The new digital innovators
4 May 2009
The global economy may be in a state of flux, however, new opportunities are at hand. The cross-faculty BA Creative Digital Practices course, due to launch in 2010, is poised to produce the next generation of workplace leaders.
Elaine Lally
According to the New South Wales Government’s Department of State and Regional Development website, creative digital industries in Australia are valued at almost $19 billion.
NSW, which has the largest creative digital industry in Australia, accounts for 36 000 of the nation’s creative digital businesses and over one-third of the country’s creative digital industry employment.
Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Elaine Lally, who joined UTS on 1 May, has played a key role in setting up the new degree.
“The new course is a cross-faculty program, bringing together the strengths of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building and the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology,” she says.
With a background in researching arts, technology and the social and cultural dimensions of digital developments, Lally will be coordinating the new Creative Digital Studies program, and developing and teaching some of the new subjects.
According to Lally, the three-year course “will cater to students who want to develop their creative and expressive sides as well as their skills with digital technologies. Students will develop practical skills in digital interactive media, with a balance between aesthetic, functional and commercial imperatives in the evaluation of work.
“The program will also encourage students to develop capacities for imaginative synthetic and analytical thinking and communication, at the same time as they learn about how the digital economy works.”
Aiming to produce technologically-literate, culturally-sophisticated, innovative and resourceful leaders in the creative digital industries, graduates can look forward to working in media, communication, IT, design, arts and culture, business and the government.
With the first intake of students taking place next year, Lally is looking forward to the future.
“This is an exciting academic area to be working in, since it's changing so rapidly.”
“I'm particularly excited by the cross-faculty collaboration that's already making this an innovative new course. I'm looking forward to leveraging the connections made through the development of the course to enrich my own research and hopefully, to develop some new collaborations as I establish myself at UTS.”
While she acknowledges there may be challenges in combining the diverse discipline areas in each faculty, Lally believes “that level of integration will happen in the interactions between the students and academics, and between the academics in different parts of the program. It'll be a big challenge, but I'm excited by the prospect of taking it on.”
Fiona Murray
Marketing and Communication Unit
Photographer: Joanne Saad
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