As part of my work reviewing the draft NSW arts and cultural strategy, I looked at a document entitled NSW creative industries profile prepared by NSW Trade & Investment. The following table provides a summary of NSW regional creative industries (CI) employment by New England region. Sydney numbers are included as a benchmark. Comments follow the table.
| Region | Total CI | Share of NSW % | CI share of total employment % | Concentration change % pts | Growth 2006-2011 |
| Sydney | 127,421 | 86.3 | 6.2 | 0.6 | 20.'5 |
| Hunter | 5,063 | 3.4 | 1.8 | 0.0 | 11.7 |
| Richmond-Tweed | 2,349 | 1.6 | 2.6 | 0.1 | 10.3 |
| Mid-North Coast | 1,882 | 1.3 | 1.7 | 0.0 | 8.5 |
| Northern | 893 | 0.6 | 1.2 | -0.1 | -5.3 |
| North-Western | 488 | 0.3 | 1.0 | -0.2 | -12.7 |
Now there are some definition problems with the numbers, but it's still not a pretty picture. The whole North has just 7.2% of the CI workforce as compared to Sydney's 86.3%, while inland New England appears to be going backward at a frightening rate. Not nice.
Postscript
This document, describes Newcastle as a satellite of Sydney. Again, not nice!
2 comments:
I find these numbers very hard to believe. There is a thriving arts community in Port Macquarie-Hastings, not to mention the jobs in the numerous internet startups happening in the area.
I agree with your comment, Scott. |It's partly a definitional thing, partly the way that individual nodes are swamped in broader statistics.
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