where careers were precarious, to a production centre where producers, writer and
directors based on the Gold Coast are producing a diverse range of screen content and creative intellectual
property (Ryan et al., 2020). A strong cluster of almost 80 small production companies specialising in
commercial and corporate production and longer-form film and TV production is producing commercial
TVCs, branded content, training and instructional videos, corporate promos and web video content, video
marketing, music videos and technical video production services for clients across most sectors of the
16
Version 1 16 March 2020You can also read
