marcus westbury

Success is overrated. Take risks, be experimental, try failing creatively.

ONE of the things I’m hoping for more of in the arts this decade is failure.

No, I’m not wishing that the nation’s artists and arts companies spend the coming years slipping into decline, bankruptcy and despair.

I’m just hoping that they will find ways to take the kinds of creative risks that don’t always come off.

The kind of failure that I’m talking about is not the opposite of success but the kind that is intrinsically bound up in it.

It is one where the alternative is not success but risk aversion, low expectations and predictability.

It is a kind of failure that is actually a prerequisite for innovation in creative life – and most other areas of life for that matter.

It is part of the process of challenging yourself and those around you to try to do something a little different.

I know the only reason I’ve ended up any good at anything is through making mistakes and being reasonably good at not repeating them. It is failing and applying the lessons learnt that allow us to refine our ideas, experiment and innovate.

I’m particularly reminded that failure is important at this time of year because the commercial world is shoving it in our faces around now. Half the much-hyped TV shows starting over the coming month aren’t destined to see out the season. They will be unceremoniously axed or forced to run after midnight (or on the new digital channel graveyard) if the ratings don’t support them. The perpetually shunted local histories of the likes of The Sopranos, The West Wing and The Wire on Australian TV have demonstrated that being bumped in this way is hardly a sign of poor product. Hey Hey It’s Saturday on the other hand . . .

For every Avatar or mediocre Boxing Day blockbuster there are a dozen films that bomb at the box office and a hundred more that struggle straight to cable or on to video.

For every hit record there are a hundred that won’t make their money back. This is how culture moves forward. Failure in a commercial sense is very different from failure in a creative one.

Inevitably, much of the “failed” work will inspire a small but loyal audience and some will inspire and resonate long after the blockbusters are forgotten. Give me inspired flawed creative failures over lacklustre blockbusters any day.

Things aren’t so simple in the arts world.

Most of our publicly funded organisations and institutions would find it impossible to sustain anything like the failure rate that the commercial cultural world takes for granted. Competing claims for the public purse make it difficult to justify things that are complex and unpredictable. Risk-averse politics make it hard to justify resourcing failure, tight financial margins mean they often can’t afford it, and it is almost impossible to distinguish between types of failure.

Failing  from attempting to try something new, trying to challenge or reach a new audience, or long-term repositioning  is indistinguishable from mismanagement or a growing series of self-indulgent duds.

Public subsidy can also simply entrench the wrong kind of failure. It can create a culture of subsidised mediocrity and low expectations of success. The Australian film industry seems to revel in demonstrating that it is possible to fail repeatedly without it leading to innovation or evolution from applying the lessons of the experience.

Our failure at productive failure is not all the artists’, administrators’ or risk-averse managers’ fault. We in the media aren’t usually renowned for our sympathy either.

When a gallery puts on an exhibition that is panned and poorly attended, or when a theatre company puts forward a show that few see and even fewer would ever recommend, it is rare to see a review that contextualises the value of experimentation.

Yet where culture will truly flourish is when it has strategies for failure and risk. One of the great paradoxes of the arts is that you can take more risks with fewer resources. Part of this is simply about creating spaces for experimentation. It is encouraging to see that some larger institutions such as the Arts Centre in Melbourne and the Opera House and Belvoir Street in Sydney create spaces in their programs that allow for lower budgets, failure and innovation.

Here’s hoping that 2010 and beyond will be an era of fruitful failure and flawed experimentation. May we all find the courage to try ideas that may not quite come off.

Tags:   Experimentation · Failure · Innovation · Risk5 Comments

Reggie Watts: Sasquatch (for Shoot The Player) from shoottheplayer.com on Vimeo.

Shoot The Player has created an incredible series of videos of Australian and international musicians performing live and in one take.

Between now and the end of the month, Sydney’s CarriageWorks is showcasing the work of Sydney based ‘cult DIY film project’ Shoot The Player. Amelia Tovey and Johnathan Wald have created an incredible series of videos of Australian and international musicians performing live, in one take, in public across Sydney and occasionally in other cities around the world.

Read the story over at the ABC arts site.

Tags:   ABC Arts · ABC Arts Gateway · Amelia Tovey · Johnathan Wald · Reggie Watts · Shoot The PlayerNo Comments.

Late last year the Federal Government announced that it intended to go ahead with one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in a long time. The Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy – presumably assuming Australia was distracted by Christmas and Copenhagen to notice – announced that an expensive, ineffective and intrusive filter will be installed on every Internet connection in the country.

It’s philosophically dubious and practically unworkable. It will leave artists and creative enterprises particularly vulnerable to its errors, complexities and abuses. It calls into the question the very idea of Australia as a culturally liberal western democracy that values open cultural exchange, free speech and freedom of expression. As commentators from left and right, from Australia and around the world have noted that it would put Australia in a select and dubious club whose members include China, Iran and Burma. I hope and expect that it will profoundly resisted by artists and the creative community.

In case you’ve not been following it, the problems with such a scheme are many. While a filter on the underside of the Internet may sound appealing to some but the reality will be a cultural and technological nightmare. Far from being a deterrent to terrorists and paedophiles – the government report into the technology freely admits they will have no problem getting around it – it is likely to instead be a giant pain in the arse to the rest of us.

At best the filter will prevent most Australians from viewing a relatively small number of web pages contained in a secret blacklist. The leaking of an earlier and error ridden version of the list ably demonstrated that any such list will be riddled with incompetency and fodder for endless allegations of political or ideological interference by current and future governments. It’s also way short of comprehensive: Google is indexing well over a trillion pages and growing exponentially so a manually compiled list will always be falling behind.

In the government’s trial, smart filtering software didn’t work particularly effectively either. The software managed the trifecta of slowing down the Internet (sometimes drastically), letting problematic pages slip through, and blocking many legitimate pages unintentionally (and without recourse) in the process. Also the technology is only effective for web pages and not chat rooms, peer-to-peer networks or any other current and future Internet applications where undesirables things may be lurking.

The misplaced faith of parents who trust their children to the “safe” Internet provided by such a scheme will be tabloid fodder for years to come.

All this is to say nothing of those trying to get around it.  A secure and encrypted internet connection to somewhere outside the country – a technology that corporate networks and IT professionals use every day – can bypass even the most repressive of filters entirely. Anyone who has spent any time in states with successful filters knows they don’t rely so much on technology as fear. Draconian laws that make it illegal to circumvent or discuss how to circumvent such systems are critical to their effectiveness.

For Australia as a cultural centre, if the response to last week’s announcement is anything to go by we risk becoming a laughing stock. If such a filter is enacted expect inconsistently applied rules, clumsily and mistakenly censored works and poor respect for freedom of expression to become a running joke in discussions of Australia around the world.

Artistic worth will likely remain a consideration in censorship. Effectively that means that Australia is about to embark on the bizarre project of empowering blacklisting bureaucrats to assess the artistic merit of hundreds of thousands of contentious web pages from around the world. If the Australia Council can be baffling imagine a small army of bureaucrats making judgements about what is and isn’t art and making it disappear from our internet connections accordingly.

Perversely the sheer absurdity of it means that “blocked in Australia” may well become a badge that many may wear with pride. Local and international artists will inevitably provocatively position their work at the fuzzy boundaries of political speech and censored expression under such a system. Expect the filter to spurn creative works ranging from the undergraduate and puerile to the nuanced and politically charged. The censorship of Australian arts and artists will be both tabloid fodder locally and a cause celebre for free speech advocates and the arts community internationally.

Lets hope it doesn’t come to that. I’d like to think that government has failed to consider the full ramifications of their approach. If the response online is anything to go by they’ve certainly underestimated the reaction to the policy. Australian artists could help by getting creative in opposing the legislation before they need to get creative to get around it.

Tags:   australia internet filtering · Internet censorship · internet fil · no clean feed · open internet · stephen conroy12 Comments

While i was off in Japan honeymooning in December there was a flurry of articles in the Newcastle press celebrating the 12 month anniversary of the Renew Newcastle scheme.

This one actually brought a little tear to my eye, from Amy Delore in the Newcastle Herald:

THIS is a column I was going to write this time last year.

What prompted me then to think about putting words to paper was an incident that occurred about 10am one weekday just before Christmas.

I had ducked out of work for 20 minutes to see my daughter’s kindergarten class have their photograph taken with Santa at David Jones in town. There was, as you can imagine, much squealing and frivolity as the children relayed their Christmas lists to a very patient Mr Claus, smiled and pulled faces at the camera and waved to parents.

Leaving this jolly scene to head back to work, my thoughts were consumed by the deterioration of the Hunter Street Mall. Someone had told me a few days earlier they had counted 20 empty shops and this seemed so unlikely I decided I’d count them myself as I walked to The Herald’s Bolton Street building.

I think I was about three-quarters of the way up the mall and up to about 12 or 13 in my count before an animated discussion about 15 metres ahead diverted my attention. A small group of people were speaking loudly and waving their arms around. At first I thought it was a bit of tomfoolery, until I heard the sickeningly unmistakable thud of a clenched fist meeting a cheekbone.

Alarmed, I looked up to see that a nasty fight had begun between two deadbeats in singlets and bare feet who, despite their rather pathetic physical presence, were throwing fists around with frightening force. To one side, a heavily tattooed woman connected to one or the other of them or perhaps both wailed, although whether it was in protest or encouragement I’m not sure.

There were no security guards in sight and no bystander seemed willing or able to break up the melee. So intimidated was I, that I decided to take refuge inside one of the few open shops.

It was then I remembered the kindergartens were soon to be heading this way after their Santa visit and I was horrified that a group of five- and six-year-olds might encounter this ugly scene.

Fortunately the fight dispersed before they arrived, but the whole incident well and truly ruined my mood for the morning.

I walked back to work fuming. Was it not enough that those who lived and worked around the mall had to put up daily with its parlous decay the depressingly empty shopfronts, the graffiti, the broken windows, the awful buskers and hawkers, the trouble-making loiterers without also having to be confronted by fistfights at 10 in the morning?

It was this new low in the mall’s escalating downward spiral that made me think then about writing a column beseeching somebody to do something about the blight and embarrassment the city’s CBD had become. Could there, I wondered, be a higher priority on the civic agenda than sorting out this mess?

I was going to point out that when I had started working at the top of town in the mid-1980s, it had been a privilege to work in the centre of the city’s bustling business and retail precinct, when there were too many shops to browse in even a week of lunch hours and the mall was abuzz with smartly dressed office workers and day shoppers. I intended to write about how I’d all but stopped going down the mall to buy lunch because walking through it made me feel like an extra in some B-grade movie about the Apocalypse.

I can’t remember why I didn’t get to writing that column but I’m glad now that I didn’t. Glad, because just one year later, there is a much more encouraging column to be written.

Around the same time those two neanderthals were slugging it out in the mall that morning, Marcus Westbury was taking delivery of keys to empty shopfronts in the mall, having convinced property owners in his quiet but purposeful way that leasing their spaces out to artists at peppercorn rents was better for all concerned than having a mall full of shops displaying nothing more than “For Lease” signs in their windows.

I walked down the mall again this week and the change in it since December 2008 is nothing short of outstanding. Some of the small galleries have evolved into viable retail shops, there’s a new tea room, and, in what must be the most encouraging sign of newfound confidence yet, mainstream retailers seem to be rediscovering the precinct. Three new shops all chain stores found in the suburban malls have opened in the past month or so and several existing tenants have shifted to larger premises and updated their shops.

It’s a small step in what is going to be a long haul to bring a semblance of Hunter Street’s past retail glory back to the area, but it’s important to see the slide has not only been arrested but turned around.

So thanks Marcus Westbury and your dedicated team at Renew Newcastle for having a crack, for acting without the motivation of financial or political gain and actually making a difference.

The original story is here.

There was also a fairly indulgent profile piece on me and “the miracle on Hunter street” around the same time.

Tags:   Hunter Street mall · Newcastle Herald · Renew Newcastle · Street violence in Newcastle · the miracle on Hunter Street · urban renewal2 Comments

[Note: I am catching up with posting bits and pieces of writing that have not yet been posted here. This was actually published in The Age last November - preempting the recent events at The Tote and The Arthouse. Umm, told you so?]

MELBOURNE does the small scale better than any other Australian city – or at least, up until now. A newly enlightened approach north of the border and an ever-tightening set of rules in Victoria mean that roles could be reversing very soon.

Urban Melbourne has long been a place of unique possibilities for artists, musicians, and creative people from the rest of Australia. The brain-drain of the young, enthusiastic and talented has worked dramatically in Victoria’s favour for quite some time now. Inevitably, one of the things that cultural refugees to Victoria cite is Melbourne’s impressive smallness. Melbourne does the little things in cultural life exceptionally well. Melbourne’s richness comes from the incredible critical mass of small-scale cultural communities, venues, and galleries that have a foothold in the city. It simply hasn’t been possible in other Australian cities.

As a festival director in Melbourne, you’re spoilt for choice. Organisers of festivals such as the Melbourne Fringe, Next Wave or the fashion festival are blessed with an abundance of bars, cafes, small venues and other spaces. They’ve long been cheap, flexible and easily available to suitable quality projects. In other cities, the challenge can be about finding any venues. In Melbourne, it’s long been about finding the right one from the many options available.

It’s been working so well that Sydney has cottoned on. NSW has pushed through major reforms of its licensing laws and the rules governing live performance that make it relatively easy to present live music and performance across the state. Sydney’s live music and entertainment scene is open to new players, and with any luck, in the near future, small-scale venues will emerge again.

At the very same time, Victoria is experiencing an unprecedented crackdown. In Melbourne it is getting harder to put on shows in the city. Victoria’s new liquor licensing Compliance Directorate has begun zealously cracking down on live music and performance. Armed with rules long on the books but rarely enforced, compliance officers are travelling Victoria putting small venues on notice. Under the rules, any entertainment involving “live or recorded amplified music other than background music” now comes with the requirement of two security guards for the first 100 people and one for every hundred on top of that. The costs of small-scale live entertainment could shoot through the roof.

The rules are broad enough to require two bouncers for almost anything involving a PA: every avant-garde theatre performance; every experimental noise music gig; every solo dance performance; or any other event at a licensed venue that is louder than “background music”. Hundreds, if not thousands, of events from fringe theatre shows to folk bands in beer gardens become uneconomical. Some of the best shows I’ve seen would breach it and yet were so small that two security guards would represent a significant proportion of the audience.

The reality is that most artists aren’t entrepreneurs. Most shows rarely make a lot of money. The question is more often one of “how much can we afford to lose?” not “how much will we make”. For bands, venues, and performance companies in that position, the obviously unnecessary cost of two security guards can be the difference between putting on a show and calling the whole thing off. Clearly the rules are intended to keep a check on antisocial behaviour but the cost burden for everyone who wants to play a fiddle, offer an open mic poetry slam or put on an interpretive dance performance to music in a beer garden verges on ridiculous.

Culturally it’s the wrong move at the wrong time and risks throwing away Melbourne’s hard-earned reputation for coolness and innovation. Recent developments in NSW are driven by the recognition that cities need more small venues and not fewer of them. As our cities have grown, in many ways our cultures have shrunk — a rich cultural life demands the possibility of being able to do many different things in viable small spaces.

Surely some reworking of the rules or discretion is in order?

The licensed venues that cause all the trouble are rarely if ever the places where this kind of small-scale activity takes place. A poorly managed crackdown risks making small venues untenable, small culture shrivel up, and in turn forcing more people to larger venues with louder music and more problems. Unthinkably and even more terrifyingly, it could force the next generation of creative minds north to Sydney.

Originally Published in The Age 30th November 2009.

Tags:   cultural policy · Liscensing Laws · Stupid Victorian Government · The Arthouse · The Tote · Victorian Liquor Liscensing4 Comments

I’ve been tyring to get my head around the results of the Federal Government’s internet filtering trial. Rather than undertake hours of laborious research off my own bat i decided to consult the resource that all people i know turn to when stuck with a technical question: my brother Stuart.

His assesment:

Here is a bit of background. The Enex report (which is fucking big) on the live trial explains that there were 3 technologies used by the participating ISP’s. Some in combination with each other.

Proxy server

The simplest solution. Just blocks web traffic based on a blacklist using a standard proxy (caching) server. This would work in small scenarios but is extremely simple to bypass unless they block other network traffic. They have not said that the proxy trial participant did this. I do this at work to block known malware sites based on a blacklist. In larger implementations this is just not feasible due to the massive amounts of data you would have to pass over these servers. It is not scalable and not suitable for ISPs the size of Telstra or Optus.

Pass by filtering

Not all traffic is inspected. This would need to be used for much larger implementations. Instead of funneling everything via the proxy, they maintain a list of IP addresses that are blocked using border gateway protocol (i wont go into that) on border routers. If you are attempting to access an IP address that is on the blacklist, your traffic is then funneled through a proxy server to filter it for the actual URL. You cannot just block an IP address for undesirable content. This is due to shared hosting environments that often have the same IP. Blocking the undesirable IP would potentially result in blocking harmless stuff on the same web host. This also just relies on a blacklist anyway. Again, there is no mention of blocking ports or protocols like bittorrent, P2P technologies, IM, VPN or anything else that could be used to transmit smut.

Pass through filtering

Pass through filtering is the scariest one. It performs DPI (Deep Packet Inspection). This one can identify undesirable content inside individual packets of data but it is also by far the most resource intensive to implement. It has the potential to inspect torrents, IM etc but will still be defeated by encrypted technologies live VPNs. Without the ability to decrypt, then inspect a VPN packet (making the “Private” in virtual private network redundant), the only way to stop it accessing nasty content is to block them all. The economic implications of this are huge. They just won’t do it.

Some other stuff

Of 37 circumvention tests performed against the filters. The successful block rate ranged from 8.1% (proxy / pass by) to a much higher 94.5% in the case of hybrid proxy / DPI methods. You can be assured that a) this method will not be implemented without the government subsidising banks of super computers and b) the circumvention that worked against it is the holy grail of defeating this thing. VPNs. It will also be capable of serious false positives.

Results

I looked mostly into Participant ISP #5’s results as it had the most success in blocking circumvention attempts – 94.5%. It also had by far the worst results in terms of performance degradation. I didn’t do any number crunching but the graphs show at least 50% in a lot of cases. This will not be implemented as the final solution. It would be insanity.

It’s also important to note that these tests are also ludicrously based on people getting access speeds of 8mbit (FTTN specifications) / sec in a trial that involved very small numbers of real clients. What happens when the NBN rolls out and is supposed to supply most of the nation with 100mbit connections? This whole thing will need massive reassessment.

Coming tomorrow: my brother on how your fourteen year old will be able to bypass the filter anyway.

Tags:   #nocleanfeed · australia internet filtering · Clean Feed · internet fltering · isp trial · stephen conroy · stuart westbury4 Comments

Some tips on how to start a Renew Newcastle type project in vacant buildings in your own cities and towns from my ABC Arts blog.

Tags: 2 Comments

LYNDON Terracini has been outspoken and surprisingly frank about the limitations of Australia’s major performing arts companies in recent weeks. The incoming Opera Australia artistic director has slammed Australia’s orchestras and opera companies as “conservative and predictable,” admitted that Melbourne has been poorly served by Opera Australia from Sydney and, most notably, has drawn attention to the narrowness of Opera Australia’s audience base.

It’s all reasonable and reasonably obvious. Yet the discussion he has generated implied that what he is saying is somehow insightful or unexpected. If anything Terracini’s admissions actually fall well short of the mark and remind us that Australia is long overdue for a serious discussion about cultural priorities. While his snapshot of the situation is accurate, he too quickly explains the problem away as one of the potential audiences’ ignorance and not of the companies’ growing irrelevance.

Undoubtedly Terracini, like all passionate people, believes in what he is doing. He argues that while people have a “prejudice about coming to opera” he is confident that “once they come, you can bet they will adore it.” This may be true in some cases but the convenient illusion that there is a great army of potential opera fans simply awaiting conversion is unrealistic. It is yet another in a long line of arguments that it is the failure of education, knowledge, marketing or some other external factor is behind the ageing demographics and the relative decline in interest in the major performing arts.

The reality is that Australia is changing and our cultural needs and priorities are changing with it. As Terracini points out, the ethnic diversity in the major performing arts audiences lags well behind that in smaller companies and across most other artforms. He points out that Opera Australia has failed to reach such places as Western Sydney and indigenous people are underrepresented as audiences or performers.

Yet looking at this as failure of audience outreach misses the point. It ignores the growing cultural diversity of Australia in the broadest sense — of practitioners, of artforms, of audiences, of influences, of traditions and opportunities for cultural expression. Despite the oft-repeated stereotype that arts funding favours the marginal and multicultural, the Australia Council’s entire Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts board has less than a quarter of Opera Australia’s funding. Yet indigenous artists in music, literature and the visual arts have achieved much more in provoking, nurturing and promoting a distinctive Australian culture at home and around the world than a dozen Opera Australia’s ever will.

Criticising opera companies for catering to audiences that are overwhelmingly white, affluent and drawn from the corporate social set is like criticising athletes for their athleticism. It has long been opera’s unique strength that it is the subculture of the elite and influential. Opera Australia is the single-best-funded company in Australia by a long margin. It receives levels of government support well out of proportion to its audience numbers, its cultural relevance or its creative influence. In 2007-08, Opera Australia and the associated Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra received $17.5 million of Australia Council funding. By comparison, the Australia Council’s highly competitive funds for literature, music, theatre and visual arts between them had a combined budget of $21.8 million spread over 916 separate projects, organisations and individuals.

Opera Australia receives the equivalent of half the total allocation for competitive funding for all Australia Council artform boards.

It is admirable and urgent that Terracini reaches out to every last potential convert.

It is impossible to imagine a future in which Opera Australia survives without diversifying its audience — but in a serious sense it is the wrong question. Rather than ask how to make the Australian community more interested in opera, we should perhaps ask the unaskable about the cultural traditions Australians actually value and how we might best support and resource them.

For too long Australia’s major performing arts companies have treated the lack of a diverse audience for their work as an audience development problem and not a cultural shift. By framing it as a failure of marketing, they’ve even successfully leveraged even more resources and greater subsidies as a means of rectifying it. This can’t continue.

Terracini’s will ultimately be measured against his ambitions — i fear we will be saying the exact same thing at the end of his tenure. But the need for diversification is desperate otherwise the consequences for Opera Australia are unimaginable:  not that opera will die but that it will find itself back in the competitive, scrappy, under resourced funding process that other Australian artists and artforms take for granted.

Tags:   Aboriginal and torres straight islander arts board · arts education · Arts Funding · Audience development · australia council · Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra · competitive arts funding · cultural policy · literature board · Major performing Arts · music board · Opera Australia · theatre board · visual arts board6 Comments

National Museum of Australia

WHAT HAPPENS when the Federal Government puts a call out to the public to make suggestions about a cultural policy? After a few hours of reviewing some of the submissions, it would be fair to say that the quality and usefulness of the submissions so far have been decidedly mixed.

Despite its rather wonkish description, a national cultural policy may be the most significant development in arts and culture in Australia for a long time. While governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on the arts and billions more on other activities that generate Australian culture, Australia hasn’t had anything like a cultural policy since the Keating Creative Nation era.

Why do we even need a cultural policy? There is a legitimate argument that government should butt out of culture entirely. But for those who support or accept the idea that governments fund and regulate the arts, it is difficult to argue that they should do so without a policy.

If you hold the view — as I do — that the structure doesn’t work particularly well, an eternal frustration is the lack of a stated explanation of what we should be trying to do.

Without a cultural policy, Australian Government funding, regulation and activity in the arts can be hopelessly ad hoc. Cultural agencies such as the Australia Council, Screen Australia and even schools, universities and the ABC are often acting without a larger framework or co-ordination. They are often doing so without broader objectives. Arts funding, policy and support can easily degenerate into a set of big fiefdoms and an even larger set of gaps.

To his credit, Federal Arts Minister Peter Garrett has recognised that a policy is required. He kicked off the consultation process with a speech at the National Press Club and has put forward discussion points, asked for submissions and created a web forum where the public beyond the usual suspects can post ideas.

While the usual processes — including some that I’m involved in — will take place behind closed doors, the Government has also gone directly to the public through a website and asked three main questions: “What positive steps would you like to see to advance Australian culture?”; “What do you think should be priorities for a national cultural policy?”; and “What other issues do you think are important?”

The responses show that if you call for submissions from everyone, you will get gems, but you’ll have to hunt for them.

There are more than 100 submissions and suggestions ranging from the practical to the promising to the practically insane.

The comments are dominated by artists working outside the mainstream-funded arts. There are many complaints that the model is now too Sydney-centric, top-heavy and a little out of touch with contemporary culture. There are plenty of suggestions, although they often seem a little self-interested.

There’s also more than a little misinformation. A proposal to establish artist residencies in regional areas has been explained by some bright spark who says residency “is handled by the Immigration Department” and that artists should take it up “the old-fashioned way, by waiting in line”.

Someone else, undeterred by the fact that this isn’t Sweden and noting the role played by Nobel prizes in promoting the sciences, has asked “Why is there not similar recognition (or a comparable prize?) for our artists, poets, writers, designers, [and] musicians.” OK. Perhaps we could start with literature and poetry, and call it the Patrick White award?

There is a great passion for the arts in the comments, but not much background or context. Many people love the arts but aren’t very aware of how it works.

Providing a little more fact-checking, some figures, and some context about the history of federal arts policy would go a long way to focus the debate — as would providing some explanation of the priorities, and options for future ones.

Still, if you have an opinion or even an observation, this is the best opportunity in a long time to put it out there.

The process of engaging people is worth the obvious pitfalls. Of course, the ultimate test is not about what goes into the process but about what comes out. For that, we must all wait and see.

Originally published in The Age.You can read a detailed history of arts funding in Australia here or join the discussion here.

Tags:   ABC · Arts Funding · australia council · Creative Nation · crowdsourcing · National Cultural Policy · nobel prize · patrick white · Peter Garrett · Rudd Government · screen australia3 Comments

In response to some recent posts and articles of mine about arts funding and cultural policy,  Nick Herd from the Australia Council pointed me to this comprehensive history of arts policy in Australia prepared by the Parliamentary Library. It’s very useful background reading for anyone thinking of putting in a submission to the National Cultural Policy process which is underway at the moment.

The history does tend to emphasise that cultural policy has long been bound up with the needs of the major performing arts. As i’ve argued elsewhere we need to look at cultural policy in the context of contemporary culture and not merely of the historical arts. This background provides a useful history to put that context in.

Anyhow, worth a look if you’re an arts policy wonk or aspiring to be one.

Tags:   Arts Funding · Arts Policy · australia council · cultural policy · National Cultural Policy · parliamentary libraryNo Comments.