A wide open road? The strange story of creative industries in Western Australia

Much of the international creative industries literature is evangelical in its alignment of economic development and urban development. Yet some fascinating case studies reveal the failures and errors that have emerged in response to the introduction of such policies. Mark Jayne's investigation of Stoke in the journal Capital and Class is a fine example of a research project that located a mismatch between policy objectives and embedded applications. Perth and Western Australia can contribute to this small and often unpopular research of local failures in the global narratives of cultural and creative 'development'. In Western Australia, a state where mining and farming is paramount to financial stability, the desire, political will and capacity to construct a 'new economy', in the many connotations of that phrase, is absent. This article evaluates how this absence was created and has been perpetuated. Utilizing desk research and policy analysis, the aim is to explore what has gone wrong through the cycles of strategies, initiatives and taskforces. For the first time, a study is offered that connects these documents and explores the consequences of Groundhog Day initiatives that are not only disconnected from their environment, but each other.