marcus westbury

It can be incredibly difficult to kill an arts company in this country and damn near impossible to simply let it die a natural death. Come the apocalypse, the only things likely to survive are cockroaches, email spammers and arts companies. Yet finding a way to let things die is vitally important in the realm [...]

For what i think is the first time, my weekly column in The Age is up and on the web site. DIGITAL technology has created two opposing cultures. One where copyright rules are enforced by a phalanx of lawyers with no regard for artistic intent or respect for legitimate creativity, and another — in our [...]

Based on the fact that i am sweating over my copy this afternoon, i think it is safe to say that I am now officially a newspaper columnist. The downside is that “newspaper columnist” is a sub-profession of human being somewhere above politician and used car salesman and below journalist. I’m not sure that inflicting [...]

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 [...]

I was asked recently by the folks at the Department Of Culture and the Arts in WA to take part in a forum about “Creative People” as part of their process to develop an “Umbrella Policy Framework” for the state. I thought it might be useful to post the notes here that i made for [...]