Published by Focus Malaysia, image from Focus Malaysia.
While creative industries that rely on physical audience or real-world markets have been badly affected by physical distancing, those that make it easier for people to stay in touch such as home entertainment and Zoom, and conduct their businesses via e-commerce platforms have greatly benefitted from the pandemic.
In fact, some parts of the creative industry experienced phenomenal growth such as animation and electronic games due to a surge in demand for creative content by tech giants brought about by the lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic where people stay at home.
There has never been a more pressing time for creative professionals to think of innovative ways to pivot their skills to supplement the advent of ‘createch’ which is a growing market.
Coined by the UK’s Creative Industries Council, createch refers to the emerging field of creating new products, services or experiences through a technology-enabled creative sector, and vice versa.
Combining the definitions from the British Council and Economics Observatory, creative industries or economies refer to performing arts such as theatre and dance, music, film, the heritage sector, visual arts, and even in games and animation.
It may also be collectively referred to as cultural and creative sectors (CCS) as used by OECD.
An example of how a creative professional elevated their art through technology was highlighted during the Creative Economy 2021 Forum on Oct 6, whereby MyCreative Ventures highlighted a story that was also told in the Forbes magazine about Jenny Doan.
Once a broke housewife, Doan ended up turning into a millionaire after she posted 65 quilting tutorials on YouTube, with over 135 million views.
Jenny Doan’s story provides the following critical lessons for creative professionals:
- combining art with tech opens up a new way to engage a wider audience and create demand;
- the need to embrace digital tech due to the inevitable migration to cyberspace; and
- tech is a powerful enabler but not a silver bullet and success still requires creative professionals to put in the hard work over many years – after all, Doan put over 500 videos in nearly a decade to make that kind of money.
As for those who could not or did not adapt, we have heard disheartening stories of art galleries shutting down putting many artists out of a market place, and Malaysian live-performers being unable to put a roof over their heads as they face income losses.
A report on the future of jobs by the World Economic Forum (WEF) considers creativity, along with complex problem solving and critical thinking, as one of top three skills in 2020, and estimated 87% of creative jobs are ‘at low or no risk of automation’.
With advancing artificial intelligence (AI) that can make artistic paint work and write stories, AI is encroaching into creative sectors, therefore creative professionals have no choice but to up their ante, innovate and diversify their skills.
The creative economy in Asia Pacific has an estimated worth of US$743 bil (RM3,080 bil) in revenue, making up a significant 33% of the global revenue of the creative economy.
Indonesia and Singapore’s creative economy for instance are estimated at 7.8% and 3.2% of their national GDP respectively. Malaysia is left behind at about 1.9%.
In terms of job creation, the creative economy generated jobs for about 6% of Indonesia’s population, and approximately 1.4% of Singapore’s population.
The market potential of creative economy can be expected to get a healthy boost next year when the United Nations declared at the end of last year, 2021 is the ‘International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development’ – a proposal sponsored by Indonesia and supported by many other countries.
The government may refer to OECD’s policy recommendations including addressing gaps in self-employment support schemes, investment in cultural production and digital infrastructure, use of tax incentives, support cultural and creative entrepreneurship and many others.
Ahmad Ameen Mohd Kamal is Head of Science and Technology at EMIR Research, an independent think tank focused on strategic policy recommendations based on rigorous research.
