I had a chance to live in Wellington, New Zealand for a few years teaching television production and a graduate class on the geopolitics of Directing student productionscommunication at Victoria University. Besides being the capital of the country, it’s a great little city that has used its English heritage to effectively draw from the British Commonwealth as well as America to create rich art, design and theater cultures. The city is mentioned in Richard Florida’s Flight of the Creative Class as an example of one of the enterprising nodes around the world that now compete in the global “creative economy”. After an interview with New Zealand native Peter Jackson, the Academy Award winning auteur of such films as King Kong and the Lord of the Rings series that was shot in New Zealand, Florida reflected on the role New Zealand’s capital city. Jackson was able to use the incredible profits generated by the Rings trilogy to build his Weta Digital studio and help catapult the kiwi capital into the global circuits of creative production and attract significant talent to “the land of the long white cloud“.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Florida’s Creative Class Thesis and the Global Economy : Anthony J. Pennings, PhD
