Justin O’Connor is Professor of Cultural Economy, University of South Australia. He is also visiting Professor in the Department of Cultural Industries Management, Shanghai Jiaotong University. From 2012-2018 he was Professor of Communications and Cultural Economy at Monash University. Between 2012-18 he was part of the UNESCO ‘Expert Facility’, supporting the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Diversity.
Justin has produced Creative industry policy reports for the Australia Federal Government and the Tasmanian State Government, and for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DEFAT) on Creative Industries and Soft Power. Previously he helped set up Manchester’s Creative Industries Development Service (CIDS). He has advised cities in Europe, Russia, Korea and China. Under the UNESCO/EU Technical Assistance Programme he has worked with the Ministries of Culture in both Mauritius and Samoa to develop cultural industry strategies.
Justin is the author of the 2016 Platform Paper After the Creative Industries: Why we need a Cultural Economy; co-editor (with Kate Oakley) of the 2015 Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries; and (with Rong Yueming ) (2018) Cultural Industries in Shanghai: Policy and Planning inside a Global City, (Intellect). He has recently published (with Xin Gu) Red Creative: Culture and Modernity in China (Intellect), and (with Xin Gu, Mike Kho Lim) Re-Imagining Creative Cities in 21st Century Asia
Bangarra Dance Theatre Fourteen months after it was announced, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts has handed down its report, “Sculpting A National Cultural Plan”, on Australia’s cultural and creative industries and institutions. Labor finished
Thinking of music as a public good rather than as an industry can help us radically rethink how to approach music policy, how to support it. We would recognise the public value, the ‘communal luxury’ music provides to all of us.
