Moving from creative to cultural industries: the case of the Australian wine sector

The creative industries label is gaining increasing currency throughout academia and government circles. It is a tag that represents a conflation of cultural and economic qualities for the purposes of socioeconomic 'relevance'. It is also a tag that promises a level of recognition not normally witnessed within undernourished cultural sectors. There is, however, a price to be paid. There is a level of colonisation in the creative industries model, in which alternative frameworks and debates are being subsumed within approaches that reward compliance and acquiescence. Current creative industry policies appear hinged upon the anatomical attachment of cultural elements to economic products for greater fiscal returns. As such, the relationship is distorted and the final outcome misrepresented. Using developments within the Australian wine industry as a case study this paper highlights the critical need for reconfiguration of our creative sectors. It outlines an alternative wine sector framework that draws upon a cultural-economic 'ecology' that represents the symbolic as well as the practical to create a fabric of enhanced value.