Profiling diversity: Managing multimedia industry development 1

The importance of developing high quality, relevant and user-­friendly 'content', for the forthcoming phase of multimedia development compels us to consider the impact of multimedia on the cultural industries, and the importance of the creative skills, held by cultural workers. Questions of content development are not just a matter for the cultural industries, of course, and one thing that multimedia shows us is that we need a new conception of creativity which can accommodate the importance, of content design across a range of economic and social contexts. Nevertheless, the emergence of multimedia in those diverse spaces where convergence has occurred has seen those skills conventionally held by cultural workers being called upon in new kinds of employment contexts. For this reason, cultural policy needs to be attentive to the relationship between the cultural industries and a more expanded field: the 'content industries'. We would argue that a multimedia industry development strategy is a key element in providing mechanisms for sustainable cultural industry development.