Left to right:Speakers at the Regulation Policy Forum: Professor Eric Brousseau (Université Paris-Dauphine); Robin Van Mulders (Competition and Markets Authority); Professor Philip Schlesinger (University of Glasgow), chair; Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Draft Online Safety Bill Joint Committee, UK Parliament); Kate Davies (Ofcom).

Hard on the heels of the University of Sydney’s Vice-Chancellor visit to build links with UofG, cooperation is in evidence work on the creative digital economy.

Professor Philip Schlesinger, who is leading the Glasgow end of a current Partnership Collaboration with the University of Sydney, organised an invitation-only symposium in the ARC on 29-30 March on ‘Policy Futures for the Digital Creative Economy’.

This showcased cutting-edge research at the Centre for Cultural Policy Research and CREATe, the UK Copyright and Creative Economy Centre, as well as that of our Sydney counterparts. 

Professor Schlesinger of the School of Culture & Creative Arts and Deputy Director of CREATe, said: “This really worked as an encounter across disciplinary boundaries and diverse interests. It took off spectacularly during in-depth exchanges on policy and research between academic researchers, a legislator, and regulators from Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority. It was a rare, unbridled, private conversation, and the more valuable for that. As a foundational encounter, this visit from Sydney, and our colleagues from Université Paris-Dauphine, has set the stage for further developments.”

Professor Terry Flew, University of Sydney's leading analyst of digital change, opened the symposium with a lecture on Australian cultural policy. Future-oriented contributions around the table ranged across algorithms, creativity and AI, creative labour, copyright, climate change, sports media, new challenges facing regulation, and public service media.

The ARC programme kicked off with a public lecture on 28 March by University of Sydney’s Professor John Hartley, a leading international figure in media and cultural studies. His lecture was titled “‘Present at their own making’: In the era of global-digital media, how do we make a pan-demic class?”. The lecture opened an intense debate with the audience on whether a new problem-solving class could address the climate crisis and other global problems.

Further Information

Learn more about the work of CREATe.

Learn more about the Centre for Cultural Policy Research (CCPR)

First published: 5 April 2023

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