Albury-Wodonga has been identified as one of 20 'hot-spots' for creative industries in a nation-wide study.
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Figures from the 2016 Census and feedback from peak bodies have led a team from the University of Newcastle and the Queensland University of Technology to areas including Woolongong and Bendigo.
UON Associate Professor Susan Kerrigan is conducting interviews in Victoria and NSW and said the states' arts funding bodies were among five partners informing the study's scope.
"Create NSW wanted to come to Albury, and Creative Victoria were interested in Wodonga," she said.
"The study is supported by an Australian Research Council linkage grant, and came off the back of one we did in the Hunter region.
"We interviewed 115 people in that study and looked at the whole of the creative industries.
"We identified a hierarchy of arts, media, design, and IT.
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"Sometimes people misunderstand what the creative industries are, and conflate it into just the arts sector.
"In actual fact, it's about how people are make a living from a creative endeavour."
An analysis of Census data done for the study shows within the sector, 786 people work in Albury and 552 people work in Wodonga, earning on average $61,000-$63,000.
In the Hunter study, 6535 people or 2 per cent of the working population were attributed to creative industries, contributing a "conservative" estimate of $1 billion to the Hunter gross regional product.
It identified that physical and digital infrastructure was necessary to the health and growth of the sector and that there was a "rapidly growing trend" of freelancing and casualisation of the workforce.
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Researchers also found "new occupations such as social media manager, transmedia storyteller, techno-preneur or digital strategist are emerging at an exponential rate".
Dr Kerrigan spoke to representatives of Border agencies last week and said she was interested to learn what the nature of the sector was locally, and the challenges faced.
"What we saw in the Hunter study was people couldn't find employment, so they would go to capital cities or internationally to get jobs, and after 10 years they would come back to have their families and business," she said.
"I've heard that story here in Albury-Wodonga.
"Other things of interest to us are the NBN and state-based policies, which is a hot topic on the Border."
Reports on each of the 20 hot-spots will be released before Australian cultural and creative activity: A population and hotspot analysis is published next year.
