marcus westbury

Another one of my pre-election pieces for The Age. I really have been slack in updating things here. THE perception at election time is that politicians can get ahead only by rolling out the pork barrel and spending up big. But while we’d all love more money for the arts, there are a lot of [...]

MY PHONE rang late on a Wednesday afternoon. The Prime Minister’s office was calling to inquire as to whether I had any plans for Friday night. I did but they were swiftly cancelled. Little more than 48 hours later, I’d had my only passable suit dry-cleaned, some flights cancelled and new ones arranged and I [...]

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 [...]

The Sydney press is reporting this morning that the NSW state government “has agreed to fund a $1 billion project to finally bring the Sydney Opera House in line with its designer’s vision.” This decision is one that is so staggeringly out of touch with the realities of cultural policy at the moment that it [...]

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 [...]

It’s taken me a long time to update it here (hey, i went on holidays in New Zealand for 3 weeks and they don’t have the internet over there yet) but i’ve been asked to sit on a “Creative Australia” advisory panel established by Federal Arts Minister Peter Garrett. You can read all about it [...]