TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Mismanaged creative hubs provide cautionary tale
Thirty-nine-year-old Claudine Patricia has not forgotten her last day at the creative hub in Bandung, West Java, even after months
Change Size
Thirty-nine-year-old Claudine Patricia has not forgotten her last day at the creative hub in Bandung, West Java, even after months.
The former librarian was fired in 2018 when authorities decided to slash the operational budget for the following year.
The sudden work termination was a tough pill to swallow for Claudine, who had sacrificed her sub-minimum wage salary to add to the library’s collection and borne uncovered operational costs while organizing activities all by herself.
“It is a bitter memory that I’m trying to forget. I was stunned until 5 in the morning [after I was fired],” said the literature enthusiast in August last year.
Bandung Creative Hub program coordinator Febby Arhemsyah said last August he had to wait for the 2020 budget to fix a previously inundated auditorium that had leaks and several broken seats.
He admitted it had been hard to maintain the facilities and hold activities in the hub, citing bureaucracy and budget constraints as the main barriers.
The Rp 40 billion (US$2.88 million) six-story building may have seemed like a good idea to former Bandung mayor Ridwan Kamil, now the governor of West Java, when he inaugurated the so-called “home of creative industry” in 2017.
But its occupants’ stories serve as warnings for the central government as it seeks to develop such hubs in other parts of the country, as budgetary and governance issues still loom large, creative economy observers have said.
The government hopes to elevate the ever-growing creative economy into one of the country’s new economic growth engines amid rising global uncertainties that have dealt a blow to exports and investment.
Data from the Creative Economy Agency (Bekraf), which has been merged with the Tourism Ministry in President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's second term, shows that the creative economy contributed Rp 1.1 quadrillion to gross domestic product in 2018, more than double the Rp 526 trillion achieved in 2010.
Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Wishnutama Kusubandio said on Wednesday that he was going to focus on creating creative hubs this year in super-priority tourist destinations. The plan aims to seek out and nurture each region’s creative economy potential.
The five super-priority tourist destinations are Likupang in North Sulawesi, Lake Toba in North Sumatra, Borobudur temple in Central Java, Mandalika in West Nusa Tenggara and Labuan Bajo in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT).
Wishnutama also added Semarang, Central Java, to the list of creative hub sites, as previously mandated by President Jokowi.
“We have been working with the Public Works and Housing Ministry in establishing the creative hub in Pusat Waringin, Labuan Bajo, NTT,” Wishnutama told the press on Jan. 8.
Yet, even before these new creative hubs have been built, the soon-to-be hub in Malang, East Java, is already facing issues while Bandung’s hub faces its own management turmoil, said Indonesia Creative Cities Network (ICCN) cofounder and artist Gustaff Harriman Iskandar.
As of last November, Malang Creative Hub’s management faced permit issues and had seen its budget swell to Rp 189 billion from the Rp 125 billion it had originally planned.
“At first, we thought it was positive,” said Gustaff. “But governance problems have made it anticlimactic and the benefits for creativity have been unfulfilled.”
Mismanagement will likely threaten future creative hub developments if authorities fail to clearly map out the responsibilities of ministries, Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef) Center of Innovation and Digital Economy researcher Hanif Muhammad said on Friday.
“We need these creative hubs. But if coordination [between central and regional governments] remains weak, these places will merely be buildings labeled creative hubs that fail to maximize their potential,” Hanif said.
Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment as the ministry is reshuffling its organizational structure, public relations officials told The Jakarta Post on Friday.
However, the West Java governor said in November that he had urged Bandung authorities to hand over management of the creative hub to creative economy players to avoid bureaucratic governance, an order he said he had expressed when he was the mayor of Bandung.
“Just give creative people some space,” Ridwan said as quoted by tribunnews.com.
While waiting for new developments, Bandung dancer Keni Kurniasari said she hoped the government would seek the involvement of more creative economy players to better plan for future hubs in other cities.
“Each city has different needs. The government can’t just use and imitate the patterns in Bandung for other cities,” said Keni, adding that officials and practitioners could form an art council to better support the needs of creative economy players.
