RIS ID

98577

Publication Details

Brennan-Horley, C. (2015). Mapping methods: Using GIS for regional and remote cultural planning. In P. Ashton, C. Gibson & R. Gibson (Eds.), By-roads and Hidden Treasures: Mapping Cultural Assets in Regional Australia (pp. 53-70). Crawley, Australia: UWA Publishing.

Abstract

Culture and creativity have never been found exclusively in urban domains, yet only recently have researchers begun to examine creative geographies beyond axiomatic creative cities from the global north. As Chris Gibson observes in 'Creative Geographies: Tales from the "Margins"' (zoro), attention has slowly begun to turn to the periphery - small cities, regional centres and remote locations - places that don't easily fit the urban creativity script but where nascent and established creative industries can be found. Creative practitioners operating away from dense urban centres must negotiate what Susan Luckman in Locating Cultural Work (zorz) describes as the various affordances and hurdles that marginality and remoteness present. Detailed mapping of the ways that creative economies function in such places is therefore vital for the development of tailored planning strategies, reducing the reliance on concepts developed from and for urban creativity. Despite being readily deployed in cultural and economic planning circles, the term 'mapping' is usually used figuratively, to describe the categorising of creative businesses and employees and for cursory examination of locational dynamics influencing the creauve sector. Taking a more literal or visual approach to 'mapping', this chapter seeks to illustrate some of the possibilities that a combination of ethnography and cartographic mapping can offer cultural planning. Drawing on geographic information systems (GIS) and qualitative methods, in-depth information on geographJic networks and the everyday geographies of regional and remote practice can be brought to the fore.

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