Chris Gibson HomePage
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 City: Mapping Darwin’s Creative Industries
ARC Linkage project (2006-09) LP0667445; with A/Prof. Tess Lea, Charles Darwin University, Dr. Sue Luckman, UniSA
Industry partners:
Northern Territory Tourism Commission
Darwin City Council
Museums and Art Galleries Northern Territory
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 (UTS), Professor J Walmsley (UNE), Lisa Andersen (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. The Cultural Research Network
ARC Research Network Grant (2005-9); RN0459928. Convenor: Graeme Turner (UQ)
Aims: The Cultural Research Network’s disciplinary base is in cultural, media and communications studies. From this foundation it has built collaborative links with researchers from history, geography, anthropology and creative industries to develop the capacity for innovative research into media and cultural technologies, cultural literacies, cultural histories, geographies and identities. Chris Gibson is the convenor of the sub-node for geography within the network. See http://www.uq.edu.au/crn/ for further information.
5. Asia-Pacific Cultural Economy
National University of Singapore Academic Research Fund (2003-4), With Lily Kong (NUS):
The aims of the project are to examine the economic contribution, policy and cultural contexts of creative industries in the Asia-Pacific region. The project examines selected creative industries in Asia-Pacific (film, music, heritage), with a combination of economic and cultural perspectives unique to the discipline of geography. The cultural industries are a rapidly growing area of research, as their contribution to economic development is increasingly recognised, but there remains much work to be done that situates industry developments in the social and cultural contexts specific to Asia-Pacific region.
