Chris Gibson Current Research Projects

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1. Reinventing rural places: The extent and impact of festivals as regeneration strategies.

ARC Discovery project (2005-7) DP0560032; with John Connell (Usyd), Gordon Waitt (SEES, UOW) and Jim Walmsley (UNE):

Grant Details

Aims: This project aims to examine the extent and impacts of festivals in rural (defined as non-metropolitan) Australia. More specifically, the project seeks:

- to profile the extent to which festivals have been incorporated into regeneration strategies
- to assess the economic impact of festivals on specific places, in light of the hypothesis that festivals are a mechanism to encourage rural economic revitalisation
- to examine the social and cultural impacts of rural festivals, in light of the hypothesis that festivals are events in which dominant rural identities are reproduced and maintained.

Overall, the objective of the project is to contribute to knowledge about the importance of festivals in rural regional restructuring, the transition to post-productivism and changing cultural identities.

2. Creative Tropical City: Mapping Darwin’s Creative Industries

Download the Creative Tropical City final report here

ARC Linkage project (2006-09) LP0667445; with A/Prof. Tess Lea, Charles Darwin University, Dr. Sue Luckman, UniSA, and Prof. Donal Fitzpatrick, Curtin University of Technology.

Industry partners:

TourismNT 
Darwin City Council
Northern Territory Government

This research has a threefold aim: first, to determine the nature, extent and change over time of the creative industries in Darwin; second, to interrogate the applicability of national and international creative industry policy frameworks to Darwin; third to identify opportunities for growth and transformation of the creative industries in Darwin.

3. ARC Linkage Project: Cultural Asset Mapping for Planning and Development in Regional Australia (2008-2012) 

With Professor R J Gibson (USYD), Professor J Walmsley (UNE), Lisa Andersen (UTS), Professor Paul Ashton (UTS)

Industry partners:

Regional Arts NSW
Local Government & Shires Association of NSW
Australian Council of the Arts
Canberra Arts Marketing
City of Wodonga
Albury City
Uralla Shire Council
Armidale Dumaresq Council
Wollongong City Council
Central Darling Shire Council

Project Summary
At a time when the environmental, social and industrial bases of regional life are changing markedly, this project examines ways that many areas in Australia might revitalise their economies and communities by engaging in new approaches to the arts and creative activity.  For consumers and producers alike, many non-metropolitan regions in Australia offer opportunities for enhanced cultural activity and productivity and quality of life.  But these opportunities have not yet been thoroughly observed, described or analysed.  This project addresses this serious gap in knowledge and gives policy-makers, planners and regional and rural communities crucial information they need to decide their futures.

 

4. Making less Space for Carbon: Cultural Research for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

ARC Discovery Grant (2009-2012) DP0986041, with A/Prof. Gordon Waitt, Dr. Nick Gill and Prof. Lesley Head

Climate change is now widely recognised as requiring social and cultural as well as scientific solutions. This project builds adaptive capacity for climate change mitigation and adaptation, using cultural research. We focus on the Illawarra, a region central to Australia’s carbon economy. We will undertake a baseline study of current knowledge of climate change, track community response over a period of four years, identify social and cultural resources for, and constraints to, more environmentally sustainable behaviours, and contribute to policy solutions. The project will provide international leadership for comparable regional communities, and contribute to key debates about human-environment relations.

5. Cultural Sustainability in Australian Country Towns:  Amenity, Mobility, and Everyday Life

ARC Discovery Grant (2009-2011) DP0984223, with Catherine Driscoll (Usyd), Kate Bowles (UOW), Kate Darian-Smith (UniMelb), David Nicholls (UniMelb) and Gordon Waitt (UOW)

This project examines cultural sustainability in three small Australian country towns. Previous understandings of sustainability have neglected the realm of culture while emphasising the economic, social and environmental. Working across the themes of belonging, mobility and change, and heritage and innovation, this project will produce a complex understanding of the culture of Australian country towns and cultural sustainability in those towns. Drawing upon cross-disciplinary methodology, outcomes will include multiple interdisciplinary research publications and digital cultural mapping.

 

6. Crisis and change: cultural economic research on the adaptability and sustainability of Australian households 
(2010-2013); Future Fellowship FT0991193.
Aims: Through cultural-economic research, this project will document and analyse the critical issue of how Australian households in different places are positioned to adapt to sustainability demands. The decisions of households will be economic in nature, but values informing decisions will stem from cultural norms. Through qualitative research tracking households longitudinally, this research will advance theories of how citizens respond to governmental objectives, and open up climate change research to new lines of inquiry. Results will show whether Australian households are able to adapt to the new carbon economy, amidst economic uncertainty and underlying demographic transition – with global relevance for research and policy.