The Northern Rivers media sector: making do in a high-profile rural location

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the screen media businesses and production milieu that has developed in the predominantly rural region of the Northern Rivers, Australia, over the past 20 years. Spread across a number of towns and small cities each at some distance from each other, this screen milieu would seem to go against the prevailing logic for screen media to concentrate in globally connected cities. Taking up Allen J. Scott’s suggestion that the new capitalism of the twenty-first century is producing restructuring effects in many of the interstitial spaces between large cities, this article examines the spatial assemblages of the screen media and related creative industries sectors in one such space. We demonstrate how screen media actors in this rural region are participating in the wider cultural economy and explore its cultural policy implications.

Keywords:

• place identity
• cultural economy
• creative industries
• rural development
• screen production