marcus westbury

THE news last month that Arts Victoria and the Victorian government was not getting around to notifying successful applicants for their 2010 arts grants in time for them to actually do their projects hit a raw nerve with me. It has an ominous ring for many who have schlepped around in the underfunded, under-appreciated bottom-feeding [...]

ARE critics a dying breed? Are the art critics that we’ve come to know (and, occasionally, love) soon to become things of the past? Last month, I joined a panel at the Australia Council’s annual arts marketing summit in Brisbane, asking “Who’s the critic now?” The audience was made up of directors and marketing people [...]

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 [...]

There is something slightly disingenuous about the spin that came with the Australia Council’s More than Bums on Seats: Australian Participation in the Arts survey released last week. At the very least, it’s a double-edged sword. At the superficial headline level, the report shows that Australians love and value the arts. But dig a little [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Now is a pretty good time for creative geeks in Australia, thanks to some major new initiatives by the Australia Council for the Arts and the State Library of Queensland. Read the rest at my ABC Arts Blog.

I’m basically just posting this here so i can link to it from this discussion over at Larvatus Prodeo. But it’s a reminder though that I’m involved in many debates and discussions about arts funding and policy priorities in Australia at the moment (most recently here and here) and too easily forget that most people [...]

THE Australia Council and the ABC provide two radically different examples of how cultural agencies can deal or fail to deal with technological change. Where the ABC has spent the last decade experimenting, making and learning from mistakes and innovating with digital technology, the Australia Council has retreated further and further away from engagement in [...]