Caroline Hamilton

Dr Caroline Hamilton is a McKenzie research fellow in the Department of Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne. She is presently investigating the effects of digital media on Melbourne’s local literary cultures as part of a three year research grant. She is also the author of a book on the publishing success of Dave Eggers, One Man Zeitgeist (Continuum, 2010).

Dr Kirsten Seale is Senior Researcher in the School of Media and Communication. Her current research looks at the role of literature in the production of place.

Counting Culture: Measuring Achievements in the City of Literature

In this paper we investigate Melbourne’s deployment of its ‘UNESCO City of Literature’ designation. We begin by outlining the city’s present emphasis on the production and consumption of local literary culture for an imagined global audience and propose the need for measures of the effectiveness of this strategy. We will articulate the various factors that might be considered when measuring the ‘success’ of the designation – community cultural development, tourism, local business development and education initiatives – and compare these with existing measures employed to assess the effectiveness of other schemes for creating Creative Cities.