Comments on: Where Australia’s Arts funding goes

By: john walker

john walker — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:25:51 +0000

Tim the sort of German taxes that you refer to are called hypothecated taxes , and in Australia such things are constitutionally and legislatively not on.

And the generaly very high levels of funded government intervention in ‘culture’ that were common in the EU are over, they are broke.

By: Tim Austin

Tim Austin — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:48:30 +0000

With pokies almost killing off the smaller venues in the live music industry for musicians, it would be good to see government offer more funding either in direct support to musicians in an improved grant scheme or by forming a “supergoverning body” (with funding) with a makeup of the already existing (potential) organisations like ABC, Ausmusic, Amcos, Apra etc, that are dedicated to relevant contemporary Art Forms & support industries (selected by this new panel).

They would also co-ordinate & utilize the hundreds of council/state & national venues (Scout halls, Town Halls, Civic Centres, Regional Arts Centres) and coordinate realworld training & employment in these & other venues. Festivals could also be co-ordinated in this “arts” initiative and would also receive funding. Assist in improving the contemporary live scene so there is a career path for musicians, technicians, and the mirade of support industries.

Better utilise all the current assets & potential venues around the country and make Australian Contemporary Music an industry the government support nationally & internationally. They do and have since the seventies received a lot of income from it. There is a need for a co-ordinated approach. I would expect people like Gadinski, Chugg, Harry M Miller, Steve Pav and other relevant business people with a proven track record to champion the cause.

Training providers would also be involved as they could start to actually place students in jobs.

The WEB/NBN future presents exciting opportunities for many contemporary art genres. Music, Video, Film, Web based productions etc. and will connect this country even more (if you’re not happy with current connection technology)

One of the fantastic things that will happen out of that is more people will make a living out of the industry.

Many are passionate about it and have spent years of their time and their money incurring large HECS fees and business costs striving to achieve this outcome. It is a job creation sector just waiting to be tapped.

By: Tim Austin

Tim Austin — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:39:54 +0000

I was present at your illuminating presentation of the facts around funding during your Festival of Dangerous Ideas session. Having been lucky enough myself to have worked in the arts for the last 25 years across many genres of live entertainment as a sound engineer. It reinforced my belief that the focus on contemporary music is barely supported by the various funding bodies in Australia. Indeed “pop culture” through the 80′s, 90′s, naughties, and the current crop of artists have had to rely on private enterprise for survival & promotion. When poker machines came along it almost killed off a whole “circuit of venues” that this business relied on and in so doing ended a lot of opportunity for budding musicians. When I consider the various taxes raised by the Government directly related to the music business it is plain to see how much unbalance there is. Where the government could step in would be to build performing arts buildings that cater specifically for this genre of music. This would help all the people who are trying to make a living in this business. Just my 2c

By: arts interview: Penelope Benton « arts interview

arts interview: Penelope Benton « arts interview — Sun, 01 May 2011 22:10:59 +0000

[...] Where Australian arts funding goes [...]

By: john

john — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 23:49:19 +0000

Marcus

The OZCO peer review board world is very skewed towards career academics and it has a lot of influence over the awarding of ARC grants. These ARC grants are in monetary terms often very large. Being ‘research grants’ they are not accounted for as funding of the arts sector.
The following is a SMH report of a bizarre piece of contemporary arts kitsch that received 1 million dollars in ARC ‘research’ funding.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/fritzl-dungeon-inspires-confronting-festival-work-20110221-1b2iz.html

1 million dollars is equivalent to about 25% of The OZCOS total, publicly declared, direct Visual arts funding.

Suggest that the funded contemporary arts sector makes the funding of opera look both uncontroversial and properly accounted for . The reason everybody talks about the opera is because nobody knows what is really going down.

By: john walker

john walker — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 02:53:41 +0000

In june 08 NAVA was publicly sacked from the indigenous code of conduct by the cultural minsters council and Mr Garret.
NAVAs version of this event was that- “NAVA agreed to license the completion of the code of conduct to the Australia council” .

I have just obtained a copy of NAVAs 09 year fin statement.
NAVA had a gross income of $720k.
$530 was in the form direct payments from the Australia council, an increase of about 40 thou on the previous year.
Only 97 thousand of its total income was in the form of member contributions = %13 of its total income.
Its member contributions have actually declined %25 (from about 120 thou) in the past 5 years and are actually less than member contributions were worth ten years ago.

The management of the funded arts sector is ;Answerable to no one.

By: john walker

john walker — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:29:25 +0000

Marcus
The way spending is ‘reported’ is a big issue , under the bonnet of the OZCO (& other funded Organisations) field.
We just came across a very small( $1 thou) 2 week funded ‘artist residency’ , that actually is a two week job for somebody to provide advice and consult services to the management of the program. This sort of thing is more common than it should be.
Payments to Management costs & payments to ‘art’ are often confused in the same entry in the book keeping of the funded field.

The OZCO is paid a lot to: manage the distribution of public funds to ‘art’ . Often what OZCO actually dos is pass this money(minus the OZCOs management ‘fee’) onto another management body to distribute. The total management costs of the funded field are much higher than reported.

The public Gallery System is seriously under funded , without private philanthropy & donations , most would have no collection budgets at all.

Without the self starting initiative of people like your self et all ,there would be bugger all happening.

When I was young people like Mollison had the budgets (and a genuine interest in the new) to be able to turn up in lots of then alternative new ‘spaces’ and buy; Pay young artists some money for the labour of making ‘art’, they then could then go and make some more stuff.
The technologies mediums ect change but ‘art takes time to make , every body needs to be able to at the least buy the time, no?

By: Mike Mullins: THE POLITICS OF CHANGE « 5TH WALL

Mike Mullins: THE POLITICS OF CHANGE « 5TH WALL — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:51:19 +0000

[...] now through forums like facebook and Peter Garrett’s recent National Cultural Policy website. Marcus Westbury’s been not-so-quietly questioning our cultural priorities for a while now, but many of the current [...]

By: john

john — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:18:33 +0000

The comments above should really have gone under

Crowdsourcing a cultural policy? –Meee culpa

By: john

john — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:25:42 +0000

just a wee bit more,
a scheme where the money invested in it is the scheme’s only income is a Ponzi scheme.
Any art scheme where people are effectively paid to be the audience supplying support /income to the scheme is as unsustainable as any other sort of ponzi scheme