Economic Impact of Arts and Culture

City of Darebin

The creative industries have more than just economic value. They create products and experiences that make life worthwhile. Nonetheless, sometimes you do have to value them, so that we can demonstrate their importance to funding bodies and the community. In this project we carried out an economic and social impact assessment of the value of the creative industries in Darebin, Victoria.

The study drew on a wide range of data and consultation to quantify the sector, with a more detailed analysis of live music; an important part of Darebin's creative landscape. An economic impact model was constructed for the municipal economy and results compared with the Council’s own in-house model outputs. By using two methods of estimating the value, we can be more confident we have an accurate measure of the creative sector, and of the Council’s contribution to its development. And, with great caution, we also investigated our large database of Tweets to carry out a sentiment analysis of attitudes towards cultural events in the City (they were pretty much positive all round).