Fringe to famous: Enabling and popularising cultural innovation in Australia

If there is any general question that cuts across different national contexts for the development of cultural policy it is the appropriate relation between government and commercial cultural industries. The reflections in this chapter emerge more specifically from a three-year research project, 'Fringe to Famous', examining the conditions in Australia for crossover of fringe, independent and avant garde cultural production and mainstream cultural industries. The starting point for 'Fringe to Famous' was an interest in areas of consistency or complementarity between commerce and culture. An important point of reference for the project has been the perspectives that emerged from a particular moment in cultural studies and cultural policy in Britain in the 1980s. There have also been costs, however, and the innovation systems perspective has attracted substantial criticism. 'Fringe to Famous' might best be described, therefore, as adopting a 'soft' innovation perspective.