"New Economy" - Creative Industries
By Roca Hoi
Contrary to popular beliefs, creative industries have been developed alongside the more prominent economic development of Macau. Creative Macau is an organization that not only promotes local artists, but also trains new ones.
Creative Macau is a non-profit organization for creative industries in Macau. It is a project developed and managed by the Institute of European Studies of Macau since 2003. The main role of this centre is to assist the creative industries by raising their profiles and helping them to achieve their full economic potential.
It is located at Macao Cultural Centre Building Xian Sing Hai Avenue.
What are creative industries? SO far 12 areas have been defined as so by Creative Macau, they include “Advertising, Architecture, Crafts, Design, Designer Fashion…”
According to Creative Macau, creative industry is a sector of the “new economy”. It relies on the inner capacities of the people to be creative, given conditions to develop their potential. That is why it can work as a platform to job creation, especially for young people. In those developed countries, it is an important contributor to their GDP, to foreign trade and to international recognition and prominence.
The centre welcomes artists, designers, and entrepreneurs in different fields of the creative industries based in Macau. It provides a showroom for them to demonstrate talents, broaden knowledge and increase visibility for the works and the products of the local creative industries.
From March 26 to April 9, there was a graphic design group exhibition called It’s a head scratch, isn’t it? II people from different creative areas were invited. They are architects, designers and artists.
Every artist who holds an exhibition at Creative Macau is required to hold the “meet the artist” session. This is for increasing the interaction and communication between the artist and the public. During this session, both the artist and the public are encouraged to share their thoughts and ideas. It is a chance for people to hear more about the artist, and at the same time, the artist can also learn something from the people.
Creative Macau provides high quality trainings for skills and creativity development. The classes related to business management are offered for SMEs and micro companies in creative industries.
It is convenient to take part in the workshop since the application forms for training classes can be easily downloaded from its website. Also, there is no limitation of the age or career.
The workshop opened from February to March was called “constrAction”, and was presented by local architect, Nuno Soares. This course was related to furniture design. It allowed people to design and build their own pieces of furniture. 12 participants were from different field. The course was expected to finish within 6 weeks along with their design projects.
Some of the works were selected and displayed in the constrAction Exhibition in May in Creative Macau.
