The new audiovisual industry report has just been published - final title: Creative Capital - Building Ireland's Audiovisual Creative Economy.
Read it at this link and see what you think.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
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4 comments:
What do we think? Reminence of the Fianna Fail fan club on the steering committee...
Lots of interesting proposals...
The industrial relations problem is acknowledged and seen as something to be addressed at a govt department level.
Suggestions to expand remit and functions of the IFB are understandable response to demise of UKFC...
Call for metrics to assess performance of cultural output long overdue. Some of international precendents here (albeit of questionable value) eg UK, New Zealand...
Could have talked more about diversity. The industry is arguable too white, middle class, and male...
Steering group could have included more reps from smaller companies...
But interesting points raised overall. What's the next move I wonder?
I've not had a chance to read it in detail yet but I had spotted the references to industrial rerlations issues - and believe me they are even worse than I have reported on here.
It'a significant, I think, that they have been passed 'upstairs' to the Minister because it shows that the IFB is not seen as a neutral entity by everyone in the industry.
I noted also the heavy emphasis on leveraging broadcaster involvement - including the proposal that the Sound & Vision fund be moved into the IFB, albeit with the same distribution remit... including the radio element? I don't see the BAI assenting to that, at all. In this context it would be interesting to hear what the audience numbers were like for the Setanta Irish film experiment over the last few weeks.
As regards the 'metrics' or data issue, I agree completely. With this caveat, however, that they can be skewed to bolster policy direction.
Which brings me to my greatest anxiety about the report - that it compares 1993 employment levels(when they were, as it were, only counting oranges) with 2008 employment figures (when they were, as it were, counting orange, lemons, limes and apples). In other words, there are, I believe, some fairly hefty assumptions being fed into growing employment by 100% in five years - with cost neutral proposals.
But mnore anon, when I've had a chance to read it thoroughly.
Not sure what to make of it - it seems wildly over-optimistic in regards to job creation - also there is no reference to, or data on, the quality of existing employment - how many of the current c. 5400 "Full-time equivalent" jobs are properly paid?
The "Industrial Relations" paragraph is the usual thinly-veiled "why can't everyone work for free" guff - nothing new there.
Also, while it may be tempting to expand the functions of Bord Scannan, this could result in loss of funding diversity (if the Sound & Vision fund were subsumed) - a bad outcome.
There's the usual denial of quality problems - are banks and venture capitalists reluctant to invest (page 6) and is box office for Irish films relatively poor (page 15) because, emm, the product (with honourable exceptions) has historically been so bad?
It seems to be an exercise in hubris - we simply don't have the population to sustain the kind of "industry" on the scale envisaged in this report.
We should do our own Report on these Reports (and the people who write them), as well as on our cultural fondness in general for Reports of all kinds :-)
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