Our submission to the National Cultural Policy consultation argues that creativity should be recognised as a national capability, not only a cultural portfolio concern.

Gledhill Shield has made a submission to the public consultation on Australia’s next National Cultural Policy.

Our core proposition is that Australia should treat creativity as productivity infrastructure.

By this, we mean the upstream capabilities that improve how value is created: how problems are framed, how systems are designed, how technology is applied in context, and how people and institutions collaborate and make decisions.

Culture has intrinsic value. Artistic expression, cultural memory and creative practice matter in their own right. They enrich public life and help societies understand themselves.

But creativity also helps shape how other forms of value are created. It supports invention, interpretation, design, judgement, cultural understanding and public problem-solving.

This matters as Australia faces a structural productivity challenge, rapid technological change and increasingly complex public decisions. As machine intelligence becomes more available, creative capability becomes more important: helping us know what to ask, what to make, what to trust, and what matters.

Australia has deep creative capability. The opportunity is to enable it more deliberately across the systems that shape future value: education, enterprise, public decision-making, infrastructure, digital systems, places and civic life.

Our submission makes five recommendations. The core recommendation is that the next National Cultural Policy establish a formal cross-portfolio mechanism for creative capability, linking arts, education, industry, digital, infrastructure and public sector reform.

Culture and creativity should not be peripheral to Australia’s productivity and innovation agenda.

We should expect more from them, and give them a larger role in shaping Australia’s future capability.

Read the full submission here.