I guess we are starting off from two different assumptions. Your assumption – and correct me if i am wrong – appears to be that the existing suite of arts organisations is the appropriate and adequate mix for the future needs of Australian arts and culture. My assumption is that we need to vary the mix over time and that we do not have an adequate and fair process that allows us to do that.

In the context of your assumption, the points you make are valid and make perfect sense. However, in writing this piece i was arguing against that assumption and not within it. You don’t really seem to have responded to that intention — and perhaps it wasn’t clear from the original piece.

I guess my question is why you take that view? My experience is formed largelyy by seeing the huge number of projects and initiatives that get nipped in the bud because funding and policy structures are preoccupied with the demands of the already funded. Perhaps i’ve just worked too many day jobs to fund too many projects to take the funding disparity without questioning it and the assumptions behind it.

As for artistic directors quietly admitting that their project is past it’s use-by, what sort of artistic director can afford to squander their funding and reputation by hanging around attached to a project to which they are not committed? Arts funding in Australia is simply not comfortable nor secure enough to allow such complacency.

Yes, some arts funding is paralysed in Australia – being subject to efficiency dividends, it does not grow at the same rate as inflation. So each year the real worth of a renewing grant diminishes, with the idea that this is good encouragement for arts organisations to make up the accumulating shortfall themselves. It’s not much of a reward for artists. Arts organisations can therefore either reduce expenditure, or increase income through fundraising and/or selling more at the box office.

If a company wanted simply to keep doing what it’s doing, ie putting on four operas a year, or six dance performances, or five exhibitions, they must either eventually reduce the scope of their output so it costs less, put on cash-cow shows that will earn them money, or start going after the corporate or private dollar. And fundraising isn’t free to do – eventually it becomes necessary to employ marketing and sponsorship people, who instantly must raise more income than they cost, in order to boost the net position of the company. The original arts project has now transformed into an arts and fundraising organisation, which spends a larger portion of its grant on administration than before – a situation created primarily by a lack of cash in the first place. It’s usually about this stage when the funding body starts asking questions about the changed spend ratio of artistic to administrative costs, and for precise detail about philanthropic activity, and it’s effectiveness.

In the case of the Australian National Academy of Music, the outcry was indeed vocal, but not small in terms of the arts community. Some 15,000 supporters throughout the country and overseas voiced their concern for an arts minister who ignorantly, incorrectly and publicly labelled the ANAM inefficient and ineffective. Luckily, the ANAM had the energy, commitment and drive of it’s exceptional artistic director and general manager to undertake the critical transformation and self-reinvention that was required to regain the confidence of the government and, consequently, its funding.

Arts funding in Australia is indeed perilously scarce, and of course the largest chunks of it are directed into the largest established activities – Opera Australia, the Australian Ballet and the Sydney Symphony come to mind. These companies have the largest marketing and fundraising departments in the country: 20 at the Opera, 31 at the Ballet, and 24 at Sydney Symphony. If there wasn’t the pressure to self-generate revenue, one wonders how different these companies would be. One also wonders what would happen to the money saved in wages expense for these 75 people.

Maybe instead of making arts organisations easier to dismantle, creativity in this country could be better nurtured through better access to adequate funding. Easing the pathway to artistic production should be smoother, not more fraught. Maybe then there’d be fewer marketing and fundraising people to unbalance arts organisations, and a better opportunity for artists to concentrate on communicating their vision to a country that clearly needs it.