Literature and languages – inaugural Indigenous literary festival sign of things to come

Happening this weekend is a very important event for Australian cultural life, the inaugural Victorian Indigenous literary festival Blak & Bright. It aims to promote and celebrate a diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices.

The fabulous author and Indigenous languages revivalist, Bruce Pascoe, is co-headlining the festival. With 29 books to his name, including the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary award-winning Fog a Dox, he will help make an historic event. In the lead up to the Festival he has been interviewed about his views on Australian literature.

Melbourne from across the  River Yarra.

There have also been important developments in Queensland, with the state Indigenous languages organisations, the Queensland Indigenous Languages Advisory Committee, having a history of involvement with the Queensland Writers Festival. They recently had a smaller event along the lines of Blak & Bright in Brisbane. There have probably been other activities happening that I’m not aware of, though I’d be keen to hear.

The intriguing world of tiny exhibitions - Craft ACT shows what small organisations can do

Beyond the big blockbusters, across Australia small and smallish arts and cultural organisations are creating a cultural life with our communities - often below the radar - that belies their size. There are many examples - this is just one. Let's just be grateful and not lose it.

We’re all used to the great big blockbuster exhibitions with all their wow and flutter. They are great. What’s really intriguing though is the world of tiny exhibitions, a babbling brook of activity that flows away – often unnoticed – under the tall timbers of the big institutions.

At Craft ACT at the moment you get four of them at once – in one smallish gallery space. That takes some serious curatorial skill and a big range of talent for a curator to draw on. As a member of the Craft ACT Board I get to go to quite a few of our exhibitions but this set of four really entranced me. Like most other small or smallish arts and cultural organisations we have a strong team to produce our exhibitions – exhibitions coordinator, curator, installation team. Unfortunately, as with other similar organisations, they are all usually the same person – so they have to be good at what they do.

Even, found petals, found cloth, embroidery thread, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist

From East Arnhem Land to Canberra 
Before you even reach the gallery, at the top of the stairs, is a small but beautiful display of handwoven bags in ochre colours from the Ramingining community in East Arnhem Land – as far from Canberra as you can get in Australia. Early career artists Marley and Linda Djangirri Malibirr use traditional craft techniques to express stories of Yolngu culture and country. The work, like many in the other exhibitions, is for sale, but don’t think about it for too long – when I was there almost half were already sold.

Collateral damage – the creeping cumulative impact of national arts cuts

Figures about national arts cuts quoted in the most recent Senate Estimates hearings seriously understate the cumulative long-term magnitude and effect of arts cuts and underestimate, just as with the national cultural institutions, the long-term damage. Yet this is the real and permanent impact – a compound effect of creeping cuts.

In the Senate Additional Estimates hearings on 9 February, the Department of Communications and the Arts was asked how much funding was cut from the Ministry for the Arts in the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook and which programs would have to be discontinued and reduced.

The Department replied that ‘there were administrative program cuts of $9.6 million for the arts programs over the forward estimates…This is money within the Ministry that has not been allocated to anybody. The Ministry's budget has been decreased by $9.6 million. The major part of that is the $6 million in savings from not continuing with the Book Council.’

The former home of the Ministry for the Arts - SAP House, or as I used to call it, ASAP House. One of the many stops the Ministry has made in its circumnavigation of the public service and of Canberra as it has weathered the storms of policy and program upheaval.

A compound effect of creeping cuts
This seems to be a lot less than the figures in the table I provided in my earlier article, ‘Smoking gun – the invisible cuts to national arts and culture funding’. It is accurate – but limited – and doesn't tell us a lot. It seriously understates the cumulative long-term magnitude and effect of these cuts and, just as with the national cultural institutions, the long-term damage is the worst – a compound effect of creeping cuts.

Smoking gun – the invisible cuts to national arts and culture funding

'A close look at the public budgets of the Australian Government Ministry for the Arts over the last few years is a clear case of a smoking gun. It reveals serious cuts to overall Ministry program funds almost every year since the 2014-15 budget, stretching long into the future, with levels down from around $198.5m in 2013-14 to just over $184m in 2015-16, with a projected drop even further to around $171.4m in 2018-19. This is a 13.7% drop from 2013-14 to 2018-19. There are odd blips but the overall trend is clearly down. Worst of all, it’s not as if these programs have ever been massive ones by any measure, so these cuts have been made to what are extremely modest and lean programs to start with.'

Towards the end of last year I published an article, ‘National arts and culture funding – follow the money’, looking at cuts to the program funding managed by the Ministry for the Arts in the Australian Government's Department of Communications and the Arts. The article analysed figures available in the public Portfolio Budget Statements which each Australian Government Department publishes annually.

At the time I was so shocked by what the figures showed about cuts in the last two budgets that I simply published the table of amounts and some explanatory notes about where the figures came from without further explanation. I assumed the picture would be clear enough from the figures.

Government actions, including cuts to crucial programs, have produced strong reactions but it has been surprisingly ineffective, beyond removing a Prime Minister.

Since then a number of people have asked me to draw out the implications of these figures more explicitly. I have attempted to do that in this article. I also republish an updated version of the table from the earlier article, reflecting new developments since Brandis was replaced by Fifield as Minister and showing the different components of funding involved.

Arts and culture front and centre - ‘indefinite article’ blog views pass 7,000

'I have been posting articles to social media – mostly about Australian arts and culture – since March 2014. Someone asked a while back what sort of response I had been getting so I posted a summary. Since then views have been steadily increasing and now, with this main blog passing 7,000 views, it seemed a good time to update these figures. One of the main reasons I write articles and other commentary is to develop arguments and perspectives that contribute to a broader understanding of the central role of arts and culture in contemporary Australian life. I always saw my research and writing as being about providing ammunition to those working in the culture sector to argue their case. Having worked across the cultural sector and seen how everything is connected I want to see arts and culture front and centre and placed firmly and permanently on the main agenda.'

This afternoon views of this blog, ‘indefinite article’, about Australian arts and culture, passed 7,000, on the back of my coverage of the ‘Celestial Empire’ exhibition at the National Library of Australia, the cuts to the national cultural institutions in the mid-year budget review and the importance of China in the contemporary world. At the same time my social media engagement – blog views, public Facebook views, views of Linked In articles and active engagement on Twitter – passed 15,000.

Celebrating with a cup of coffee.

As I mentioned when I first posted this update I have been posting articles to social media – mostly about Australian arts and culture – since I left the Australian Government Ministry for the Arts in March 2014. Someone asked a while back what sort of response I had been getting so I posted a summary to my Facebook page also called ‘indefinite article’. Since then views have been steadily increasing and now, with this main blog passing 7,000 views, it seemed a good time to update these figures.

The Middle Kingdom

This is the third and final article in a series of three that link several topics – the critical nature of our declining cultural institutions, the importance of their international engagement and the power and fascination of China. The first, ‘Cut to the bone – the accelerating decline of our cultural institutions and its impact on Australia's national heritage’, is an outline of the cumulative negative consequences for our national heritage of the ongoing and accelerating laceration of our major cultural institutions. The second article, ‘Whatever the question, China is the answer’, is a preview of the important new exhibition about China at the National Library of Australia, ‘Celestial Empire: Life in China, 1644-1911’, and this third article, ‘The Middle Kingdom’ is about the power and fascination of China in the contemporary world.

‘When famed medieval Italian traveller and explorer Marco Polo first encountered China, the Cathay of legend, he saw it as a treasure house of exotic customs and riches. In many ways this is still an element in our own exploration of China. However China is not simply the exotic world of our shaky imagination. China is well on the way to becoming the Middle Kingdom of its traditional name. Australia has a long history of interaction with China. Many of the rich goldfield cities, like Bendigo and Ballarat, were built by Chinese labour and based on Chinese business. More recently, the Chinese in Australia are one of the largest components of the cultural diversity which fuels innovation and commerce in our major cities. For all its faults and political twists and turns I will continue to be fascinated by the Middle Kingdom and watch its inevitable rise with deep interest’.

When famed medieval Italian traveller and explorer Marco Polo first encountered China, the Cathay of legend, he saw it as a treasure house of exotic customs and riches. In many ways this is still an element in our own exploration of China.

Many years ago, I lived for a time in the heart of Sydney and worked at Community Radio 2SER-FM, perched atop the 26 floor tower building of the University of Technology, Sydney, in the heart of Sydney’s Chinatown. I used to vanish from the office at lunchtime into the densely populated shelves of the Burlington Centre supermarket. It was packed with an array of goods from China, most of which I had never heard and certainly mostly items I had never seen. I would emerge days later, dazed and confused by an encounter with little more than the daily shopping list of a Chinese world.

Chinatown, Vancouver 1995, with memorial to Chinese icon, Dr Sun Yat-sen

The exotic treasures of an unknown world, so attractive to Marco Polo, were repeated for me at a much more domestic and mundane level but I’m sure I sensed his response many centuries before me.

Whatever the question, China is the answer

This is the second in a series of three articles that link several topics – the critical nature of our declining cultural institutions, the importance of their international engagement and the power and fascination of China. The first, ‘Cut to the bone – the accelerating decline of our cultural institutions and its impact on Australia's national heritage’, is an outline of the cumulative negative consequences for our national heritage of the ongoing and accelerating laceration of our major cultural institutions. This second article, ‘Whatever the question, China is the answer’, is a preview of the important new exhibition about China at the National Library of Australia, ‘Celestial Empire: Life in China, 1644-1911’, and the third, to be published next, ‘The Middle Kingdom’ is about the power and fascination of China in the contemporary world.

‘It has been said, only half jokingly, that whatever the question, China is the answer. China has its own distinctive problems but this has an underlying element of truth, especially in our current century, the much heralded Asian Century. Our major cultural institutions have risen to the challenge of the Asian Century, playing a leadership role in building the soft diplomacy which enables a deeper and more durable relationship with Asian nations. In the latest example of this engagement, the National Library of Australia has done what national cultural institutions do best – it has collaborated with the National Library of China to produce an outstanding exhibition, “Celestial Empire: Life in China, 1644-1911”. This is a case of cultural interaction building enduring bridges that all the ore trucks in the world can't match’.

My former colleagues at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology have collaborated closely with the Chinese on the development of creative industries in both Australia and China. They used to say, only half jokingly, that whatever the question, China was the answer. China has its own distinctive problems but there is an underlying element of truth in that comment, especially in our current century, the much heralded Asian Century

Our major cultural institutions have risen to the challenge of the Asian Century, playing a leadership role in building the soft diplomacy which enables a deeper and more durable relationship with Asian nations. They have always been active in support for cultural activity, in particular through their work on intangible cultural heritage.

The National Library of Australia - one of a set of major national cultural institutions which support Australian cultural heritage and provide a bridge to the cultures of our Asian neighbours.

Celestial Empire: Life in China, 1644-1911
In the latest example of this engagement, the National Library of Australia has done one of the things national cultural institutions do better than anyone – it has collaborated with the National Library of China to produce an outstanding exhibition, ‘Celestial Empire: Life in China, 1644-1911’. Viewing it is a real pleasure and, due to the detail in the maps, books and scrolls, something not to be rushed.