Making a living – building careers in creative and cultural futures

Making a living in the developing creative economy is no easy task. For a viable career, flexibility and creativity are crucial. For this a strategic outlook and a grasp of the major long-term forces shaping Australian creativity and culture is essential. To help foster this amongst emerging cultural sector practitioners, a new flagship course, a Master of Arts in Creative and Cultural Futures, was launched at the University of Canberra in 2019, building on earlier experiments in aligning research and analysis with real world cultural sector experience.

A vast transformation of contemporary culture not seen since the breakdown of traditional arts and crafts in the industrial revolution is under way due to the impact of the digital and online environment. Not only artists, but also culture managers and cultural specialists today are confronted with radically different challenges and opportunities to those they faced in the 20th Century.

Dior exhibition, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 2019.

In parallel with the traditional focus on the arts and arts funding, there has been growing interest in the broader area of the creative or cultural economy and the related, more commercial, creative industries. While the arts and culture sector cannot be reduced simply to economics, it would be a mistake if, for that reason, we ignored the fact that it plays an important economic role. The economic role parallels the broader social role it plays. What the two roles have in common is that both spring from the reality that creativity and culture are integral to everyday life and the essential activities that make it up.

Who owns Australia’s ‘soul’? Our cultural institutions, our history and our future

The announcement of a substantial sum from the Government for expansion of the Australian War Memorial has highlighted some crucial issues around shrinking support for our cultural institutions, recognition of our history and heritage, and sponsorship in a time of diminishing budgets. The Director of the War Memorial has commented that ‘the Australian War Memorial is…a place that reveals our character as a people, our soul.’ In the end though, Australia's ‘soul’ might turn out to be larger, longer and wider than our history of wars.

In a time of tight budgets and creeping efficiency dividends on cultural institutions that cripple their ability to do their job, it seems the Government can manage to find an odd 500 million dollars for an expansion of the Australian War Memorial. Director of the War Memorial, Dr Brendan Nelson, has commented that ‘the Australian War Memorial is…a place that reveals our character as a people, our soul.’

It’s generated some heat for them in the world of culture and heritage and some incisive commentary beyond that, but with the Government’s much bigger problems, I suppose they will be unlikely to notice. Still, it’s a pity about all the other declining national cultural institutions which care for our heritage – including our military heritage, witness the extensive war records held by the National Archives of Australia.

Our major national cultural institutions, such as the National Library of Australia, amongst many others, are battling neglect to maintain their services in the face of growing need.

Unfinished histories – encountering ‘Encounters’

A single exhibition can sum up many things. By bringing together so many histories, stories and objects – particularly long-absent ones from the British Museum – the 'Encounters' exhibition at the National Museum presented a snapshot of the ongoing living history of Australia. Many strands ran through it, reflecting the complexity of the realities it tried to express. By successfully reflecting on the pressing issues it raised we have some hope of getting beyond the vision of the Great South Land of 18th and 19th Century ambition towards a truly great nation of the 21st Century.

Having written an article – even before it opened – about how interesting I expected the ‘Encounters’ exhibition at the National Museum of Australia to be, based solely on publicity about its content, I thought I’d better get there before it finished. The exhibition has now closed and very soon all the ancient objects borrowed from the British Museum will retrace their original paths from Australia to Britain. Why review an exhibition that no longer exists?

The National Museum of Australia sits on the Acton Peninsula in Canberra, on Ngunnawal country.

‘Encounters’ the exhibition, a brief moment in our shared history, may have finished, but it has left us once again to our own drawn-out real encounters with our predecessors on this continent. The exhibition may have finished but the experiences it speaks of continue. For that reason it’s worth reflecting at some length on the exhibition and what it meant from the perspective of Australian culture.

Arts and culture part of everyday life and on the main agenda

There’s an election in the air and I was thinking about what would be a good list of positive improvements that would benefit Australia’s arts and culture, so I jotted down some ideas. They are about recognising arts and culture as a central part of everyday life and an essential component of the big agenda for Australia. They are about where the knowledge economy, creative industries and arts and culture fit, how arts and culture explain what it means to be Australian and how they are a valuable means of addressing pressing social challenges

There’s an election in the air, and an early one as well – as if we need any more of them, given some of the disastrous outcomes of past ones. I was thinking about what would be a good list of positive improvements that would benefit Australia’s arts and culture, so I jotted down some ideas.

Australian arts and culture part of everyday life and on the main agenda - let's burn that bridge when we come to it.

Central to everyday life and the main national agenda

1. We want to see arts and culture recognised for the essential central role it plays in Australia’s social and economic life, with it included on the main national agenda, recognising its integral relationship with major economic and social factors such as economic development, education, innovation, community resilience, social and community identity and health and wellbeing.

Research, including extensive case studies, make this broader benefit clear. As far back as 2004, ‘Art and wellbeing’ an Australia Council publication by Deborah Mills and Paul Brown, examined this in detail. Tenacious social problems flourish when morale is virtually non-existent – and morale depends on a positive sense of self and community which involvement in arts and culture provides. It’s no exaggeration to say that in many cases it changes lives. The experience of many years of the Indigenous culture programs of the Australian Government was that involvement in arts and cultural activity often has powerful flow on social and economic effects. This is true of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. By building self-esteem and generating a sense of achievement, by developing a stronger sense of community, by increasing skills and capabilities through involvement in engaging activities relevant to modern jobs and thereby increasing employability, and by helping to generate income streams, however small, cultural activity can have profound long-term effects.

2. The focus on the economic role of arts and culture is similar to the focus on its community role – both spring from recognition that arts and culture are integral to everyday life and the essential activities that make it up.

In praise of the Berra

When I first moved to Canberra, almost as an accidental intersection of geography and employment after the Sydney Olympics, I used to say “if you had lived in Sydney and one day you woke up and discovered you were in Canberra, you would think you had died.” Then I changed my mind. It took ten years but it was inevitable. Berrans are a hardy bunch – they can withstand the hot winds of summer and of Australia’s Parliament, the chill flurries from the Snowy Mountains and the chilling news of budget cuts. The Berra is half-way between everywhere.

When I first moved to Canberra, almost as an accidental intersection of geography and employment after the Sydney Olympics, I used to say ‘if you had lived in Sydney and one day you woke up and discovered you were in Canberra, you would think you had died’.

Canberra in the rain from Black Mountain

Then I changed my mind. It took ten years but it was inevitable.

Remembering Dresden

Silly dogmas and empires and failed social experiments cannot withstand the power of the everyday, the desire to live long and quietly and productively.

The age we live in is one of small, short wars. It affects some of us in large ways, but most of us, hardly at all. This is a return to the norm, for the widespread horror of world war is unusual this century—at least, so far.

A lesson for our fragile times

When I was growing up, my experience of wars was handed down from a father too young to enlist, despite misguided attempts, and a batch of uncles, loaded up with decorations and unexpected survival. For me this legacy was a defining factor in my sense of history—as was the Depression for my parents.

Like a long lost masterpiece

Many decades ago in Adelaide when I was much younger and a student I used to march in National Aboriginal Day Observance Committee marches. They were shorthanded to NADOC marches, back in the days when Islanders hadn’t yet been included and there was no ‘I’ in the name. They later became better known as NAIDOC marches.

I realised a while back that I must have been marching under the new Aboriginal flag at its birth because it was designed in Adelaide in those years and would have been first carried in local marches there. I had a poster from those years which I used to cart around with me until one day late in 2004 when I was about to move yet again. I  decided to donate it to the National Library of Australia. As a memento I kept a poor quality photo of the poster.