Economic policy and cultural well-being: the New Zealand experience

Abstract

In 2002, the New Zealand government identified three sectors that would be the focus of public policy under its Growth and Innovation Framework. One of these three sectors was the creative industries, selected on the basis that ‘the creative industries can leverage New Zealand’s unique culture and as a knowledge based sector, it has the potential to generate wealth on a sustained basis and reposition New Zealand as a nation of new ideas and new thinking’. Also in 2002, New Zealand reformed its Local Government Act so that one of the two purposes of local government is to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities, in the present and for the future. This paper draws on New Zealand’s experiences under these policies to examine the links between economic policy and cultural well-being, highlighting the underlying principle that the use of cultural capital for economic benefit may damage cultural well-being if the cultural capital is not kept connected to its cultural context.