Creative Business Wrap – September 2025

Spring: sunshine, flowers… tax reform? September isn’t usually the time to be talking tax, but the Art of Tax Reform summit, convened by the NSW government, is happening later this month. I can’t recall an event like this ever being dedicated solely to tax reform for the cultural and creative industries, and while it might sound a bit dry, I’m nerdy enough to be interested to see what comes out of it.

Now, I’d forgive you if you didn’t pore over all 257 submissions (and if you did, well done!). But if you’re after the edited highlights, here are what I (and Notebook LM) reckon are the five most popular areas for comment that cropped up across the submissions:

1. Strengthen Incentives for Philanthropic Giving and Donations. This idea was overwhelmingly the most frequently mentioned, with many submissions advocating for mechanisms to encourage private investment in the arts.
2. Tax Exemption for Prizes, Grants, Awards, and Fellowships. This is consistently highlighted as important, particularly for individual artists and independent creatives.
3. Sector-Specific Tax Offsets/Incentives (new and changes to existing). This covers a broad spectrum of targeted tax benefits for specific creative industries, such as live performance, and refinements to the existing screen and games offsets.
4. Property Tax Benefits/Incentives for Creative Spaces/Addressing Vacancy Issues. Many submissions underscored the immense challenges artists and creative organisations face in securing affordable and suitable physical spaces, particularly in inner-city areas where costs are soaring.
5. Reform/Improve Income Averaging Rules. The unpredictable and irregular nature of creative income is a significant and persistent concern, leading to calls for more effective income averaging provisions.

I’ll be sure to follow up next month with some notes about how the summit went, and if you’re curious to read Sharpe Advisory’s submission, it’s on this list right here.
 

Over the last year or two, we’ve been brought on to advise on several proposed cultural facilities in regional Australia: big visions, big costs. So it was interesting to read this ABC News article about the Hamilton Gallery, where the debate about how much the local Council should stump up for a new gallery is well and truly live. Director Joshua White makes a case that council funding isn’t just for the gallery itself, but for the entire community. He argues that this funding attracts visitors to the Hamilton region, which in turn boosts the local economy. With over 9,000 items in its collection and ambitious community programs, the gallery’s current infrastructure is insufficient. A new gallery would allow them to display more of their collection, including touring exhibitions, and cement its role as a cultural and economic driver for the region.

This is a set of arguments I’ve become well-versed with since working on business cases for large cultural infrastructure projects. It seems to me that local councils are now familiar with the many economic and social benefits major galleries and performing arts centres can bring, and it’s good news for getting significant collections and live entertainment out to the regions. The problem is that state governments will be increasingly asked to help out with capital and operational costs. Can they sustain the ambition of their local government counterparts? Should they? I think there’s going to be many more of these Hamilton-style examples in the years to come. And wouldn’t it be great if governments of all stripes were prepared for that?
 

Moving from cultural infrastructure to business strategy, I came across a thought-provoking piece from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth titled “A Product is Not a Strategy”. It argues that while the lean startup movement has helped entrepreneurs avoid building products no one wants, a myopic focus on product features isn’t enough for long-term success.

A product is merely an offering, but a strategy is the underlying logic of why a business’s actions matter. The article defines a strong strategy as a theory that identifies a critical problem and proposes a coherent set of actions to solve it, warning against the “if you build it, they will come” mentality. Creative entrepreneurs are constantly balancing the creative and the commercial, and this piece is a valuable reminder that even the most brilliant creative ‘product’ needs a robust strategy to overcome “problems-of-value” – challenges that make a customer’s need hard to serve profitably and sustainably, such as legal fragility or cost structure issues. Enduring success requires solving the startup’s problem-of-value, which is where real strategy begins.
 

Now, how about some deeper ethical considerations? The article “The Good, the Bad, and the Iffy: is there such a thing as an ethical designer?”, published by It’s Nice That, dives into the moral dilemmas designers face. It’s a preview for a new book from Hero Press and explores the challenges of client selection and the logistics of rejecting work on ethical grounds.

What one person considers an “unethical” industry, another might see as an opportunity for positive change, making these waters murky indeed. The piece highlights the personal and professional struggles of designers who balance their values with the need to make a living, noting that not all designers have the luxury of being selective, especially junior designers or those with significant financial obligations. It questions the very concept of an “ethical designer” within an economic system often built on exploitation, suggesting the debate is a continuous negotiation of personal values in a complex world. Something we can all relate to, no doubt, especially when navigating our own creative and commercial imperatives.
 

The conversation about artists’ lives and well-being continues to be critical. In an article for Arts Professional titled “Artists’ Lives: Ecologies for Resilience”, Susan Jones presents new research challenging prevailing arts policy in England. Jones argues that since 2010, the focus on institutional resilience has come at the expense of artists’ careers, livelihoods, and well-being. Based on seven years of interviews, the research reveals a significant disconnect between the policy’s emphasis on “creative industries” and artists’ motivations, which are driven by intrinsic values such as personal growth and social inquiry, rather than fame or fortune alone. Sound familiar?

The study highlights that the current arts ecology, marked by a “Hunger Games-type competition” for limited funding, undermines artists’ ability to make a living and maintain their well-being. This resonates strongly with the discussions around significant funding cuts in Berlin and the precarious lives of artists in the Irish Basic Income for the Arts scheme. The article highlights the need for a new policy approach that supports the “ecologies” essential for artists to thrive over their lifetimes, including sufficient time, space, and resources for professional reflection and artistic development.

Do you like to see your favourite streaming titles at the cinema? This article, published by Screen Daily, asks “Is Netflix eyeing a theatrical strategy shift?”. Recent titles, The Thursday Murder Club and KPop Demon Hunters, have received theatrical releases to supplement their release on Netflix. KPop Demon Hunters reportedly earned an estimated $18 million, potentially topping the North American chart for its opening weekend. The Thursday Murder Club also performed strongly in the UK, generating around £500,000 from a limited release in a single weekend. These successes, especially for an older-skewing title, have cinema operators wondering if Netflix will alter its traditional model.

However, the article suggests a significant shift is unlikely. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has previously stated that their core strategy is to provide content directly to subscribers, viewing theatrical releases as an “outmoded idea for most people”. It seems these limited theatrical runs, often for awards eligibility, are more a publicity tactic than a revenue-generating endeavour, confirming that the streamers are still battling it out on their own terms.

Finally, here’s a fantastic video from Great Big Story, This Conductor Fills Concert Halls With Video Game Fans, featuring conductor and composer Eimear Noone. Known as the “Irish Queen of Game Music,” she showcases her incredible work on iconic video game scores, including World of Warcraft and The Legend of Zelda. Eimear explains that to compose great game music, a deep immersion in the game’s world is necessary to capture its emotional essence. The video also introduces her musical partner, Craig Garfinkle, as they collaborate on a score for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. Eimear’s passion for conducting, bringing static musical notes to life and creating a dynamic connection with the orchestra is clearly there on screen.

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is on board with this trend, having performed their “Press Play” concert earlier this year, and plenty of orchestras now regularly program film music as a way of broadening audience appeal. I think this cross-genre content is going to be increasingly important for arts and entertainment events in the next few years. So, there’s an excuse to spend some “research time” with your PlayStation or Xbox.