Creative Industries
The state of Georgia provides significant and growing tax incentives to support production work in film, television, music and digital entertainment. These incentives have sparked explosive growth in production work and the development of statewide infrastructure and workforce. Filmmaking and TV work in Georgia generates a $9 billion annual economic impact.
The state legislature, in recent years, has convened study groups to explore whether the benefits of production activity are reaching all Georgians, especially minority media makers and others from backgrounds of economic disadvantage, and to develop metrics to capture the economic benefits.
The central educational mission of Georgia State and other partner institutions in the University System of Georgia and Technical and Community College System has faculty statewide focused on workforce development and the work of connecting liberal arts educational training with advanced technology and creative industries careers.
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The first High Demand Career Initiative summit convened by Governor Nathan Deal was held at Georgia State, and focused on the media and entertainment industries. The most common view articulated there by industry partners was the need to build technology training platforms able to support work in the state animation and game design industry. Georgia State responded by introducing a game design and development program.
Kay Beck, founding director of the university’s Digital Arts Entertainment Lab (the CMII precursor), and an architect of its thriving film program, worked with the Board of Regents to undertake a workforce study that helped lay the foundation for the start of the Georgia Film Academy. The study detailed the most urgent areas for curricular development and made a case for the internship and experiential educational model implemented today by Georgia Film Academy programs.
Researchers connected with the university’s Fiscal Research Center regularly perform economic assessments that relate to the creative industries. A recent example of their work is an informational overview (PDF) of the state production tax credits.
What are the geographical implications of growing work in the state creative industries? Ethan Tussey and Amelia Arsenault, assistant professors in film and media, have started an Atlanta Media Mapping Project that tracks hiring and infrastructure data points to literally map the growth of the state’s media industries.
CMII is organizing a wider group of interested faculty who work on the economics of creative industry production, either formulated around workforce issues or economic impact.