Thank you to everyone who contributed to Creative Victoria’s public consultation for the development of the Victorian Government’s next creative industries strategy.
In July and August 2024, we asked for your priorities, ideas and reflections on the role of creativity, arts and culture in Victoria and how you think the Victorian Government can best support the creative industries over the next three years.
We’d like to thank everyone who contributed, and to share a summary of the consultation process.
The Creative State consultation took several forms:
- An online survey which received 750 responses, with 80 percent of people telling us they live outside of metropolitan Melbourne
- An open submission process where we received over 120 submissions, and
- a series of roundtables online and across Victoria where we heard from over 500 people.
All up the consultation gathered views from around 1,500 Victorians. Across all participants:
- 16% identified as Culturally and Linguistically diverse
- 20% identified as LGBTQIA+
- 11% identified as Deaf and/or Disabled
Through our roundtables, we also engaged directly with culturally diverse artists and audiences with the help of Multicultural Arts Victoria; and Deaf and/or Disabled artists and organisations with the help of Arts Access Victoria and Flow Festival.
Dedicated, self-determined First Peoples consultation was also led by the First Peoples Direction Circle, which guides Creative Victoria’s work. The Directions Circle will continue to guide the strategy development to ensure it reflects the opportunities and challenges facing the First Peoples creative sector in Victoria. This consultation process included engagement of more than 200 First Peoples artists and creative workers at the first Victorian First Peoples Creative Industries Forum, held in October.
In collaboration with Regional Arts Victoria, we ran 12 regional roundtables from Swan Hill to Sale. We offer our sincere gratitude to these organisations for assisting us with the consultation.
The creative industries are broad and diverse – in their work and way or working, their contributors and contribution, and their audiences and markets.
The process reaffirmed that creativity, arts and culture are an integral part of who we are as Victorians and the responses we received were diverse and thoughtful.
We look forward to sharing more information with you in the new year as we work toward the launch of the next Creative State strategy.