Arts fightback – breaking out of the goldfish bowl

How can the broad arts and cultural sector become a better organised, effective voice for arts and culture and its wider importance for Australia? These current dire circumstances, where we face a national arts crisis the seriousness of which can’t be understated, may provide the opportunity we have needed to look seriously at this question. It’s time for the big picture and long view for Australian arts and culture and time to get ready for a long haul effort to win hearts and minds.

We face a national arts crisis the seriousness of which can’t be understated. Looking forward, though, a far more important issue than arts funding is the question of how the broad arts and cultural sector can become a better organised, effective voice for arts and culture and its wider importance for Australia. Changes like this happen because they are able to happen – because decision-makers think it’s not important enough and they can get away with it. The arts and culture sector and its supporters have to be influential enough that decision-makers think carefully about the importance and the standing of Australia’s arts and culture and weigh any decisions they make carefully in terms of the strategic needs of the sector. The current dire circumstances may provide the opportunity we have needed to look seriously at this question. It’s time for the big picture and long view for Australian arts and culture.

Election poster from an Auckland, New Zealand street, 2014

Bigger pictures to paint – no less than a fight for the soul of Australia

While there is an important campaign underway around arts funding we shouldn’t get lost in that alone. There are far more important issues affecting the future of arts and culture in Australia that underlie the question of funding. Many issues have been thrown up about which organisations were funded in the Australia Council four year operational funding round. Without getting lost in these, the real issue is how the overall arts and culture budget, except for brief moments, has always fallen short of a serious commitment. On top of this, that limited commitment has been steadily eroded. Even more crucially, Australian arts and culture itself is being threatened, with crucial institutions and traditions and long positive histories being trashed for short term greed and gain.

Election mode for Australian arts and culture – a policy-free zone?

A policy and the understanding of issues that leads to its adoption, provides arts and culture with a stature that underpins funding by providing a rationale for support. Otherwise funding will always be ad hoc and insecure, piecemeal, project-based, intermittent and at the mercy of whim and fashion. We have to get arts and culture to the stage where it is seen like public health or education and debated accordingly.

It will be interesting in this #Ausvotesarts election if we see many arts policies, in contrast to thought balloons or bland and meaningless statements about how such and such a politician ‘likes’ the arts.

Without good policies, our elected representatives are just warming their seats.

Back in ancient times when Tony Abbott was Prime Minister, faced with the prospect that it could become the next Australian Government, the Labor Party started reviewing its ‘arts’ policy. We know that Mark Dreyfus supports arts and culture and knows the arts sector. As yet we don’t know where the Labor Party as a whole stands. It has a website called 100 positive ideas, which is one positive idea in itself, but which, alas, has no sign of any policies about arts and culture. It promises more policies to come, so here’s hoping. Until it releases it’s arts policy, which I understand will be a new and improved cultural policy along the lines of the National Cultural Policy, we won’t know. I wonder if the updated policy will reflect Dreyfus’ interest in human rights – something sadly neglected in Australia in recent years. Whatever happens, it’s important that the Labor Party doesn’t reinvent the wheel.

Dear Treasurer – our arts are central to everyday life, why doesn’t funding reflect it?

In response to steadily diminishing support for arts and culture by government, it's crucial to recognise that Australia's arts are central to everyday life and should be firmly on the main national agenda. Apart from their value in maintaining a thriving Australian culture, the range of social and economic benefits they deliver and their role in telling Australia's story to ourselves and the world make them an essential service.

Like it or not, we’re all part of a double disillusion election, and an early one as well – as if we need any more of them, given some of the disastrous outcomes of past ones. Somewhere in the noise and dust, Australia’s arts and culture future could well be lost.

Tobacco drying sheds, North East Victoria: The creative industries are too important to become just another industry overtaken by history.

Silent retreat – is arts funding becoming project funding?

There’s lots to be worried about in the flurry of recent changes to national arts funding arrangements. Amongst it we need to be concerned at what might be the beginning of a bigger trend – the tendency for government to withdraw from longer term operational support for the arts in preference for short term, one-off project funding.

The arts and culture sector is contemplating the first full set of projects funded by the new Catalyst program and awaiting the announcements next week by the Australia Council of their decisions about which organisations will receive four year funding. It’s a good time to think about the implications of what has been happening in the arts funding landscape over the last year.

Amongst the many concerns about the recent changes to national arts funding arrangements I am deeply disturbed that we might be witnessing the beginning of a bigger trend – that is the tendency for government to pull back from longer term operational support for the arts in preference for short term, one-off project funding.

'We might be witnessing the beginning of a bigger trend – that is the tendency for government to pull back from longer term operational support for the arts in preference for short term, one-off project funding'

It’s a complex picture because in many ways the current Australian Government in its quest to reduce ‘red tape’, in many areas has moved even further along the path of multi-year contracts and minimal oversight, particularly in the brave new (and old) world of Indigenous Affairs. However, at least in marginal areas like arts support, it is a tendency that seems to be developing momentum. Potentially it marks a creeping government withdrawal from serious long-term effective support.

Parliament House in Canberra was designed so that anyone could walk on it to remind politicians that they answered to the will of the people - a message that seems to have been forgotten.

Even cheaper outsourcing
Perhaps we have to see this as a form of even cheaper outsourcing in the community sphere than at present, parallel to the more lucrative outsourcing dreamed of – and occurring – in the business sphere. After all, as Peter Shergold has pointed out, if government wants certain outcomes, a highly cost-effective (cheap) way to get them is by funding community organisations who live (and die) on the smell of an oily rag. Unfortunately project funding is a particularly erratic and ad hoc form of outsourcing.

Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst – the looming failure of arts support

With arts support continuing to shrink cultural groups need to hope for the best but plan for the worst – and build broad alliances – what’s happening in the arts and culture realm is just a symptom of what’s happening far more broadly.

In the slowly unravelling universe of arts and culture support, organisations – whether they be small arts organisations or the largest of national cultural institutions – need to think seriously about their future. They need to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. This means developing strategies to survive the combination of drastic cuts and slow erosion already occurring and likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

Australia is not one country but two separate ones heading in opposite directions. One of these countries is heading into a future which is only slowly emerging from the mists created by deliberately ignoring or distorting science and the evidence it relies upon.

Strategic leadership in everything
This means strategic leadership like never before – something sadly lacking across the sector, particularly at the top end where this should be expected and demanded. The relatively limited and mixed response of large cultural organisations to the last few years of budget cuts is a clear sign of this. It should be a moment for them to drastically rethink what they do and how they do it, not tidy the edges.

Creativity at work – economic engine for our cities

Increasingly two critical things will help shape our economic future. The first is the central role of cities in generating wealth. The second is the knowledge economy of the future and, more particularly, the creative industries that sit at its heart. In Sydney, Australia’s largest city, both of these come together in a scattering of evolving creative clusters, a development is part of a national and world-wide trend which has profound implications.

It is becoming abundantly clear that in our contemporary world two critical things will help shape the way we make a living – and our economy overall. The first is the central role of cities in generating wealth. The second is the knowledge economy of the future and, more particularly, the creative industries that sit at its heart.

Creative clusters connect disparate small business and creative individuals to mutual advantage - the way bridges bring separate parts of a city into contact.

In Sydney, Australia’s largest city, both of these come together in a scattering of evolving creative clusters – concentrations of creative individuals and small businesses, clumped together in geographic proximity. A recent important article by Anne Davies in ‘The Sydney Morning Herald’ outlines this development and some of its profound implications.

Lies, damned lies and lies about statistics

I’ve said that the traditional saying about ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’, should instead refer to ‘lies, damned lies and lies about statistics’. Cuts to national arts and cultural funding, while relatively small each year, have a cumulative effect far greater than at first appears and, in the long run, will undermine the effectiveness of national arts and culture support. Where the real disastrous impact of these cuts will hit home is when we also factor in the impact of population growth. If anything, there needs to be an expansion of arts and cultural funding to service the growth

I’ve said before when writing about negative gearing and public policy, that the traditional saying about 'lies, damned lies and statistics’, should instead refer to ‘lies, damned lies and lies about statistics’. The sad truth is that statistics don't lie, only the people who use them - often to dazzle someone who doesn’t understand what the statistics are measuring and how. This means the lies, damned lies and lies about statistics are usually coming from the mouth of some politician or lobby group or spin doctor for the well-off. This is particularly the case during elections. In contrast to lies, damned lies and lies about statistics, there's analysis based on research that is actually related to reality.

Australia's population is growing rapidly - it adds another person every one minute and thirty seconds. The implications for public services, including arts and culture, are profound. 

'The sad truth is that statistics don't lie, only the people who use them - often to dazzle someone who doesn’t understand what the statistics are measuring and how'

In my article about cuts in national arts and cultural funding, ‘Smoking gun – the invisible cuts to national arts and culture funding’, I noted that the cuts, while relatively small each year, have a cumulative effect far greater than at first appears and, in the long run, will undermine the effectiveness of national arts and culture support. In my earlier article, ‘Cut to the bone – the accelerating decline of our major cultural institutionsand its impact on Australia’s national heritage and economy’, I looked at how this had affected our national cultural institutions.