South West Creative Industries Strategy

Since 2007 RAV has had a resource based in the southwest working with regional stakeholders to support the creative sector.

In 2018 at Regional Development Victoria’s Great South Coast Regional Assembly the need for a regional strategy was identified (read more), with RAV then engaged to lead development of a new collaborative strategy.

The initial 2020-2024 South West Creative Industries Strategy was a four-year plan to create beneficial and sustainable creative industries in southwest Victoria.

This initiative was Victoria’s first regional creative strategy. It became a blueprint for others including the G21 region’s Making Change strategy and is a national benchmark in terms of regional innovation and collaboration.

The Evaluation of the first Strategy demonstrates it’s remarkable impact, from $2.1 million in directly leveraged funding and cross-sector collaboration to dedicated Council strategies and incredible goals being achieved by local creatives.

Read the Strategy in full or in a short summary below, and access the Evaluation here or see the summary in the below timeline.

The Strategy is a collaborative plan to support and grow the local creative sector, with the primary goal of establishing sustainable creative industries that are embedded in and enrich lives in Southwest Victoria.

Building on the foundations laid in the original Strategy, the renewed 2025-2029 Strategy refocuses efforts to address the evolving needs of the creative sector in a post-COVID and economically challenging landscape.

The key pillars under which the sector is supported, developed and celebrated are:
– First Peoples
– Creative Communities
– Professional and Business Development
– Young People and Families

Our theory of change is that:

If partners collaborate to deliver on strategic objectives
↳ By supporting and empowering creative communities, seizing opportunities, and advocating for the sector
↳ This will result in sustainable creative industries embedded in and enriching lives in southwest Victoria
↳ And lead to vibrant and rich cultures, healthy, safe and inclusive communities, and dynamic and resilient local economies

Read the full Strategy to learn more about the goals of the Strategy and how progress will be monitored and evaluated.

In this Strategy, southwest Victoria refers to the five municipalities that comprise the Great South Coast Regional Partnership, reaching from the Shipwreck Coast to the South Australian border.

The five municipalities in this region are Corangamite Shire; Glenelg Shire; Moyne Shire; Southern Grampians Shire; and the City of Warrnambool.

You can read more about the region, and the Partnership, at the Regional Development Victoria website.

This Strategy impacts upon lands and waters over which a number of First Nations’ Traditional Owner and language groups hold custodianship. Registered Aboriginal Parties and Native Title Holders in the region include the Eastern Maar; Gunditj Mirring; and Wadawurrung Aboriginal Corporations and the Barengi Gadjin Land Council.

Traditional Owners and language groups in the southwest include people who identify as Bunganditj, Djabwurung, Djargurdwurung, Gunditjmara, Jardwadjali, Kirrae Whurrung, Kuurn Kopan Noot Maar, Peek Whurrong, Tjap Wurrung, Yarro waetch (Tooram Tribe), Wadawurrung, and Wotjobaluk.

We recognise their continuous connection to culture, community and Country and embrace their traditional and contemporary cultural and creative expression stretching back millennia.

We acknowledge the land on which we live and work, and pay our respect to the First Peoples on all of these lands and those that surround them.

A regional-level strategy allows us to work together on common challenges and opportunities, rather than approach them in isolation.

Traditional Owners, artists, federal government, state government, local government, tourism groups, not-for-profits, peak bodies, and businesses are just a few of the many and varied groups working in the creative industries across the region.

Building on what is already being achieved, as well as strengthening some of the long-term partnership already in place, is a way to build a roadmap for supporting practitioners, organisations and supporters in the southwest of Victoria.

It also presents an opportunity for people living and working in the area to take a leading role in shaping outcomes for the creative industries that impact locally.

In many years working in the southwest of Victoria, Regional Arts Victoria has never found the region to be short of ideas. A strategic approach like this allows us to determine how we can join forces to turn these ideas into action.

The South West Creative Industries Strategy aligns closely with the Victorian Government’s state-wide strategy to guide growth and investment in the creative industries; Creative State (find out more here).

Regional Arts Victoria and Creative Victoria work closely to ensure that insights are shared in both directions, with a representative from Creative Victoria sitting on the governance group for the South West Creative Industries Strategy.

This helps ensure that state government has an understanding of southwest priorities and insights, what’s happening on-the-ground in the regions and helps to advocate for the sector more broadly. 

As part of the development of ‘Creative State’, Victoria’s first Creative Industries strategy, Creative Victoria stated:

“Creative industries are an evolving mix of sectors spanning arts, culture, screen, design, publishing and advertising. They cover disciplines as diverse as game development and graphic design, fashion and filmmaking, performing arts and publishing, architecture and advertising, media and music, comedy and craft. They include activities that are commercially-driven and community based, experimental and export-intense.”

The South West Creative Industry Strategy development will take a similarly broad approach in considering the diverse fields that contribute to cultural, economic and social life in the southwest of the state.

The creative ecologies survey was one of the data gathering methods used in the project to map the Great South Coast’s creative ecology. The purpose of the survey was to:

• Collect hard data about the region’s creative and cultural actors, their activities and behaviours
• Capture community aspirations for themselves, their locale and the region
• Gain insight into how the creative ecology functions, and
• Provide a community engagement vehicle for the project stakeholders.

The data collected fed into the final Creative Ecology report, which mapped the region’s actors and activities and provides a health check against the Creative Ecology Domains.

Target respondents were divided into four categories:

• Individual creatives (professional and amateur)
• Creative professionals (working within creative and non-organisations)
• Arts workers (from arts organisations and businesses that support creative activities)
• Consumers of creative output (the wider community and advocates).

The survey was open between 8 July and 13 September 2019. It was promoted by the Project Control Group stakeholders through their networks, with supporting digital and print advertising undertaken by Regional Arts Victoria.

This report provides an overview of the responses and highlights key notable findings.

The Strategy is led by Regional Arts Victoria and key partners. The first Strategy was governed by a Project Control Group with support from an Advisory Group, evolving for 2025-2029 into an overarching governance group (the Partnership Circle) and a more operational and nimble Work Group.

Stacey Barnes, Regional Manager – South West