A key aspect of Australian culture not yet mentioned on this page is our landscape, which most certainly is intrinsically different from the landscape of other countries. Our landscape inspires artists, not just to paint landscapes but to respond in varied media to the heat and isolation, the blue of the mountain ranges and the red of the inland, the stark, dirty but sparkling white of salt lakes, the brown rush of floodwaters, the cracked earth in drought.

There is no part of Australia untouched by humans, therefore the whole country is cultural landscape. First Aboriginal people shaped the land, then white people shaped the land. Our cultural landscape includes all the areas we think of as “natural” and all the places we know are influenced by humans – the roadside planting of Lombardy poplars near country towns, the windbreaks of radiata pine sheltering farmhouses, the persistence of Victorian era floral clocks and other plantings spelling out significant local events, the winding old rivers and their billabongs, the city streets rarely defined by anything distinctively Australian, similarly urban and suburban public and private spaces which could often be anywhere in the world.

Our cultural institutions which display the distinctive nature of our landscape, the more “natural” elements relatively untouched by humans, are our Botanic Gardens, specifically the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra, portions of other capital city botanic gardens, and several Regional Botanic Gardens which focus on Australian plants indigenous to their local area. The Australian National Botanic Gardens in particular has been starved of funding for many years, and subjected to decades of “efficiency dividends” as if plants are able to grow more efficiently and just as beautifully with less funding. Less funding means fewer staff, less weeding, less pruning, less replacement of old or unthrifty plants, less watering, less research, fewer publications and so forth.

The Australian National Botanic Gardens needs more government assistance to ensure that this aspect of Australian culture can survive. In particular, the Australian National Botanic Gardens should have the same status as other cultural institutions in Canberra in relation to Commonwealth funding for school visits from throughout Australia. Without this, there is a very real risk that future generations will have little or no awareness of Australia’s distinctive landscape, and the current process of landscape homogenisation will escalate in the absence of knowledgeable custodians in the future.

Almost all arts funding is as a producer subsidy – giving wholly wrong incentives. Agent-based models now show that even small amounts of nepotism in a ‘peer review’ system corrupt the process. In Australia, there’s lots of nepotism. In-crowds from Darlinghurst and St Kilda get government jobs to give money to their friends.

Pay on results.

Then we might get exciting ideas like films that have audiences, instead of the smug, sanctimonious drivel from The Well to Little Fish and the dross in between.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/richard-mills-joins-culture-war-over-heritage/story-e6frg8n6-1225901816645

I praise you for your efforts, great essay. I cant wait to watch to see what is the outcome of your comments…

If there is anything i can help you with anything for Brisbane, I know a lot of artists here ….let me know
artcrediball@gmail.com is my email.
with respect
jo

You’re right that regulatory, taxation, etc changes are ‘taste neutral’, and they do need to flow from policy changes as you point out in the second paragraph of your response to my first comment.

My proposition is that for all this to happen we need to adopt of two meta-level policy principles:

1. The equality of art – everyone’s cultural tastes and affinities are as valid as everyone else’s – as long as human and other rights aren’t infringed.

2. Value in process – the making of and doing of art is just as important as the product

I speak as a grateful user of public libraries for 65 years and an active member of my local Friends of Library group for 13 years. Despite all our efforts we have had no success with lobbying State or Federal governments to adequately fund public libraries – an essential part of our culture and democracy.

I have just been reading the history of the Tote Hotel (mentioned at the beginning of your article) on its website: http://www.thetotehotel.com/ I have also been reading on that site about the hotel’s closing, but its gig guide seems quite full at present so it appears that the pub is still running.

And as your article and the comments show, culture in Australia takes many forms. I prefer my music without amplification, so I am unlikely to appreciate the offerings at the Tote. But I do appreciate the fact that some people are passionate about their own cultural preferences (as long as they respect the preferences of others).

In demonstrating their views, people show that we do have an unofficial cultural policy in Australia. It is called standing up (or singing, writing, protesting, painting, etc) for what we believe in. Whether one person or production or whatever should be “funded” for doing so is the difficult part.

I have read The Age article by Richard Mills and understand most of his point of view, especially when it comes to understanding the historical perspective of creativity and the interactive role of education.

An interesting aspect in this debate may take the Tote Hotel as its example again. Old pubs are part of Australia’s cultural heritage – and its heritage culture for that matter (even if they are not part of your idea of “heritage arts”).

The pub culture of old is an important part of Australia’s heritage. I sometimes go to the opera and I usually prefer listening to Mozart than to most other forms of music. I avoid pubs if they have poker machines and/or too many decibels, but not if they have character and characters.

The community and heritage aspects of arts and culture, whether in the pub, the opera house, or anywhere else, are intrinsically valuable. I’m not sure about the funding aspects, as I mention above, as it appears to depends on what is valuable to different people.

My main wish is that we can find a way to fund arts and culture and heritage as appreciators rather than as “bureaucrats”, “politicians” and “consumers”.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed so many interesting insights here. Twaklin

Mills’ argument seems to herald major opera and theatre companies as the font from which all culture springs, with blatent disregard for the craft of game design, jewellery design and making etc; which I believe doesn’t require a “reasonable intelligence and a modicum of training” as Mills’ says, but it requires ongoing training, development and devotion to your craft – just as playing a violin or performing Shakespeare does.

All of this aside though, I am currently travelling round the country including much of rural and regional Australia. The thing that I am realising as we travel is the traditional art practices are so important to many of these regions as there would be very little engagement with culture beyond television, movies (in some towns) and games, if traditional art practice didn’t find its way in.

I think many of us started to love music by seeing different instruments played; or recognised a love of art making by seeing the works of an amazing artist at the gallery. Perhaps without this exposure to traditional arts through school and weekend activities these passions would not have developed? Therefore perhaps it is the exhibitions from AGNSW touring, or the Queensland Orchestra coming to town (and the funding that allows this) that opens up culture and its diversity for many people outside of cities and regional centres?

As you will have seen, I have described a similar but different viewpoint for understanding the problem and some possible solutions. I’d be really interested to know your views on what I said.

As far as the AC is concerned, I agree it is failing to meet the needs of contemporary arts practice and should be reformed, although that has been implicitly acknowledged by Minister Garrett. But we have a Commonwealth Department and other agencies (e.g. ABAF) that also need to be considered, as well as the institutional structure I have described. I think there is nothing particularly wrong with the AC charter, but it is interpreted by them in terms of the institutional environment that surrounds it. I think it is as important, if not more so to address what our universities are doing.

Personally, I am simply arguing that there are functions that the OzCo can not do that must be done. Therefore a structure must be created that can do them. If i had my way i would leave most of the Australia Council largely intact and recognise it for what it is: The National Trust of the art world. It simply can not realistically maintain its policy advisory role though both because i think it’s lousy at it and because i think in the interests of checks and balances it can not and should not be both implementing and evaluating its own initiatives. The lack of transparency between funding agency and policy advise has got us into this mess.

What’s missing in my opinion is a strong policy agency for all the reasons and with all functions outlined above. I have no strong view either way as to who should administer the strategies it promotes and shakes down the funds for.

I think it would be a shame to lose a lot of what the Australia Council offers. I think it would be greater shame to lose everything else because we refuse to acknowledge its limitations.

But secondly you said, “calling for the overthrow of the AC is so unrealistic as to be unsupportable.” Unrealistic or undesirable? I agree it may be undesirable for the reasons outlined above. However given the ability of 40 year old agencies to survive in perpetuity without having their structure tweaked is almost non-existent, i’d argue that it is closer to inevitable than unrealistic?

What that needs though is a better understanding of where culture comes from. If you assume it comes largely or exclusively from professionals working in arts centres as our policy settings do then such approaches struggle to gain much traction. if you assume it comes from the actions of many, from the professional and semi professional, from the commercial, and the hobbyist and from people of all walks of life acting individually, collectively and as communities you can do a lot to support it by simply making the system more responsive to their initiative.

As for the reform of the whole of government – i’m struggling under the challenge of the arts bit just now!

….RealTIme article reproduced below….

gavin findlay: peter garrett’s national cultural policy discussion

WHEN THE RUDD GOVERNMENT WAS ELECTED IN 2007 THE VAST MAJORITY OF ARTISTS IN AUSTRALIA SURELY LOOKED FORWARD TO THE PROSPECT OF PETER GARRETT AS MINISTER FOR THE ARTS, DESPITE THE FORGETTABLE ARTS POLICY THE ALP TOOK INTO THE ELECTION. A RESPECTED, PRACTISING ARTIST AS WELL AS NOTED ACTIVIST FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND INDIGENOUS RIGHTS—HELL, HE’S ONE OF US!

As we know, Peter Garrett’s time as a minister has been difficult and, for the environmental movement, tainted by the fact that he has had no choice but to publicly peddle the Labor Party line in order to move towards change in the longer term. But his actions in the arts portfolio have been disappointingly sparse. It took until his speech to the National Press Club in October 2009 for any substantial statement about possible reforms to the arts policy vacuum left by the previous government. That speech was clearly delivered by someone who has real passion for the arts. It described some innovations on the agenda, and importantly was not afraid to acknowledge that the national arts funding and institutional structure is in need of a major overhaul.

The speech also announced the opening of a discussion towards a national cultural policy, an idea taken up from the 2020 Summit. The announcement wasn’t widely reported, and I didn’t know of it until stumbling on the notice on the RealTime website over the holiday break. The National Cultural Policy website (http://nationalculturalpolicy.com.au) contains Garrett’s speech as well as a framework document, ten discussion points and access to a comments forum. Submissions to the current phase of the discussion closed February 1. Despite the limited time, plenty of erudite and knowledgeable arts practitioners have had their say in submissions and made very good points. Mine’s number 50 on the list if anyone’s interested, but RealTime has kindly given space for me to summarise my key arguments.

RealTime readers would know all too well that arts and cultural policies in Australia suffer from a range of problems that reflect, on one side, insufficient understanding by policy makers of what is required to sustain new and innovative arts practice, and on the other, insufficient understanding by creative artists of how to make arguments to government that will result in better policy to support new work. In order to improve this current situation, we need to articulate and analyse things differently. The National Cultural Policy discussion offers an opportunity to put new ideas about arts policy on the agenda.

Unfortunately at this stage the discussion is being framed on the basis of cultural rather than arts policy. This presents several problems. The first, as Garrett himself articulated in his speech, is that ‘culture’ is a term that defies simple definition. A fundamental principle of policy design is to be able to define the space in which it operates, but culture is such an open-ended term that it is difficult to draw these necessary boundaries. For example, electronic media conveys a huge proportion of what most Australians would understand as our ‘culture.’ Should a cultural policy therefore encompass our media organisations, including privately owned television stations and newspapers?

A second problem is that the sense of shared values conveyed by the term ‘culture’ will inevitably politicise it. As cultural theorist Graham Turner noted in 1993, it is virtually impossible to discuss cultural policy without ideas of nationalism and a narrative of our cultural history. Peter Garrett claims the ‘culture wars’ are over; I am not so sure. At some future point we will presumably have another conservative government obsessed with settling old scores and politically interfering with the ABC to impose its version of the cultural narrative. Presumably the National Cultural Policy that might emerge could be demolished as was the Keating Government’s visionary Creative Nation. We should therefore, through this policy, seek outcomes that cannot be so easily unmade.

This brings us to the third problem: the relationship of the cultural policy to the arts is very loosely defined on the NCP website. This seems a significant shortcoming, as the primary policy measures and tangible outcomes arising from the national policy will be in the arts. This is all the more unfortunate because the Press Club speech articulated the relationship between arts and culture quite clearly and seems to give each equal weight.

Surely we need a firmer foundation than this as the basis for the relation between culture and the arts, especially given that the primary outcomes of any national cultural policy will be changes to policies and funding for the arts. The legitimacy of funding for new work will always be called into question by a not insignificant minority, especially when they don’t like what is being produced. This inadequate approach to cultural policy, therefore, will inevitably risk politicising matters of arts policy as well.

As Garrett has pointed out, arts funding around Australia, both Commonwealth and State, is largely locked up in supporting a network of arts organisations. Surely it is time for policy that fully recognises that the arts sector and our educational institutions are inextricably linked. No, that’s not strong enough—the arts institutions that are part of our tertiary education sector are the engine room of the arts and cultural sector and should be incorporated fully into any consideration of funding and policy.

While art institutions perform valuable functions and support many artists, the result, as Minister Garrett notes, has been too little money available to support individual artists or to adequately foster new and experimental work. This could clearly be solved by increasing funding to individual artists, although to truly allow freedom to work outside institutional structures we should seriously consider, as many have suggested, tax incentives for artists or individual direct subsidy for professional artists such as has been successful in Europe.

The welfare and ‘public good’ arguments for subsidisation of artists’ incomes is well known. David Throsby and Glenn Withers laid it out in their 1979 work The Economics of the Performing Arts, still the benchmark on this subject, and yet the ability of artists to make a living always seems to be at the very bottom of the pile of topics for discussion. This is a serious omission: surely, the first function of cultural policy is to lay the basis for the creative work to thrive, and to do this we must ensure that artists are able to make an adequate living while making their art. All else flows from this. It may be that there is a limit to the number of artists who can make their primary living as artists. So why not, for once, clearly state these objectives in a cultural policy?

There is a fourth and more difficult problem, which in my view is critical for a national cultural policy to address: how to have an open, credible, non-parochial debate about the network of major artistic institutions, including in our education systems, which considers the equity and efficiency as well as the excellence of such institutions, and that aims towards building capacity to take us forward, both recognising heritage and allowing new work to grow. This cannot be left in the hands of politicians or bureaucrats, and neither can it be left up to the arts establishment alone—they will of course act, first and foremost, to preserve the organisations they work for and the structures they are comfortable with. We also need to have a broadly accepted understanding of how to close institutions and companies when their time is done, to allow new ones to grow, and how to better handle the relationship between state and federal funding and what level of support is needed to maintain the agreed institutional arrangements.

Artistic institutions are subject to the drastic effects of falling below a threshold of ‘critical mass’—policy makers seem oblivious to the fact that a few seemingly small cuts can bring the whole edifice down. When highly respected teaching staff are made redundant at a tertiary arts teaching institution, because the one-on-one teaching model needed to train professional artists is deemed too expensive by university bureaucrats, that city will find (as we have in Canberra) the best students will no longer come.

The National Cultural Policy should articulate clearly what is desirable for Australia as a framework for our arts and cultural industries; it should mandate in perpetuity an overall level of funding for artists and the institutional structure, including arts education that we as a nation wish to maintain from our taxes. The detail can then be left to the peer funding process along with support from the private sector.

Overall, the statements of the Minister and the points of the discussion framework have much to commend them. However, the National Cultural Policy discussion will remain flawed if simply focused on a loose definition of ‘culture.’ We can hope, now that Minister Garrett’s responsibilities have been lightened, that he can give the National Cultural Policy the attention it deserves.

“society is becoming more culturally diverse. Immigration, demographic change and new technologies and communications media have transformed the spectrum of cultural choices available. 12 The large-scale infrastructure and mass subscription model that underpins the logic of many funded arts organisations is poorly equipped to respond to the plethora of new artists, artforms, audiences, genres, and sub-cultures emerging in a rapidly changing cultural dynamic.”

Clearly there’s plenty more that we could have said there. But we have certainly mentioned it. Indeed i think you’ll find the growing diversity of plurality of cultural traditions is a theme that underpins the larger policy and approach based argument that we are making.

Right now there is a large and reasonably well funded infrastructure to support the major performing arts in this country. There’s isn’t for everything else.

To give you one example: In 2007-08, Opera Australia and the associated Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra received $17.5 million of Australia Council funding. By comparison, the Australia Council’s competitive funds for literature, music, theatre and visual arts between them had a combined budget of $21.8 million spread over 916 separate projects, organisations and individuals.

Opera Australia receives the equivalent of half the total allocation for competitive funding for all the works by all the artform boards. That’s almost all the people making original work in Australia combined!

I argue that the emphasis there is wrong. I’d like to think i can make that case without being accused of wanting to destroy the collected history of Western civilisation.

Worth a read for an insight into the logic of the status quo: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/opera/let-us-defend-our-heritage-arts-20100726-10sji.html

What’s really at the core of the problem with Australian cultural policy? It’s that we persist in ranking art and personal taste. Throughout history, various cliques and cabals have long worked to promote their particular set of tastes as being superior to others. In Australia, many have been able to institutionalise their agreed aesthetic under the banner of ‘excellent’.

There is a very liberating and inclusive alternative, which says that everyone’s cultural tastes and affinities are as valid as everyone else’s – as long as human and other rights are not being infringed. This enlightened understanding can remove a lot of fear around arts, and validates the common view: ‘I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like’.

This understanding does not mean groups shouldn’t form around what they like, but it does mean that governments should not favour any of these groups above any other, which is what happens now.

When cultural policies acknowledge that all personal taste can be viewed as equal and that there is great value in the creative process itself, not just the outcome, government support can more equally flow to participatory and local level cultural development. Funding does not have to come at the expense of ‘heritage arts’ – it can come from social and other agencies not typically known for arts funding.

Art and the creative process can provides us solutions for the dangers of compartmentalised thinking, which gives rise to the silo problem in organisations. This answer here, which focuses on the connections between things, is well illustrated by Chris Dessar at onthecommons.org. Chris shows how arts practice can lead in joining things up. This is what we need to apply to government, to move towards ‘whole of’ and ‘joined-up’ government.

For this to work properly, extensive public sector structural reform is needed. It’s not just arts that are hamstrung by red tape, it’s all types of activities. There’s a practice that governments need to undertake, if we’re to get anywhere with the whole of government idea. It’s called subsidiarity – and it’s the principle that government power ought to reside at the lowest feasible level.

The worry some commentators here are feeling about the super arts department idea, is the real danger government will end up using it stifle creativity, especially that which threatens power structures. Maybe a time-limited agency with a reform mandate for bringing the three spheres of government into alignment would work. Both Lex VV and Marcus are right – Local Government based support for arts can work well, and major public sector reform is needed to make this happen.

Perhaps Peter G’s cultural ebay idea could work – except in reverse, so that new ideas and emerging artists not participating in the market get government support until they can.

Absolutely let’s reform ozco, but let’s not fall into the heritage and other arts dichotomy trap. Focus on process and participation – helping more people make more art more often. And not judging it.

It’s like the old arts vs. sport thing – “all that money going to sport when it should be going to art”. Why not sport AND art?

Also your discussion under “The false divide between “high art” and “popular culture”” is confusing and confused. Your statements about value and popularity seem to contradict your argument for supporting or not supporting “high” arts or heritage.

The “high” art and heritage arts in this country helped form the arts world here today. The contemporary artists of today (and for that matter tomorrow), learned from and about the artists of yesterday. It’s not called ‘heritage’ for no reason – it is OUR heritage – and you have no cause nor right to run it down.

I suspect that one or both of you has little time for anything that is NOT contemporary, begrudgingly accepting the popularity of Wagner and Shakespeare (and a few thousand others).

But it IS important. For so many reasons. Please don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater in your vociferous vendetta against the Australia Council. Millions of Australians very much enjoy what you put down as old, antiquated and arcane in art.

Margaret Wheatley writes about the mismatch between organisational structures and the science of the day…highlighting that many of our decision-making structures are based on an industrial revolution science of cause and effect rather than the current sciences of quantum and chaos. What better place than with those exploring ‘arts and culture’ than to also consider whether an organisational structure can be developed that is more about what we want to achieve with the organisation than about how bureaucracies can fund and manage the organisation.

Years ago I wrote that the answer to ‘what is art?’ for me is that ‘art is a verb’. An action word and that although artefacts came from the process for me it was the action of art making that was the most important. At this moment it is almost as if a discussion of ‘Culture as a verb’ would be interesting. Policy documents like definitive statements are often out of date before they hit the printer. Should we instead be considering an aspirational Vision Statement and a Cultural Action Plan? A ‘what we want’ and ‘how we could get there’? Or am I just now playing with words?

Anyway thanks for inspiring some new thoughts,
Lisa

I’ve actually tried to steer away from discussing funding in this piece for lots of reasons. What i would argue about funding though is that it is best delivered in a variety of ways that mirrors the variety of cultures, priorities, and experiences of the community itself. It is best devolved and spread through a variety of mechanisms and dynamics. It is, after all, an ecology. I think community support for funding of the arts is also to some extent dependent on them seeing their own cultural policy priorities reflected.

That’s a whole other discussion though!

Secondarily, in my experience of working with councils they are as much the victims of bad policy setting by state and federal governments as anyone.

What i would say is this by way of example…

I think the single biggest thing that governments of all persuasions could do in the performing arts is make it much easier to put on live performances. It involves changing in a measured but not reckless way the rules that govern live performance, making it easier and cheaper to rent buildings, making in simpler to use a park, and putting in place sensible but achievable guidelines on what you can and can’t do that are actually possible to meet with a limited amount of your own (not the government’s) money. It may also involve some changes to liscensing laws in some jurisdictions if you want to make it economically viable to do so.

Apart from the brain work that would cost the taxpayer almost nothing. It would inevitably lead to an explosion of live performance across all genres from dance, to theatre, to every form of music imaginable. No argument about what is good or bad art necessary.

There’s a million other similar examples. There’s only one problem: it’s no one’s job to do that. They’re all no one’s job.

But you need to look at this sort of thing in context. The Australia Council has a fascinating history of experimenting with useful and worthwhile schemes over and above what they are obliged to do under the act. They also have a history of shedding them the moment they are politically inconvenient, financially difficult or some other fad comes along. The whole history of the New Media Arts Board is a case study in this but it was that was replicated over and over again across many initiatives.

A similar tale can be told about Screen Australia and it’s predecessors in relation to games and multimedia.

If you read the Australia Council Act the reason it behaves like this is obvious. It has things it has to do and things it doesn’t. All the stuff you are describing is optional and it comes and goes with the fashion of the day, the management of the OzCo and whoever’s in government. Again, i go back to the systemic problem that a lot of this isn’t really their job – so they do it when they feel like it and dump it when they don’t.

The Arts in the Digital Era strategy is the 3rd or 4th time it’s been picked up in my memory. Unless the political pressure keeps up it will be dropped again and rediscovered in 2022 and the cycle is doomed to repeat itself.

1. I think you’re right that culture as “everything” is serious danger of disappearing into uselessness and i wouldn’t advocate it here. Probably one of the dangers of this essay in reading it back is that we have underdone the question of how you draw the boundaries around the brief. Again, that’s a whole essay in itself but i think we have an obligation to explain that better than we’ve done here.

However… I think there’s a lot of room between culture as everything and the 1970s Australia Council Act that most people would broadly agree upon. My argument is that we should start with the values that we want to nurture – or where the role of the state can be effective – rather than forms and i think we’ve said that somewhere.

I’d add that there is an enormous amount of work to be done that is effectively form neutral. Addressing questions of the supply of space, public liability laws, compliance costs, how hard it is to set up a performance venue, etc are all ones where a huge number of artists, creators (and even sports peripherally) could benefit from policy settings that make it easier to create space for communities to come together. That requires a shift in thinking rather than argument about artforms.

2. Agreed. Not much to add without taking us down many other paths!

3. I understand your concerns and i think the risk you identify is real. The larger concern that we start with here is that under the current system almost everything we have identified in this essay is effectively no one’s job. It needs to be someone’s job or we will continue to a colossal failure of responsibility. That could be an agency, a network of agencies, or some other form but i’d argue that it can not be the Australia Council who are by default the agency with the closest brief and the one we mistake for having this role. It is not in their DNA and indeed it would actually be quite detrimental to what they do well if they were expected to become that. Indeed, the Australia Council as counterpoint to a contemporary cultural agency/ strategy would be a very good thing.