Sun, Mar 30, 2003 page2

• Experts urge investment in creative industry

  DIFFERENT APPROACHES Tapping into Taiwan's creativity will be essential to its economic development, but there are different views about how that should be done

  • By Chang Yun-Ping / STAFF REPORTER
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  The concept of Creative Industries (CI), is a relatively new idea in Taiwan, that comprises development and promotion of traditional art forms such as performing arts, symphony orchestras, dance etc, as well as the more commercialized popular arts such as television, movies and pop music. It is a term that was first used in the UK in 1997 and now is a term used all over the world.

  In Taiwan, the government has recognized the increasing size and growth rate of the CIs as a dynamic new sector of advanced economies and has made it one of the key areas of the Six Year National Development Plan.

  In line with this goal, the Cabinet's Council for Cultural Affairs arranged an international symposium on creative industry, bringing in international experts and local artists to discuss the potential of CI and the existing problems that Taiwan needs to conquer.

  

  PHOTO:TAIPEI TIMES:

  Stuart Cunningham, director of Creative Industries Research and Applications Centre at the Queensland University of Technology, recognized the Taiwan government's initiatives to search for new opportunities to transform its economic and industrial system by recognizing the values of CI.

  "The attention put on CI is a great strategy of Taiwan when the mass production phase of industrial development is coming into bottleneck," Cunningham said.

  "Mass production, export-oriented approaches that Taiwan have engaged in the past 40 years have been successful, but have come into the end of their useful life because industries derived from those approaches are something transplanted into this country, rather than organically from the cultural life and cultural competency of people themselves," the Australian scholar said.

  During this new wave of transformation of economic structure by the cultural sectors, Cunningham said all of society needs to grow: the standard of living, the development of industry and sustainable creativity output by artists.

  Cunningham said the promotion of CI could also be conducive to Taiwan's efforts to recast its own national image, and to change the way the world sees Taiwan.

  Right now, most people know this country only through the "Made In Taiwan" label that is often perceived to be the hallmark of cheaply produced manufactured goods. Tapping the creative industries could help change that label to the hallmark of upper market products with a good international profile, he said.

  Cunningham said there is no contradiction between globalization and localization of creative industries, so people shouldn't worry about the forces of globalization and domination of cultural conglomerates.

  "Though the more diverse cultural contents created may be controlled by channels of the conglomerates, for example, those contents also contribute to cultural diversities to the world. Globalization creates the condition for localization," Cunningham argued.

  In terms of the roles to be taken by the government and business, Cunningham said that though CI poses a lot of opportunities for the medium and small businesses as it creates a viable industry, this industry should not only grow from government subsidies but also through investment by private enterprise.

  "The CI sectors have to develop more sustainable enterprise characteristics instead of only relying on government subsidies, which is not growing to keep pace with the cultural consumption, he said.

  If that investment doesn't come "people will be consuming what comes from overseas, rather than what comes genuinely from inside the country," he warned.

  However, one of Taiwan's best-known artists disagrees with Cunningham. Choreographer Lin Huai-min (林懷民), president of the internationally renowned Cloud Gate Dance Theater (雲門舞集) said that the government needs to put more efforts into supporting development of the arts.

  "Taking the performing arts group as an example, financing is a common problem faced by most of the performing arts groups in Taiwan," Lin said.

  The Cloud Gate, which is going to celebrate its 30th anniversary this year, has struggled very hard to elevate itself to become one of the most renowned dance groups in the world, Lin said.

  He noted that the Hong Kong government has much better subsidies for its various performing arts groups.

  For example the Cloud Gate receives only 30 percent of its funding from the government. while similar dance groups such as Hong Kong Ballet, and HK Dance Company received, respectively, 46 percent and 96 percent of their funding from the public purse.

  "If the government treats CI as its policy, it should invest more in cultural sectors. It is a very weird thing that among all the 68 publicly funded performing arts groups in Taiwan, the government budgets only NT$100 million for all of them -- much less than the amount of funds received by other overseas counterparts," Lin said.

  Calling for the government to step-up investment in cultural sectors, Lin said it is because cultural industry are content-oriented that artists needs more back up from the government to encourage better creativity output.

  "Without good content, branding and marketing for the products will be very difficult," he said.

  "We need a strong base for the essence of arts and culture before we can jump onto the stage of industry, and it needs help from the government to nurture our cultural environment through education programs, tax exemptions or other economic incentives to encourage the public to join arts activities.

  "After all, artists need to generate performances good enough to be able to talk about cooperation with enterprises," Lin said.
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