I’ve been meaning to write a long essay about this for a while but stumbled at figuring out exactly who would publish it. So brain dump follows…

One of the things that my friend, collaborator, enabler, and founding Renew Newcastle board member Craig Allchin has pointed out to me many times is that is that i used to be a festival director. For the first few times he said it i thought it no more or less significant than the fact i made TV shows for a bit or that once worked midnight to dawn in a service station – it gave me some useful skills but it was not particularly or directly relevant to why or how i was going about doing a project like Renew Newcastle.

Eventually Craig had said it so often that it clicked with me that to him it implied something reasonably significant. Indeed to Craig the fact that both myself and Renew Newcastle’s General Manager Marni Jackson had cut our teeth on organising and facilitating festivals and events (we’ve both served a stint as the honcho of Newcastle’s This Is Not Art Festival) was a far more significant feature of the project – which is ostensibly about urban renewal and place revitalisation – than either of us thought it was.

I’m slow. It has only slowly sunk in for me that he was actually on to something. It only recently dawned on me (particularly as i think about Renew Australia and how we might replicate the Renew Newcastle project elsewhere) that our background – or more specifically the assumptions it meant we both started with – may well be as significant to the whole thing as all the legal work we’ve done, the clever financial and insurance tweaks we’ve developed , the processes we’ve created and the lessons that we have learned along the way.

Through the Renew Newcastle project I have intersected with people from different fields – academia, local government, urban planning, architecture, community development – and attempted to explain the conceptual framework behind Renew Newcastle, I’ve often walked away with a slight sense of frustration. They see it but they don’t entirely get it.

I’ve often found myself evoking what i now discover is Maslow’s Law of the instrument or as i had always more crudely understood it “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” to explain what we’ve been grappling with in those encounters. With a few notable exceptions each and every professional i crossed paths with saw the problem – Newcastle’s 150 empty buildings or the decline in their own towns or centres – as being exactly like the ones they have been trained to identify from their discipline and were attempting to apply the tools of their discipline to solving it.

Craig himself can see well beyond it but as an architect and urban planner, he is no doubt used to meeting with people who want to build things and plan where they will be built. His clients and the agencies they work with see things in very fixed terms. They see things in light of development, of capital, of height and planning restrictions, return on investment, design and umm…  whatever else it is that ambitious and entrepreneurial people with more money than me deal with when they are planning on building stuff.

I suspect that’s the way that many see the problem. From the Newcastle media it’s certainly a dominant paradigm within the city as it is in most cities when questions of development and why the city is falling apart arise. The failure of the city to attract jobs, investors, developers and capital is the one and only definition of the problem. In turn in Newcastle as in most towns the debate starts from that assumption then continues down the path of whose fault that is, what can be done about it, who to blame, who should do something about it and who to blame in some kind of continuously recurring feedback loop of negativity and recrimination.

In local government – and government at all levels – you encounter similar issues.

Councils are complex beasts and mindsets can often tend to be segregated by their internal divisions. At the engineering end plenty of people certainly reduce the issue to the definition above and reduce the question to attracting capital, development and jobs but then there are variations. Engineers who are tasked with the addressing the problem of Renewing the city will generally see a series of fixed infrastructure problems. The footpaths need resurfacing, roads need widening, traffic needs speeding up/ calming down, ways to encourage/discourage more cars and/or cycling and/or pedestrian circulation.

In Newcastle i dread to think how many millions have been spent on schemes to change the footpaths, the pavers, the bunting, the street signs, the street furniture and the public toilets in the hope and or expectation that improving the physical appearance of the public realm will make 150 empty shops and buildings suddenly active again or bring an influx of new capital. It might help but that’s not the core issue.

The arts for their part is often no better. To a museum or gallery director there are many examples both real and perceived where gleaming galleries and museums have been catalysts for transformation of precincts, cities and towns. Plans are drawn up for grand infrastructure that may (or may not) spur cultural tourism led revivals or attract the right demographic to a particular part of town. Inevitably it follows that they devise ambitious plans and make a passionate case for the investment in state of the art facilities and iconic imagineering. Again, it might help and sometimes does.

At the warm fuzzy community end more grass roots cultural planners see nails too when they reduce the problem to a lack of public art, interesting community programs, live events, or anything else that might be their role. They seek to devise and initiate such programs and projects and seek funding to hire the artists and artsworkers to implement them. Obviously i’m not going to criticise the value of that – but it comes with limitations – short term projects are costly and starting from the top down in deciding what needs to be done is not the most efficient or effective way to go about it a lot of the time.

There’s actually nothing wrong with any of the above approaches. Each has its place. Executed well, each of them has the potential to contribute significantly to a process of rejuvenation. It is exciting to imagine a city – in this case Newcastle – with the new widened footpaths, the beautiful public art, the gleaming museums and the clever integrated transport plans and to think of the quality designed sympathetic investment such a mix could and should attract. Such visions have the power to animate and inspire.

They are beautiful and simple but all too often deceptively and seductively so. They fail, or simply evaporate into process more than they succeed. Often they are fiercely contested and debated. They struggle to survive the pendulum shifts of political fortune or simply peter out once their champions and advocates move elsewhere. They also often fail and they are often expensive to fail at – a lot of money can be spent on them never happening.

That’s what it’s like when you’ve got a hammer – all you can do is attack the problem by buildings and belting shinier newer louder nails and often we simply hit our own thumbs.

So what’s different about looking at the city as festival directors? Certainly not that we’re imune to the hammer/nail problem. We too see nails and we too have hammers but the ones we see are very different. The city we live in is full of people who want to make things happen – who are enthusiastic and keen and not waiting around to paid or cajoled into doing something. They are desperate and keen and simply want someone to remove the barriers that thwart or discourage them. When you’ve spent your life time dealing with passionate creative people busting for the slightest possibility the idea that you need to build anything much or even spend very much to encourage them seems self evidently absurd.

Every project i’ve ever worked on has had a surplus of talented motivated people looking for opportunities and a deficit of opportunities, spaces, places in which to do them. It’s not about money. It’s not about certainty. It’s about opportunity for experimentation – a shot at success that simply lowers the price of failure to one they can afford. They too may fail, but they fail cheap and often and quickly learn enough to try again.

To put it simply, the world I live in is full of “initiativists” – yes i made that word up but i’m going to keep using it for about as long as it takes for others to start using it too. From where i sit empty spaces look like wasted opportunities. They look like opportunities to experiment and incubate because I know or know how to find people that would and could use each and every one of them. We’ve found more than 60 of them in Newcastle and are still sitting on proposals from hundreds more. Such people won’t arrive with fully formed solutions but they will, if there are enough of them keep trying things until they stumble upon things that work.

Nothing from my world requires much in the way of permanent infrastructure – you build and unbuild it as needed. You adapt what’s available to your needs. The fact that everything is short term and lacks security doesn’t seem like a problem when everything you’ve ever done has been shorter and even less secure.

Nor are any of the obvious hard infrastructure complaints really all that big a deal. Most festivals don’t place things on street corners hoping for passing trade, they seed interesting things everywhere entirely confident that if you do so and the work is good enough that people will seek it out. You don’t look at a park as site for a gig and judge its suitability by how many people are there – you bring the people to the place with the activity. You curate, select, and connect. You do not expect everything to succeed or everything to appeal to everyone – you aim to create a critical mass of cross-pollination and to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. You see the value in the careful selection of co-located things, of mixing the commercial with the irrational, or cross polinating demographics and audiences by arranging interesting things in time and space.

Over the next six or so month i will be attempting to scale up from Renew Newcastle and trying to create Renew Australia. I’ll also be comparing notes with people with similar interests and problems in the USA and other parts of the world. As i think about how to seed these ideas elsewhere the hard part isn’t the legal agreements, the technicalities or even the convincing people to give us their properties or to take up the uncertain opportunities that the Renew Newcastle model inherently provides.

The hard part is actually the mindset. For the many communities, councils and others it’s going to be the challenge of seeing the city like a festival. For us – and me in particular – it’s also going to be the challenge of stepping back enough from my own ideas and obsessions to recognise when the the problem is and isn’t a nail.

This is published under Creative Commons. You can reprint some or all of it if you want providing you read the license bit. Alternately, feel free to contact me if you want me to elaborate on these themes elsewhere.

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.

I’ve been using the word “initiativist” recently to define my philosophical approach to culture. I used the term in my lecture in Newcastle the other night and attempted to sneak it into my column in The Age this week but it was removed by an overzealous sub-editor probably on account of it not being a real word.

A key line was changed by an  from “I am an initiativist and not a bureaucrat” to “I am an initiator not a bureaucrat” which made it sound like i was referring to my own work rather than a philosophy or approach. I’m sure the last thing the world needs is another “ism” but if I’m ever going to get away with using it in the paper i will probably need to have a go at defining it.

So what do i mean when i call myself an “initiativist”?

To me initiativism is a loose term to describe an alternate approach to the centralism and bureaucracy that is default position in current cultural policy. It’s based on my firm belief that culture actually comes from the initiative of the many and not from or through the institutions of the few.

I’ve argued recently in this Meanjin essay and several other places that most cultural policy (in Australia at least) has become about supporting institutions and large scale companies rather than facilitating initiative, experimentation and enterprise at the small scale. Indeed, many aspects of cultural, economic and social policy actively discourage activity at the small scale.

If you believe as i do that culture comes from the initiative of the many, then it logically follows that a key role of cultural policy, arts funding and cultural agencies should be facilitating and encouraging initiative. It is not a particularly radical idea but it’s one i’ve rarely seen practiced. Usually, policy is about creating limited scarce opportunities and attempting to select likely winners to occupy them.

Initiativism is about tilting the policy thinking away from centralized, administratively heavy, and capital dependant approaches and towards ensuring that personal, community, and small scale creative initiative is viable and that there are many entry points and opportunities for exploration and expansion as possible. It is not about creating or administering outcomes but instead about creating opportunities and efficient processes for cultural creation, production, and distribution to take root.

This approach of facilitating diverse opportunities and lowering barriers to entry is central to the success of the Renew Newcastle project and has informed the thinking behind most of the festivals, projects and events that i have been involved in such as This Is Not Art, Next Wave and Free Play.

Ultimately it is about a cultural policy approach that begins with thinking about the  viability of initiative at the smaller scale and that accumulates a cultural richness from a fertile ground of viable small scale things. As i’ve noted before, the viability of small scale initiative has been under assault from both the public and private sectors for a long time.

Thinking in terms of initiative is not an extension of straight industry paradigm in the arts, it is actually an inclusive alternative. It recognises that arts and many creative enterprises often don’t and often shouldn’t behave like an industry but equally that they arts don’t behave like public sector agencies either. It is about promoting the long tail of activity and innovation.

It is about creating a diversity of opportunity for enterprises, community and creation but not about trying to force them into a business model. It recognises that creative people don’t always have money and that their motivations are rarely exclusively (or even particularly) financial. Yet in the absence of capital, there are real economic and structural barriers to both their entry and to their ultimate success on both artistic and economic terms.

Perhaps there’s a better word for it but “initiativist” is the best i’ve got.

I’m wondering if any designers have any observations or comments about the changing role and perception of design? Particularly interested in the critical culture around design — which in some ways i find more grounded and diverse than that around art at times. I’m generally interested to hear from designers who have any strong views about the ethics, sustainability and role of their profession.

Designers, what do you reckon?

I’m working up an idea for a new TV series at the moment about censorship. Still early days but i’m keen to connect up the current debates about censorshop — particularly the proposal for a national internet filter and sedition laws — with the history of cultural censorship in Australia.

I’m not planning on doing a tits and arse story or something with gratuitous shock value. I want to to explain and explore why, how and who Australia censors. I’m someone who has explored the topic for a while i’m still not entirely clear as to the precise process and raitonale for censorship in Australia. Makes me think it’s ripe terrain for a new series.

I also think it’s one of those areas where there is a great potential to connect up common threads from the theatre and visual arts with the mass media and with current events — which always appeals to me. It seems that nothing gets are from the ghetto of the arts section and onto the news pages quicker than a censorship related scandal or story.

I’m also interested in the tales of people who have been censored or have been at the centre of censorship scandals. I’ve got my head around the last decade or two but i’m interested in hearing from people with a bit of historical perspective or with suggestions for interesting tales.

Some artists clearly court censorship by pushing boundaries and adds to their notierity and boosts their careers. While in other cases (the famous Eugene Goosens saga springs to mind) an encounter with censored material — or even calls for censorship — can be enough to ruin someone’s career or forever marginalise someone.

At this stage, i’m bouncing concepts and ideas around before sitting down to sketch out how a series might work. I’d actively looking for examples and observations — interesting tales and stories — that might be good fodder for the show.

What do you think? Any ideas?

Last night i inadvertently stumbled across a googlewhack. Well sort of – i actually entered a single made-up word and it came back with one result. Technically, a googlewhack is meant to be when you enter two words into a search engine and come up with only one result. Obviously in the age of billions of pages being searched finding any word or combination of words that have only been mentioned once is exceedingly rare.

Last night i entered a single word: feminismismism (long story – you had to be there) into google and come up with this single result. No, i have no idea what it’s about or why it comes up either. Then again feminismismism isn’t technically an actual word so i can hardly complain when google brings up nonsense.

So why is the googlewhack dead? If you’ve run the search already you would know. Because i was excited, i stupidly posted my discovery via twitter. As of this morning, the term now has three entries courtesy of my tweet. One of them even included my friend Dave Sag warning me that i’d fucked it by posting it.

It makes it pretty tricky to share a googlewhack. I am declaring the googlewhack dead by social media and I am laying the blame sqaurely at twitter — and feminismismism.

I’ve got a few in mind from my own experiences.

Obviously the experience of the Renew Newcastle project is an example of where setting up a scheme to activate a dormant resource costs very little and can achieve a hell of a lot. Governments should certainly be thinking in this kind of way more.

What about all the dormant government resources out there? Unused land, government sites, etc? There’s a lot wasted resources that could be activated with little cost if there was the right mindset.

On top of that i’ve got regulatory reform in areas like tax, OH+S, copyright, etc etc.  Not about making these things free but about making them easier. I have a long held theory that because artists earn or expect to earn much less from their works then higher costs effect them much more than they do businesses who make a large profit.

What elso have you got? Rules that could be changed to simplify things? Suggestions please!

I am conducting a little experiment over at Facebook. I’m trying to work out whether it is possible to somehow round up all those people who don’t quite fit the “Art” boxes and as a result never get a seat at the table. My theory is that a relatively small number of highly centralised and well resourced organisations get a disproportionate say in what happens cultural policy wise because they organised and visible.

From the blurb on Facebook:

Is Australia’s cultural policy is stuck in a time warp? In 2009 more than half of the Australia Council’s total arts funding (and an awful lot of its attention) still goes to symphony orchestras and operas.

This group is a forum for everyone else!

Whether you’re a designer, musician, film and video maker, blogger, artist, writer, performer, programmer, animator, craftsperson, photographer, or whatever- if you are creating something then this is a chance to show you exist and put your issues on the table.

Please join, get your friends to join, and demonstrate how many of you there are!

I am participating in several different arts/cultural policy development processes at the moment at both a state and national level.

It has become really obvious through those processes that the voices being heard in most arts and cultural policy discussions and debates tend to be those from a relatively small number of relatively well resourced organisations. Often they seem (to me at least) really quite out of touch with issues that most creators are facing.

The “Creating Australia” group is an experiment. The aim is to bring together a wide range of people who are “Creating Australia” as possible. They are people with a lot in common but no common voice or forum. The aim is to put their issues somewhere they can be acknowledged.

No, this group is not set up to whinge about funding or money. It’s open to ideas for smart funding strategies but we’d also like to see all the other issues that creators are facing and how they might be addressed come to the top.

Off the top of my head:

* Do you find that you often don’t quite fit the old artform definitions/ funding boxes/ organisational guidelienes?
* Do you spend more time administering than creating?
* How does copyright law in it’s current form help protect you or does it hinder your creativity?
* How hard is it to access the spaces you need?
* Does government provide or build the right kind of spaces/infrastruture for what you do?
* Do the rules and regulations that govern what you do make sense? How would you change them?
* How do you deal with the tax/ social security system?
* What policy settings could you change that would make it easier to do what you do?
* Are your audiences still in Australia or around the world?
* Has anyone ever sought your opinion on this stuff before?
* Is this a totally dumb set of questions?

The aim of this group is to demonstrate that Australia’s Creative community doesn’t just work in arts centres and for major organisations and to collect the ideas and input of people who don’t.

It’s an attempt to see if online networks can counteract the strong voices that centralised organisations tend always have in policy priority debates.

There won’t be a lot of spam. Please feel free just to show your support by joining even if you aren’t really looking to take part in the discussion. Allternately, feel free to get on the forums and let us know what you think.

Join the group if you are interested. Or let me know what you think.

My musing from friday about recessions and their cultural consequences has been picked up in a few places. It’s been republished both in today’s Crikey and over at Larvatus Prodeo. Further to that post, I’ve been thinking a little more about the implications of the global financial crisis on our cities and our cultural life…

The decline of manufacturing created a whole new aesthetic and required the reinvention of a whole range of places and spaces. Think how rare it is to see the word “warehouse” actually refer to a warehouse and not bundled with real estate speak like “funky” or “apartment” or “loft” or “studios”? Remember when warehouses were spaces where people made and distributed things?

Warehouses were infrastructure built for something that we don’t do very much of anymore. They ultimately became redudant and cheap and surplus. Then they were reluctantly reinvented with a new life and a new meaning.

The biggest industries around which our city centres are built today has nothing to do with factories and warehouses – it’s finance. A quick look at the signs on the buildings in any CBD reveals an abundance of banks, brokers, investment houses, and their associated entities.

Think for a second about what a sharp contraction in the finance sector could mean for our cities.

“Financial crisis” may or may not mean financial oblivion – after all the “death of manufacturing” in the west didn’t quite mean “death” so much as “partial, slow, sporadic, and often catastrophic decline.” The current pattern that dominates our cities is very much subject to change just now. Finance is the dominant force in almost every CBD. It wouldn’t take a huge number of layoffs, mergers, downsizings and contractions to punch some pretty large holes in our urban fabric.

Not all that long ago that warehouses were considered most unlikely places in which to create or live. Today developers and real estate agents are so intent on building and badging warehouses that the phrase has become the worst kind of chic lifestyle cliche. An entire generation has almost forgotten the original meaning.

What might that mean for our cities from here? Cubicle galleries? Trading room apartments? Executive experimental performance suites? Board room bars? Anyone?

The best (and most daunting thing) about the brief is that it is not defined by artform. It is a rare opportunity to put together an event that spans everything from architecture, visual art, advertising, computer software & web development, fashion, design, photography, film, video, performing arts, music, literature & publishing, radio & television and video games.

A brilliant but daunting brief. The biggest challenge is how you make it coherent and relevent given how expansive the possibilities are. It is almost impossible for anyone (in this case, me!) to be much of an expert on all of these areas.

At this early stage, the programming structure will probably follow on from a basic desire to seek out the best, brightest and most interesting people from all those fields together in one space and create an environment where they connect and bounce off each other. The question is who are they?

Hmmmm.