Creative State is the Victorian Government's strategy to strengthen and grow the state's creative industries and the value they bring to Victorians.

This is an agenda for the future of Australian making, produced by the National Craft Initiative over a three-year period of engagement with the professional craft and design community.

Our cultural sectors make a crucial contribution to the regeneration, health and wellbeing of our regions, cities, towns and villages. We will work with Arts Council England, the Heritage Lottery Fund, Public Health England and other partners to develop and promote the contribution of the cultural sectors to improving health and wellbeing.

From the 1980s European and North American cities engaged in a process of ‘urban regeneration’ involving the displacement of manufacturing by finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE), cultural and creative industries, and tourism. Henceforth developed economies would produce ‘creative’ or ‘knowledge’ intensive services and developing countries would provide outsourced manufacturing along global supply chains.

Analysts and policymakers have long complained of the dearth of internationally comparable statistics on the creative industries because it has made it impossible to benchmark the performance of different countries. In January 2014, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) adopted the Dynamic Mapping methodology for classifying some industries as ‘creative’ and others not...