tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/national-programme-for-excellence-in-the-arts-17421/articlesNational Programme for Excellence in the Arts – The Conversation2016-10-19T00:53:42Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/673032016-10-19T00:53:42Z2016-10-19T00:53:42ZArts training is an essential part of an innovative nation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142274/original/image-20161019-20336-3ok6c5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More than 50 arts training programs across the nation, including circus, may no longer be supported by the federal government. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julian Smith/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The past two years have not been happy ones for the arts sector in Australia. It all began in early 2014 with federal Ministers Brandis and Turnbull telling artists at the Sydney Biennale that they were ungrateful and selfish to protest about the role of Transfield in Nauru. </p>
<p>It then emerged that the Federal Minister for the Arts, George Brandis, believed he could do everything better in arts funding than the existing structures. He began his campaign by taking away a large portion of literature funding from the Australia Council in December 2014. </p>
<p>He then “trumped” this move by taking a third of the Council’s ongoing arts funding in May 2015 to set up his own ministerial fund for the arts naming it the National Program for Excellence in the Arts. Brandis’s concept of “excellence” though was tainted by a limited and élitist perspective of what constitutes the arts and by demonstrating overt favouritism and protectionism towards large arts organisations.</p>
<p>The arts sector protested and a Senate Inquiry was instituted. More than 3000 submissions were received by the Inquiry. The Coalition Government did not participate in the process and appeared to be ignoring the furore in the arts sector. However, with a new Prime Minister in place in late 2015, it was not long before a new Minster for the Arts emerged, Mitch Fifield. </p>
<p>In November 2015, Fifield announced he would give back a portion of the money taken from the Australia Council. However, he kept the rest and changed the name from Program of Excellence to Catalyst. Then there was an election in May 2016 and Minister Fifield’s Catalyst Fund played an interesting electoral role in allocating arts funding to some unusual recipients. </p>
<p>Further, with its reduced funding, the Australia Council cancelled project funding rounds for small groups and individuals in 2015 and then cut funding to over 60 arts organisations across the country in May 2016. There have been <a href="https://dailyreview.com.au/fifield-set-restore-raided-arts-funds-australia-council/50036/">recent rumours</a> that more of the Ministerial funds might be returned to the Australia Council but as yet there is no evidence of this.</p>
<p>But sadly this is not the only action that will harm and continue to damage the arts sector. The Federal Government is now considering cutting funding to students who wish to undertake creative arts training. Education Minister Simon Birmingham has said he believes <a href="http://www.senatorbirmingham.com.au/Media-Centre/Media-Releases/ID/3238/New-VET-Student-Loans-course-list-focussed-on-employment-outcomes">training in the creative arts is a ‘lifestyle’ choice</a> and cannot lead to a satisfactory career or any economic outcome. He says,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>VET Student Loans will only support legitimate students to undertake worthwhile and value-for-money courses at quality training providers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As the government’s priorities are related to demonstrating economic outcomes, they say that their preference is for technology programs and agricultural science courses related to the STEM educational model.</p>
<p>In this context creative arts training is perceived as irrelevant and Minister Birmingham intends to cut loan support for students to undertake this form of education and training. If this occurs, more than 50 arts training programs across the country will no longer be supported. These include programs in ceramics, photography, dance, acting, animation, all forms of design, circus, music, film, fashion and journalism.</p>
<p>To describe creative arts training as a “lifestyle” choice in my view demonstrates a lack of knowledge of what is involved and what is produced. There seems to be no understanding or recognition that artists/arts workers are trained professionals who are highly skilled, knowledgeable and adept. They are also highly employable in many industry sectors – not just the arts.</p>
<p>Australia talks constantly about supporting innovation and wanting to be seen as a “smart” country. Training people in the creative arts is a sure way of doing this. Confining education only to technology and the sciences does not create a nation that is necessarily clever or innovative.</p>
<p>Arts training provides the capacity to problem solve, think outside the square, be divergent and come up with new and untried solutions. These are skills that are essential for innovation and change. The arts are a basic foundation of the culture of this country. </p>
<p>Australia is presented internationally by its artists, by its films, by its literature - it is the soul of the country. If the arts training sectors are not funded by this Federal Government, there is a clear message that the government does not think that the arts matter in Australia and, ipso facto, Australian arts and culture does not matter to the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67303/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jo Caust has previously received funding from the Australia Council and the Australian Research Council. She is a member of the Arts Industry Council (SA) and NAVA.
</span></em></p>The past two years have not been happy ones for the arts sector in Australia. It all began in early 2014 with federal Ministers Brandis and Turnbull telling artists at the Sydney Biennale that they were…Jo Caust, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow (Hon), The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/523822015-12-15T08:53:15Z2015-12-15T08:53:15ZShort shelf life: the Book Council of Australia is stuffed back on the rack<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105999/original/image-20151215-23166-18anpen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The BCA was probably doomed the moment Tony Abbott announced its creation out of Australia Council funds.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nastya Shershneva</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the 2006 throwaway romantic comedy <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427229/">Failure to Launch</a>, Matthew McConaughey plays a funny, handsome, promising man who, deep into his thirties, just can’t leave home. Eventually, it turns out that he had suffered a calamitous loss many years before when his fiancée died. He was doomed from the outset; after the bad start, his pecker and promise are all gone. </p>
<p>So it is with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-book-council-of-australia-well-its-better-than-nothing-47549">Book Council of Australia</a> (BCA), which was long dreamed of – since 2010 in fact – by a kabal of publisher, bookseller, agent, and author organisations, and eventually endorsed by Labor, and then <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/tony-abbott-announces-new-literary-body-the-book-council-of-australia-20141208-122vpd.html">announced by Tony Abbott</a> at last year’s Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105997/original/image-20151215-23202-108741r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105997/original/image-20151215-23202-108741r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105997/original/image-20151215-23202-108741r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105997/original/image-20151215-23202-108741r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105997/original/image-20151215-23202-108741r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105997/original/image-20151215-23202-108741r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105997/original/image-20151215-23202-108741r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Caleb Roenigk</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>But the day after this year’s PM’s Awards, the A$6 million to fund the BCA for its first three years has slipped back into general revenue as part of the <a href="http://www.budget.gov.au/2015-16/content/myefo/html/11_appendix_a_expense.htm">MYEFO budget statement</a>. The BCA, rather than launching, has been sent back to hangar.</p>
<p>The Council’s fate was perhaps soured from the start when – against industry wishes – it was funded by <a href="https://www.attorneygeneral.gov.au/Mediareleases/Pages/2015/ThirdQuarter/11-September-2015-Book-Council-of-Australia.aspx">A$6 million</a> taken from the budget of the Australia Council. </p>
<p>It was dirty money, and it became dirtier still when it turned out that this was just a precursor to Senator George Brandis’s A$104.7 million attack on the Australia Council budget in May in order to establish a ministerial <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/national-programme-for-excellence-in-the-arts">National Program for Excellence in the Arts</a>. </p>
<p>Eventually, in September, when Brandis, in one of his dying acts as arts minister, empanelled a Book Council Board, under the chairpersonship of Melbourne University Press’s director Louise Adler, further indignity was heaped upon the BCA. </p>
<p>Melbourne literary activist Sam Twyford-Moore <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/sep/18/nick-cave-among-360-australian-writers-to-call-for-george-brandis-to-be-replaced-as-arts-minister">engineered an industry campaign</a> against the Council’s provenance, structure, and board appointments. Louise Adler in particular was targeted. Twyford-Moore called out the big guns: John Coetzee and Nick Cave, alongside 350 others, signed a public letter of opposition.</p>
<p>Since then nothing official has been heard about the BCA until the one-line detail in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/myefo-2015-at-a-glance-52298">MYEFO papers</a> today. But few seem to be mourning its passing. </p>
<p>Former President of the Australian Publishers Association <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/peter-donoughue-128936">Peter Donoghue</a> seemed to sum up industry feeling in a Facebook post today:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The now abolished Book Council of Australia was always a bullshit organisation of dubious “industry policy” Kim Carr provenance, funded with stolen money, and a play pen for your standard book trade enmities – big players versus small; established versus emerging; local versus global; authors versus everybody else, etc – so I for one rejoice in its demise. The pity is the money wasn’t returned to its rightful owner, the Australia Council.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The demise of the BCA leaves government policy in the literary sector uncertain. Arts Minister <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/book-council-of-australia-to-be-scrapped-as-525-million-cut-to-arts-revealed-in-myefo-20151215-glnwza.html">Mitch Fifield is promising</a> to “consult widely with the literary community about alternative sector-led mechanisms for representation and promotion”, but for now conservative governments are leaving behind them a trail of acts that some interpret as hostile to literature, including: </p>
<ul>
<li>the <a href="https://theconversation.com/queensland-announces-literary-award-winners-no-thanks-to-newman-9322">cutting of funding</a> for literary awards in Queensland <br></li>
<li>the removal of <a href="http://www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com/2015/12/apples-and-oranges-the-false-economy-of-the-parallel-importation-debate/">territorial copyright protections</a> <br></li>
<li>cuts to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/philosophy-vs-evidence-is-no-way-to-orchestrate-cultural-policy-42487">Australia Council</a><br></li>
<li>and industry reports of imminent cuts to small literary organisations in WA. </li>
</ul>
<p>At the very least the conservatives seem ambivalent about supporting literature’s potential to arm any of their opponents in the renewed culture wars.</p>
<p>The BCA was probably doomed the moment Tony Abbott announced its creation out of Australia Council funds. But whether government-funded or otherwise, the sector, after the demise of the <a href="https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-218/when-they-come-to-save-books-what-will-they-save/">Literature Board</a> in 2014 and the BCA today, still badly needs a body to advocate for literature and to advise government on policy settings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52382/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Glover has served as an advisor to the Australia Council.</span></em></p>The Book Council of Australia – announced by Tony Abbott just over a year ago – was today scrapped. But we still need a body to advocate for literature and to advise government on policy settings.Stuart Glover, Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/510262015-11-20T03:45:05Z2015-11-20T03:45:05ZOut with the NPEA, in with Catalyst: expert response<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102590/original/image-20151120-13460-o2mhdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Following a sustained and vocal campaign by the arts sector, the National Program for Excellence in the Arts has been canned. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/national-programme-for-excellence-in-the-arts">National Program for Excellence in the Arts</a> (NPEA) – the hugely controversial body announced in the May budget by George Brandis to reorder arts funding in Australia – has been renamed and revised. </p>
<p>More than <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/thousands-lodge-submissions-to-the-senate-inquiry-into-arts-cuts-20150721-gih4e7.html">2,200 submissions</a> had been made to a senate inquiry into the funding changes, the vast bulk of which argued that the funding reallocated from the Australia Council to set up the NPEA – A$104.7 million over four years – should be returned, and that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/arms-length-forget-it-its-back-to-the-menzies-era-for-arts-funding-41743">arms-length funding principle</a> of the Australia Council should be maintained. </p>
<p>New Arts Minister Mitch Fifield <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/turnbull-government-overhauls-george-brandis-arts-slush-fund-20151119-gl35nc.html">announced last night</a> that the NPEA will be replaced by Catalyst — Australian Arts and Cultural Fund, which will distribute A$12 million annually, as opposed to the NPEA’s planned A$20 million.</p>
<p>The independent Australia Council will be re-allocated the difference – an additional A$8 million a year. The Catalyst Guidelines <a href="http://arts.gov.au/catalyst">can be accessed</a> on the Ministry for the Arts website. </p>
<p>Below, our experts give their initial impressions.</p>
<h2>Stuart Glover, Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing, The University of Queensland</h2>
<p>Mitch Fifield’s Catalyst Fund pretends to remedy the basic problems of George Brandis’s proposed NPEA – but really just sweeps up the mess into a slightly neater pile. The gains for writing and publishing in these latest changes are marginal – and still no news about <a href="https://theconversation.com/writers-and-publishers-are-all-at-sea-under-brandis-and-the-npea-44842">the Book Council of Australia</a>. </p>
<p>Brandis set up his NPEA without articulating clear policy imperatives to do so, and he then raided a long-standing program – the Australia Council funds for individuals and small and medium organisations – in order to fund it. The boy might have an Arts degree but he’ll go down as the biggest wrecker we’ve had as a Federal Arts Minister. </p>
<p>The new minister, Mitch Fifield, sensibly has returned some funds to the Australia Council and set clearer and more developed parameters for the ministerial funds he’ll hold onto, including (excuse my sarcasm) coming up with a much better name for his pot. The downsides to this scheme are the same: politicisation of arts funding decision-making on a scale not seen since the battle over Commonwealth Literary Fund in the 1940s – and cuts to the Australia Council’s capacity to support individual artists and small to medium organisations. </p>
<p>For literature, it seems that the proposed Catalyst fund will accept applications from writing and publishing organisations – which the NPEA wasn’t going to do – but even with some NPEA funds flowing back into the pot at the Australia Council, the literary sector will face a net reduction in funds compared to 2013/14. </p>
<p>Beyond this, the new minister still seems to be “umming” over the Abbott/Brandis Book Council initiative and its A$2 million budget. Following the demise of the Literature Board, I am pro-the Book Council – we need a whole-of-sector body for funding and policy making – but the provenance of its funds (also sourced from a cut to the Australia Council) has already problematised its relations with the sector, imperilling the Book Council’s future. </p>
<p>The arts budget is small beer – and literature and publishing barely an afterthought – but they deserve better than this. </p>
<h2>Joanna Mendelssohn, Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW Australia</h2>
<p>It is understandable that the arts community has been quick off the blocks to claim credit for the significant changes to the ill-considered “National Programme for Excellence in the arts” (to give its original George Brandis spelling). After all, they did run the most coordinated and targeted lobbying exercise I have seen for many years. </p>
<p>With the exception of the large companies, insulated by ministerial largesse, arts groups from many different cultural perspectives came together to campaign for their very existence.</p>
<p>While details are still sketchy it appears that the main beneficiaries of the A$8 million a year that is being refunded to the Australia Council will be individual practitioners. This is fair enough as they were the main victims of the original cuts. </p>
<p>The newly named Catalyst program is intriguing. The name is a popular one in the arts. In Western Australia it is given to a <a href="http://www.canwa.com.au/what-we-do/catalyst/">community arts funding program</a>, while in the UK it’s a culture sector-wide private giving <a href="http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/apply-funding/funding-programmes/catalyst-arts/">investment scheme</a> aimed at helping cultural organisations diversify their income streams and <a href="http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/apply-funding/funding-programmes/catalyst-arts/#sthash.5TE3yrCg.dpuf">access more funding</a> from private sources. </p>
<p>The arts community has been assured that funding from Catalyst, unlike its awkwardly named predecessor, will all be doled out in an arms-length, non-political process.</p>
<p>From what has been released so far the Australian Catalyst Arts and Culture Fund could be going down the UK path, or maybe after the embarrassment of “Excellence” the minister’s advisers are trying to politely distance their new policy from Senator Brandis, who is still in Cabinet. </p>
<p>But even though Mitch Fifield has made the announcement, it is fairly clear that the changes in funding are all a part of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s larger purpose of moving government policies away from the impetuous extremism of the Abbott years, towards the effective centralism of Hamer, Menzies and Turnbull’s long-time mentor, Neville Wran.</p>
<h2>Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders University</h2>
<p>To borrow a phrase: this is not the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning. The remodelling of the NPEA as the Catalyst Fund does three things. </p>
<p>First, it shifts government relations with the theatre sector out of the rhetoric of excellence and into the language of innovation. The latter might be equally opaque and decontextualised, but at least it doesn’t equate to the minister’s personal reading list. </p>
<p>Second, it gives some money back to the Australia Council that, by any rational measure, should never have been removed from it in the first place. The client base was already cut to the bone. The NPEA bit into the bone. Catalyst still means unnecessary pain for the sector, but less of it. </p>
<p>Third, it allows the Fund to better position itself on the horizon of small to medium theatre organisations. Key to this is the fact that the Fund can consider administration costs as part of its application process, even if “projects that include a high percentage of administration costs are likely to represent less value for money to assessors”. </p>
<p>This means it won’t be just the major companies – the ones who can absorb such costs in other parts of their budget – that are able to apply when the Fund opens in two weeks’ time. </p>
<p>Despite these positive aspects to the announcement, however, it won’t stop the job losses that many smaller organisations face come the end of the year; nor does it revive plans for a six-year reporting cycle; and it doesn’t meaningfully reconnect with the <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/strategic-plan/">Australia Council’s 2014 Strategic Plan</a>, or the years of policy-making behind it. </p>
<p>As a blunder of the first water, the NPEA has been reduced in size, but remains visible. If Catalyst works, it will be duplicating the role of the Australia Council. If it doesn’t, it will be undermining it. </p>
<p>The only real way out of this problem is to seed the fund with new money, and make good in full the cuts to the federal agency. No doubt the minister has many requests on his Christmas list. He should put that one at the top.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Glover is a peer assessor for the Australia Council</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn receives funding from the ARC through a Linkage Project on the History of Exhibitions of Australian Art and has been a recipient of an ARC LIEF grant for Design and Art of Australia Online.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Following a sustained and vocal campaign by the arts sector, the controversial National Program for Excellence in the Arts has been rethought and renamed. Should we be celebrating or concerned?Stuart Glover, Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing, The University of QueenslandJoanna Mendelssohn, Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW SydneyJulian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/467512015-08-30T20:05:36Z2015-08-30T20:05:36ZThe Senate Inquiry into Arts Funding: a new live performance work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93141/original/image-20150827-381-1lb2ulw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If we have learned anything thus far it is this: one man’s excellence is another man’s mediocrity. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In live performance, when developing a new work and before getting to the final rehearsal period, previews and season, there is often a public showing. It’s an opportunity to get wide-ranging feedback, refine your research, adjust your process, and source new ideas and inspiration.</p>
<p>On August 5 in Melbourne, the arts sector’s new work, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/arts-organisations-condemn-brandis-budget-decisions-at-senate-inquiry-20150805-gisbxl.html">The Senate Inquiry into Arts Funding</a>, was the equivalent of a public showing. </p>
<p>The work was established in response to Minister for the Arts George Brandis’ <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/arts-minister-brandis-responds-to-feedback-on-national-program/6651316">diversion of $104.7 million</a> from the Australia Council to the new <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/national-programme-for-excellence-in-the-arts">National Program for Excellence in the Arts</a> (NPEA) earlier this year.</p>
<p>In Perth tomorrow there will be a <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/Arts_Funding/Public_Hearings">standing-room only preview</a> of this “new work”, followed by a national tour comprising Hobart, Brisbane, Adelaide, hopefully Sydney, and a much-anticipated regional outing in Far North Queensland.</p>
<p>By all accounts the Melbourne event was an unusual affair for a senate inquiry, marked by an unfolding narrative, intermittent applause and a <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/Arts_Funding/Public_Hearings">high rotation of characters</a> that would please the most rabid exponents of theatresports. </p>
<p>I offer my best efforts from that day, below:</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uf3TKP1GjWE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>As is often the case between a “public showing” and the actual season, new and critical information has emerged in subsequent conversations and consultations within the sector. Some startling statistics may help to create a potentially compelling narrative.</p>
<p>The arts minister’s profiling of arts touring during <a href="http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/news/senator-brandis-admits-no-consultation-arts-sector">Senate Estimates in May</a> was flawed. In his words at the time:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[L]et us not forget that the major performing arts companies are the heart and soul of the performing arts sector in this country. They are the big employers of artists and arts workers. They are the people who undertake most of the touring, including the regional touring, as well as the international touring. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He continued that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They [the AMPAG companies] are the people who provide the performances that the great audiences of Australia enjoy. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The second point is manifestly false, as was outlined <a href="https://theconversation.com/philosophy-vs-evidence-is-no-way-to-orchestrate-cultural-policy-42487">previously on The Conversation</a>.</p>
<p>And the first point, regarding touring?</p>
<p>The “small-to-medium and independent” arts sector <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/08/20/big-companies-tour-more-do-they-george-bungles-the-arts-again/">accounts for</a> 82% of Australia’s international touring and 73% of the country’s national and regional touring. </p>
<p>The small-to-medium and independent arts sector’s funding allocation from the Australia Council is around <a href="http://artfacts.australiacouncil.gov.au/overview/support-15/ov-fact76/">30% of the organisation’s total budget</a>, which means it punches way above its weight. </p>
<p>In 2013, Australia’s 145 so-called “<a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/06/15/the-145-arts-companies-gutted-by-brandis-swingeing-cuts/">key organisations</a>” (a sizable chunk of the small-to-medium sector) received <a href="http://artfacts.australiacouncil.gov.au/overview/support-15/ov-fact76/">A$21 million from the Australia Council</a>. That’s almost the same as just one of the 28 <a href="http://www.ampag.com.au/">Australian Major Performing Arts Group</a> (AMPAG) companies, Opera Australia (OA), which received <a href="https://d30bjm1vsa9rrn.cloudfront.net/res/pdfs/2014%20pdfs/oa-financial-report.pdf">A$20.5 million</a> that year. </p>
<p>OA’s <a href="https://d30bjm1vsa9rrn.cloudfront.net/res/pdfs/opera-australia-2014-financial-report.pdf">2014 Financial Report</a> shows that it is carrying an accumulated deficit of almost A$10 million, as the group’s current liabilities exceeded current assets by A$9,662,802.</p>
<p>The company has an operating deficit of A$2 million. As <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/opera/opera-australia-2014-report-bigger-audience-fails-to-equal-big-enough-returns-20150505-gguc6m.html">was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald</a> in May, OA chief executive Craig Hassall considers this “an outcome we cannot sustain over time”.</p>
<p>You really have to feel for OA. First, it has to negotiate and explain this not-inconsiderable deficit. On top of that, its <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/george-brandis-turns-arts-into-political-football-with-1047m-australia-council-cuts-20150513-gh0d0n.html">hasty public support</a> for the NPEA puts it in a rather invidious position. </p>
<p>Any funding OA might receive from the NPEA – in addition to the ringfenced <a href="https://theconversation.com/majors-and-the-majority-planning-for-australias-artistic-legacy-starts-now-45290">funding arrangements</a> the AMPAG companies continue to enjoy through the Australia Council – could be construed as propping up an ailing arts company and perceived as contingent on the OA’s public support for the NPEA. </p>
<p>Let me be very clear: I’m sure that’s not the case in reality but it’s an industry perception that’s gathering momentum. </p>
<p>And as we know from all the business workshops artists have been encouraged to undertake over the last decade, in business perception is everything. Any funds OA might receive from the NPEA will now be subject to intense public and government scrutiny. </p>
<p>This may adversely affect the allegiance of the company’s sponsors and audiences, who might become wary of associating with an arts company that’s <em>perceived</em> to be politically partisan. </p>
<h2>Another plotline</h2>
<p>Another plotline that might be developed in this “new work”, The Senate Inquiry into Arts Funding, is the allocation of Australia Council funds to the classical music heritage sector. </p>
<p>In 2013, orchestras and opera account for <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/news/australia_council_annual_report_2012-13.pdf">more than 75% of the major organisations allocation</a>. Individually, the major organisations have received [sustained and stinging criticism](<a href="http://dailyreview.com.au/editorial-shameful-silence-over-arts-cuts/25269">sustained and stinging criticism</a> over their silence to the minister’s cuts but one wonders how the dance and state theatre companies feel when the funding discrepancy in their pool is so inequitable. </p>
<p>Is it actually worth the bad blood? Will the rest finally join Circus Oz, the State Theatre Company of SA and Black Swan <a href="http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/news/arts-leaders-head-canberra-challenge-funding-reforms">in voicing concern</a>?</p>
<p>Banned, censored or self-censored, the major organisations’ deafening silence simply adds to that of the Australia Council, which has not asserted <a href="https://theconversation.com/arms-length-forget-it-its-back-to-the-menzies-era-for-arts-funding-41743">its independence</a>; nor has it advocated for the arts and artists in the precise circumstances in which such advocacy is critical. </p>
<p>Had ABC management taken this path the national broadcaster would have been reduced to a radio service long ago. The Australia Council and the major organisations are fast losing their relevance as principal players in Australia’s cultural narrative. </p>
<p>They are now officially characters in the tired “old work”: still living at home, too scared to speak up, unable to save enough for their first trip overseas, waiting for their parents’ approval or jockeying for Daddy’s patronage.</p>
<p>Fortunately, a whole new cast of protagonists is rising up to create a wholly new narrative in which equity, integrity, distributed authority, artistic and intellectual rigour are placed centre-stage. </p>
<p>The new cast will be revealed during the national tour of this new work – and the new work’s “excellence” will be partly judged on that cast’s performance. Although, if we have learned anything thus far in this story-in-the-making it is this: one man’s excellence is another man’s mediocrity. </p>
<p>The strangest plot twist of all may yet be the manifestation of any Coalition politician whose ghostly absence in Melbourne hung like Banquo over the proceedings. Could Australia’s latest new work simply be a rehashing of Shakespeare? Sounds like a bell already rung.</p>
<p>Roll up. Roll up.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Pledger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In live performance, when developing a new work and before getting to the final rehearsal period, previews and season, there is often a public showing. Enter the Senate Inquiry, stage left.David Pledger, Artist, PhD Student, School of Architecture, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/459502015-08-20T05:54:43Z2015-08-20T05:54:43ZThe fun and funding fears for children’s theatre in Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92208/original/image-20150818-5110-kqyrzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 2014 Arts in Daily Life report found that 66% of Australians think the arts are important for child development. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://one.aap.com.au/#/search/children%20audience?q=%7B%22pageSize%22:25,%22pageNumber%22:2%7D">AAP/Waltraud Grubitzsch</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Children’s theatre doesn’t often make headlines, but it did last month when <a href="https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/the-rabbits-melbourne">Rabbits</a>, a co-production by <a href="https://opera.org.au/">Opera Australia</a> and Perth’s <a href="http://barkinggecko.com.au/">Barking Gecko Theatre Company</a>, collected four <a href="http://www.helpmannawards.com.au/">Helpmann Awards</a>: Best New Australian Work, Best Presentation for Children, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score. </p>
<p>Based on the book by <a href="http://www.johnmarsden.com.au/">John Marsden</a>, illustrated by <a href="http://www.shauntan.net/">Shaun Tan</a> and featuring music by <a href="http://www.katemillerheidke.com/home">Kate Miller-Heidke</a> and a libretto by <a href="https://australianplays.org/playwright/CP-lakat">Lally Katz</a>, the work premiered at Perth Festival in February to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/feb/18/the-rabbits-review-triumphant-adaptation-of-a-deeply-tragic-story">rave reviews</a>. In October, it will be staged at the Melbourne Festival. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92210/original/image-20150818-5103-tfua2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92210/original/image-20150818-5103-tfua2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92210/original/image-20150818-5103-tfua2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92210/original/image-20150818-5103-tfua2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92210/original/image-20150818-5103-tfua2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92210/original/image-20150818-5103-tfua2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92210/original/image-20150818-5103-tfua2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92210/original/image-20150818-5103-tfua2b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Opera Australia and Barking Gecko Theatre Company’s Rabbits.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/tatia/14f24d04c714532e?projector=1">Courtesy of Melbourne Festival</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The acclaim Rabbits has received provides a chance to celebrate the innovative, clever and dynamic work of children’s theatre companies around the country. It’s also an opportunity to consider the role of theatre in engaging our youngest and, arguably, our most important audiences, and the way <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/national-programme-for-excellence-in-the-arts">recent changes to arts funding</a> may impact on its production. </p>
<h2>Australia’s children’s theatre</h2>
<p>If you don’t have children or an interest in the field, you might not know that children’s theatre companies such as <a href="http://www.windmill.org.au">Windmill Theatre</a>, <a href="http://www.patchtheatre.org.au/">Patch Theatre</a>, <a href="http://www.polyglot.org.au/">Polyglot Theatre</a> and <a href="http://www.slingsby.net.au/">Slingsby</a> make some of Australia’s finest theatre. Their productions regularly appear on the international festival circuit, collecting awards and cementing Australia’s reputation as a pioneer of dynamic work.</p>
<p>In recent years theatre for babies, such as <a href="http://www.polyglot.org.au/performances/how-high-the-sky/">How High the Sky</a> by Polyglot Theatre, and <a href="http://dropbeartheatre.com/shows/tourable-shows/rain/">Rain: for babies and their carers</a> by independent company Drop Bear Theatre, has been leading the way in creating interactive multi-art form experiences. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91869/original/image-20150814-3572-1i5vksx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91869/original/image-20150814-3572-1i5vksx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91869/original/image-20150814-3572-1i5vksx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91869/original/image-20150814-3572-1i5vksx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91869/original/image-20150814-3572-1i5vksx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91869/original/image-20150814-3572-1i5vksx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91869/original/image-20150814-3572-1i5vksx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91869/original/image-20150814-3572-1i5vksx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Drop Bear Theatre’s Rain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://dropbeartheatre.com/shows/tourable-shows/rain/">courtesy Drop Bear Theatre</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The major funded companies represent only a small proportion of the theatre made for children in Australia. There hasn’t been a national review of theatre for young people since a <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20140212041715/http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/resources/reports_and_publications/subjects/youth/touring_theatre_for_young_people_under_12_years_of_age">2005 Australia Council for the Arts report on touring children’s theatre by Ian Roberts</a>. A search of arts centre, festival and school touring programs suggests that the majority of children’s theatre is still created and performed by individuals, partnerships and small collectives. </p>
<p>Like the larger companies’ more visible productions, independent children’s theatre is often highly skilled, lovingly made and carefully tailored to its audience. Standout productions in recent years include <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44v2qYwF4PU">Nests</a> by Gillian Howell, Ken Evans and Rebecca Russell, and <a href="http://squaringthewheel.blogspot.com.au/">Squaring the Wheel</a> by Jens Altheimer. </p>
<p>This work may be excellent but a lot of it doesn’t fit <a href="https://theconversation.com/getting-with-the-program-brandis-releases-his-draft-arts-funding-guidelines-44186">the draft guidelines</a> for the National Program for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA) because it is made by individuals. At this stage, collectives may be eligible to apply for funding but this is yet to be confirmed by the minister in the final guidelines. </p>
<h2>Life as an independent children’s theatre maker</h2>
<p>Although independent children’s theatre isn’t heavily publicised, it’s around, if you know where to look – at festivals and in libraries, community arts centres, schools, kindergartens, outdoor public spaces, small theatres and museums. </p>
<p>Artists mostly create this type of theatre in their own time and out of their own pockets. They usually do all the administration, marketing and production management tasks themselves. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91871/original/image-20150814-3611-tz6v8l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91871/original/image-20150814-3611-tz6v8l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91871/original/image-20150814-3611-tz6v8l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91871/original/image-20150814-3611-tz6v8l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91871/original/image-20150814-3611-tz6v8l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91871/original/image-20150814-3611-tz6v8l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91871/original/image-20150814-3611-tz6v8l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91871/original/image-20150814-3611-tz6v8l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How High the Sky.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.polyglot.org.au/performances/how-high-the-sky/">courtesy of Polyglot Theatre</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>None receive ongoing operational funding and they are often paid meagre fees by venues and programmers. Their work is unlikely to attract philanthropic sponsorship (another <a href="http://arts.gov.au/nationalexcellenceprogram">assessment criterion</a> of the NPEA) because it doesn’t have a high public profile. </p>
<p>Individual artists also lack the time to chase up this kind of financial support. If they apply for project funding from state or federal funding bodies they spend many unpaid weeks writing grant applications, knowing that the pool of money is too small for the number of worthy applications. </p>
<p>That pool has become smaller with the NPEA taking A$104.7 million from the Australia Council for the Arts’ budget over four years. </p>
<h2>Children’s access to theatre</h2>
<p>Children aren’t mentioned in the draft guidelines for the NPEA, either as creators or audiences. This is curious given that they make up roughly a fifth of the Australian population. “Audience appeal and demand” is one of the assessment criteria for this funding but blunt interpretations of this phrase can disadvantage child audiences. </p>
<p>Their demand for theatre is usually moderated by adults, who make bookings and pay for tickets on their behalf. The 2014 Australia Council report on arts participation, <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/research/arts-in-daily-life-australian-5432524d0f2f0.pdf">Arts in Daily Life: Australian Participation in the Arts </a>, found that adults who were not taken to arts events as children participate in the arts much less than adults who had regular arts experiences when they were young. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92018/original/image-20150817-5117-cnpvqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92018/original/image-20150817-5117-cnpvqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92018/original/image-20150817-5117-cnpvqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92018/original/image-20150817-5117-cnpvqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92018/original/image-20150817-5117-cnpvqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92018/original/image-20150817-5117-cnpvqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92018/original/image-20150817-5117-cnpvqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92018/original/image-20150817-5117-cnpvqz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Squaring the Wheel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/886oeai2tkx9lyt/AADxhURwSwe99bAY9Jy8B5Nva?dl=0&preview=HERO+IMAGE+Squaring+the+Wheel.jpg">Courtesy of Jens Altheimer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many children do not experience theatre because their families or schools don’t know about it, are not interested in it, or cannot access it because of cost or distance. </p>
<p>In the past, large numbers of children have been involved in theatre in other ways, such as by participating in school incursions or youth theatre, which has long been recognised as a power house of <a href="http://eprints.qut.edu.au/18906/">theatrical innovation</a>. Most of this work is delivered by independent artists. As funding is directed away from these programs, artists find it harder to survive and children’s access to theatre is reduced both now and in their future lives as adults. </p>
<h2>How should arts policy be made?</h2>
<p>The Arts in Daily Life report also found that 66% of Australians think the arts are important for child development, and 89% think arts education should be part of every Australian’s life. These are significant findings to ignore. But that’s the problem with the NPEA: it does not seem to be based on research or proper consultation. </p>
<p>Senator Brandis <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/senator-george-brandis-defends-budget-arts-funding-changes/6477672">has said</a> that an impetus for establishing the program was the number of artists who have complained to him that their work is not eligible for Australia Council funding or has been repeatedly rejected. </p>
<p>But if there are problems with the Australia Council’s eligibility guidelines or its implementation of peer assessment wouldn’t it be better to find out how to fix them rather than to set up a new funding body at great cost? </p>
<p>By embarking on an arts funding policy that ignores history, research and consultation, the government puts pressure on artists’ livelihoods and threatens the richness of children’s cultural lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45950/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Andersen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The success of the Opera Australia and Barking Gecko Theatre’s Rabbits offers a chance to celebrate the pioneering nature of children’s theatre in Australia.Jennifer Andersen, PhD Candidate, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/461862015-08-17T20:26:59Z2015-08-17T20:26:59ZTen dos and don'ts for thinking about arts funding and the NPEA<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92004/original/image-20150817-5083-yiorqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Artists must take the opportunity to sharpen their minds as well as their rhetoric. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">id-iom</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s a common nightmare. You’re on stage, about to perform. Suddenly your mind goes blank. Your lines desert you. You stumble, unsure of your moves. The cast is oblivious. The audience is hostile. Things go from bad to worse. What play are you in again? Your lack of preparation is plain for all to see. The moment goes on and on and on … endlessly.</p>
<p>Spare a thought for Senator Brandis, whose vision of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/national-programme-for-excellence-in-the-arts">National Program for Excellence in the Arts</a> (NPEA) is wobbling like cardboard scenery. The reading of the <a href="http://dailyreview.crikey.com.au/more-than-2200-submissions-lodged-to-senate-inquiry-into-arts-cuts/27216">more than 2,200 submissions</a> to the Senate Inquiry has just begun. But from examination of the tip of the iceberg – about <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/Arts_Funding/Submissions">430 are available online</a> at time of writing – most will not be supporting the planned changes. Reasons range from access and diversity issues, to disruptions in the national arts ecology.</p>
<p>The minister can put a spin on this – and does. But his arguments look tendentious. It takes a certain effrontery to lean on the major arts organisations (or cause them to be leant on) to stay silent and <a href="http://m.theaustralian.com.au/arts/arts-funding-change-should-only-worry-the-mediocre-brandis/story-e6frg8n6-1227465466356">then claim</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I haven’t seen a single word of criticism about the proposal from any of [these] companies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Foyer chit-chat is “boards and artists are not aligned” – which is one way of putting it. Protests that the Senate Inquiry is “a political exercise” ring equally hollow. Politics is what members of the Upper House are paid to engage in. </p>
<p>Former <a href="https://quadrant.org.au/">Quadrant </a> editor Keith Windschuttle might think the Minister’s cuts to the Australia Council’s budget “<a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/culture-shock-george-brandis-defends-arts-funding-changes/story-fn9n8gph-1227464576667">a stroke of genius</a>”. Most see them as an unwarranted attack on smaller arts organisations.</p>
<p>Behind the colour and movement, however, lies a persistent problem. Despite the Minister’s inability to articulate this in a non-<em><a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ad+hominem">ad hominem</a></em> way, it is worth serious consideration. How can common standards apply to a sector with so much difference? Artists must take the opportunity to sharpen their minds as well as their pens. The implications of the NPEA go beyond the polemical.</p>
<p>Given this, we have developed 10 dos and don’ts for thinking about the debate around “excellence” and the peer review grant process.</p>
<h2>Dos and Don'ts</h2>
<p>1) Do know the history of the Australia Council, both recent and early (it’s nearly 50 years old now). Read Justin Macdonnell’s <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/34470247?q&versionId=45409587">Arts, Minister?</a> (1992), still the best account of the beginnings of the agency and the ferocious politics around its principles of operation.</p>
<p>2) Don’t get lured into arguments about redistribution of existing funds. Or, if you do, keep the debate specific. It is easy for governments to play off cultural organisations against each other in a stoush about relative merit when absolute levels of support should also be a topic of discussion.</p>
<p>3) Do be aware that when it comes to political support for the arts it’s the middle against the extremes. Both Liberal and Labor parties shade off into indifference to the sector, if not hostility, the further you get to the edges. It’s a question of navigating the factions. The current Liberal government is controlled by the Right. But that dominance won’t last forever.</p>
<p>4) Do build alliances across the industry. Expressions of solidarity between artists and arts organisations are the most effective way of shaping (and resisting) initiatives handed down on high by governments. This is hard to achieve in such a diverse sector. But the benefits are potentially great.</p>
<p>5) Don’t play the personalities. Or not <em>just</em> the personalities. The current crisis is an expression of long-term systemic issues not just short-term ministerial opinion. These need illuminating.</p>
<p>6) Do become policy-literate. The best guide to what governments will do is what they have done. This applies not only to Australia’s own history, but to other countries’ policies as well. Past and comparative experience is a vital point of reference.</p>
<p>7) Don’t be cowed into staying silent. Bullying arts organisations is easy given their uneven public support. The support is there, but it’s sprinkled across myriad different institutions and audiences. Rolling over won’t work in the policy arena, however, any more than it does in the schoolyard.</p>
<p>8) Do feel free to change your mind. Art is about commitment and vision. Policy is about effectiveness and outcomes. Your opinions should change as a) new information becomes available or b) the situation alters and requires a different response. Just because something was relevant 10 years ago doesn’t mean it’s relevant now.</p>
<p>9) Don’t be tricked into treating adjectives as nouns. If someone tells you they support “excellence” in the arts (or “innovation” or “equity”), ask them what they mean exactly. Ask for examples, and for the thinking behind those examples. Don’t debate the meaning of words unless they have a context to be meaningful in.</p>
<p>10) Do have a considered view. Change for change’s sake is time-consuming and costly. The important thing is to convert your opinion into a position, something other arts organisations, the sector, and the government, have to take seriously when considering the common good.</p>
<p>When it comes to culture, controversies usefully illuminate clandestine assumptions. It could be seen last year in the Minister’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/sydney-biennale-boycott">ill-tempered reaction to the Sydney Biennale walk-out</a>. It can be seen again in his NPEA proposal that is, in part, a response to that earlier brouhaha.</p>
<p>Controversies also raise important questions about how culture is to be valued. Senator Brandis says the decision to sequester a chunk of the Council’s budget for “excellent” art <a href="http://m.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/culture-shock-george-brandis-defends-arts-funding-changes/story-fn9n8gph-1227464576667">was based on a realisation</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>there was really nothing for the arts minister to do as a result of the arrangements left to us by the Labor Party.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the problem of defining “excellence” is a deep one, and deserves better treatment than this.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/IJEFM-06-2015-0026">We have recently argued</a> that the assessment of culture is fraught with dispute about where its value really lies. Does it lie with creators, “users”, the general public (including “non-users”), with future “users”, with history’s judgement?</p>
<p>It is an irreducibly political problem, and has to be dealt with in a dialogic way, not hidden behind the veil of ministerial tastes.</p>
<p>Senator Brandis <a href="http://m.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/culture-shock-george-brandis-defends-arts-funding-changes/story-fn9n8gph-1227464576667">argues</a> that the NPEA is an attempt to make funding “more democratic”. But awarding subsidy according to vague criteria, with the ability to veto decisions, and give money in secret, is the opposite of that.</p>
<p>Everyone involved in culture – practitioners, politicians and audiences – is implicated in <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/IJEFM-06-2015-0026">a problem of defining value</a> that is complex, heterogeneous and contentious. If the Australia Council struggles to achieve perfect outcomes, it’s not because it is a “closed shop”. It’s because delivering equitable, effective arts funding is very difficult.</p>
<p>The answer is not to brusquely quarantine funds for personal bestowal. It is to rethink the balance of interests in arts subsidy holistically.</p>
<p>It’s time for the Minister to wake up to that reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46186/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the Linkage project Laboratory Adelaide: The Value of Culture.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tully Barnett receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the Linkage project Laboratory Adelaide: The Value of Culture.</span></em></p>How can common standards apply to a sector with so much difference? Artists must take the opportunity to sharpen their minds as well as their rhetoric. The implications of the NPEA go beyond the polemical.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityTully Barnett, Research Fellow, School of Humanities, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/448422015-07-20T20:10:55Z2015-07-20T20:10:55ZWriters and publishers are all at sea under Brandis and the NPEA<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88928/original/image-20150720-21066-wc9aos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=510%2C112%2C3949%2C2523&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Making a splash in letters may be harder under changes to Australian arts funding.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Orange County Archives Follow</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>George Brandis is all loved up about literature. He self-describes as “<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/was-minister-for-books-george-brandis-reading-poetry-at-his-own-expense-20150626-ghytgp.html">Minister for Books</a>”; he values his <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2015/05/23/inside-george-brandiss-australia-council-arts-heist/14323032001913%20-%20judging-the-decision">humble arts degree</a> over his law colours; he was impressively unapologetic about his <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/attorneygeneral-george-brandis-defends-13000-taxpayerfunded-library-20130930-2upee.html">A$13,100 splurge</a> of public money on a professional library and his <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/too-big-for-his-books-brandis-library-is-shelved-20131014-2viww.html">A$7,000 spend</a> on a splendid set of bookshelves – not to mention showing <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/attorneygeneral-george-brandis-busted-reading-poetry-books-during-estimates-hearing-20150604-ghgl8z.html">bald-faced stoicism</a> when ribbed for reading bush ballads in Senate Estimates. </p>
<p>What’s more, Brandis’ taste in <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/brought-to-book-how-the-taxpayers-built-george-brandis-a-library/story-fn59niix-1226730343959">political writing</a> is impressively even handed: JS Mill is there as a libertarian backbone – Brandis did an undergraduate honours thesis on Mill – and so are John Howard and Dick Cheney from the right, but then there is Robert Caro on Lyndon Johnson and David Marr on Tony Abbott on the left. </p>
<p>Heck, the guy has even <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/275300/1035824">edited his own tome</a>: a volume on contemporary liberalism with his best mate Don Markwell, Christopher Pyne’s higher-ed advisor. And yet …</p>
<p>And yet, it is hard right now to know what Minister Brandis, in his role as chief officer for the arts, has in mind for Australian writing and publishing: how he’d like to support it – whether at all, in fact – and, pressingly, whether he intends his new <a href="http://arts.gov.au/sites/default/files/about/Draft-Guidelines-National-Program-for-Excellence-in-the-Arts-Consultation-2015.pdf">National Program for Excellence in the Arts</a> (NPEA) to have any role in supporting Australian writing. Some of the signs aren’t good.</p>
<p>George Brandis’ last 12 months as arts minister have turned the nation’s arts funding on its head. Last July, he delivered the previous Labor Government’s restructure of the Australia Council and its programs; in December, his Prime Minister announced a A$6 million raid (over three years) on the Australia Council budget to establish a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/government-give-and-take-to-the-struggling-book-industry-20141216-1288u1.html">Book Council of Australia</a> (giving to, and taking from, the arts on the same day); in May, the 2015-16 budget <a href="http://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/grants-and-funding/ben-eltham/budget-shock-decimates-australia-council-248017">flagged a further A$29m cut</a> to the Australia Council’s annual allotment, or A$104.8 million over four years.</p>
<p>We know now that <a href="http://dailyreview.crikey.com.au/npea-george-brandis-excellent-adventure/26277">A$20 million or so</a> of that figure – each year for the next four – will be given to the NPEA for distribution from inside of the Ministry of Arts. Brandis has suggested the NPEA’s role is as an alternative or competing funding source to the Australia Council to support the kinds of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-budget-to-rebuild-trust-but-not-trust-in-the-australia-council-41750">excellence</a>” (always the watchword in arts funding) that the Council doesn’t.</p>
<h2>Radical challenge to independent arts practice</h2>
<p>The establishment of the NPEA is, of course, the most radical of these manoeuvres. In some sense it is the biggest change to the principles and mechanisms of national arts funding <a href="https://theconversation.com/arms-length-forget-it-its-back-to-the-menzies-era-for-arts-funding-41743">since the establishment of the Australia Council</a> in stages from 1967 through 1975. </p>
<p>The Council is both much-loved and long-criticised, but Brandis’ raid on its budget is the most audacious change to a four-decade bipartisan consensus about the best way to fund non-government arts activity.</p>
<p>Australia was one of a number of nations in the 1960s and 1970s (along with Scandinavians and the USA) that set up arts councils at arm’s length from government (following the United Kingdom’s post-war example) in order to fund the kind of independent arts activity seen as appropriate to a modern western state. </p>
<p>While some other western nations maintain direct ministerial control or overview over such funding programs (Austria, for example), the arts council model provides a comforting structural separation between government and the arts.</p>
<p>This arm’s length separation supports the illusion or reality of a sphere of arts practice that is unpenetrated by the state, by government, or by party political interests. This space of free discourse and practice is a powerful (western democratic) liberal ideal. </p>
<p>Mostly, we all agree it is good to have such a sphere, and so paradoxically we see it necessary for the state act to protect or create such a space and to subvent the actions and voices of non-state interests operating there. Art can be considered a kind of privileged speech: first, often we see it as having its own kinds of claims to truth or knowledge (equal to but different to the truth claims of science or philosophy); and second, we privilege it by acting as a polity to ensure that art is then produced (that art happens) and that art’s particular kind of cultural and truth work is undertaken.</p>
<p>The independence or quasi-independence of this sphere of arts practice has been ensured, or at least imagined as ensured, by putting the artists themselves in charge of decision-making. This artistic autonomy is in some sense a modernist conceit. Why assume that artists and arts workers, of all of us, best know art when they see it? But then who else should decide? If not artists, who? In some sense, surely politicians and governments are the least fit alternative. </p>
<p>We arrive thus at the general endorsement of peer assessment of arts projects at arm’s length from governmental and party political influence.</p>
<p>Interestingly, where culture concerns whole populations (such as library services for the entire nation or an entire state) we let government in and are more comfortable with shorter-than-arm’s-length governance mechanisms. But where art is concerned with exploring the differential politics and identity questions within the community and between sections of the community, we prefer for government to act at arm’s length. </p>
<h2>Arts and politics</h2>
<p>One reason, then, for Minister Brandis’ entry into direct arts funding is that he correctly perceives that funded independent arts practice (if funded independent arts practice is not an impossible thing) has its own politics. And these politics do not necessarily represent, or seek to represent, the interests of the government or of the wider community. </p>
<p>Partly these politics are organised around the pursuit of a freedom for artists to speak. This is generally a given, although it is complicated by a desire or demand from artists that they be funded to do so. Funded “arts-speech” has been seen as an end in itself. </p>
<p>This straight demand for funding support for artists to speak (or to operate as some kind of community barometer or political touch-paper) is further complicated by arts funding being tethered to other kinds of cultural policy interests. As well as creating and supporting a space for arts-speech, the nation-state has an economic interest in developing sustainable cultural industries building and social policy interests in, say, developing universal literacy and specific cultural literacies. </p>
<p>The other politics of the funded independent arts, beyond speech-rights, are the politics of the artistic works and of practice itself. Brandis doesn’t seem to have much quibble with the politics of the major performing arts and of the heritage arts – and has <a href="https://theconversation.com/brandis-is-waging-a-culture-war-artists-must-take-direct-action-42615">funnelled cash that way</a> – but the politics of individual and radical arts practice – more left wing, more concerned with identity, more post-structural, less obviously audience orientated – seem to leave him cold.</p>
<p>However, because Brandis’ NPEA is not supported by new government money, but by a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-14/changes-to-arts-funding-disastrous/6471338">cut to the Australia Council funds</a> that have been used to support independent arts practice, the minister’s NPEA initiative is perceived by many in the sector as rewarding his own allies and supporting his own politics at a cost to arts practice and arts politics that he doesn’t support.</p>
<p>As a badge-carrying libertarian and fan of John Stuart Mill, Minister Brandis is pursuing a strange path if he wishes his and the government’s actions to be seen as free from political bias and meddling. I am sure Brandis sees the NPEA as a reasonable redress of the systemic left-wing politics in funded independent and in small-to-medium arts practice. But as a ministerial instrument, the NPEA will never be seen as independent of governmental interference. </p>
<p>While it might be defended as another instance of government acting to ensure a diversity of voices are heard, it is hard to argue that the voices Brandis seeks to sponsor – conservative, normative, and popularist – don’t already get a pretty fair go. It is a problematic way of addressing a relatively small problem – even a non-problem – that of a funded independent arts sector that tends to speak against the government and against the present government’s politics. </p>
<p>In the end, limiting rather than encouraging independent arts practice – even if such practitioners bite the Minister’s hand as he reluctantly signs them a cheque – is something we might expect of a much narrower democracy than our own.</p>
<h2>The NPEA and writing</h2>
<p>The draft <a href="https://theconversation.com/getting-with-the-program-brandis-releases-his-draft-arts-funding-guidelines-44186">NPEA guidelines</a> – released earlier this month – do not seem to have been created with literature and publishing in mind. In fact, they don’t mention literature, writing, writers, or publishing at all. </p>
<p>The guidelines are drafty rather than fulsome, but various things are ruled as fundable: performances, exhibitions, tours, new work and festivals for a start. And elsewhere various other things are ruled out: individuals (so no writer’s grants, I presume), <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-country-for-new-videogames-brandis-and-abbott-are-playing-with-our-creative-future-44309">interactive games</a>, prizes, training, and, blessedly, <a href="http://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/grants-and-funding/richard-watts/here-they-are-npea-draft-guidelines-released-248586">eisteddfods</a>.</p>
<p>That would seem to leave the possibility of support for writers’ tours, writers’ festivals, publications perhaps, maybe workshops, international writer visits and residences; but in the end, I suspect not much NPEA cash will be coming the way of the writing sector.</p>
<p>The NPEA’s most significant impact on writing and literature will likely come from the cuts to the Australia Council’s grants budget. The Council’s six–year funding program for major organisations <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/australia-council-cuts-sixyear-funding-in-wake-of-brandis-budget-cuts-dance-protests-planned-20150522-gh7694.html">has already been suspended</a>. Thirty or more writing organisations that have been previously funded as key organisations were candidates for six-year funding. </p>
<p>Together, those publishers, journals, festivals and writers centres constitute the bulk of the significant NGOs in the literary sector. Literature is a mix of writers working as freelancers, profit-seeking publishers, bookshops, government-funded libraries and these small but important NGOs.</p>
<p>Also endangered are the continuation of funding for individual writers (a key role for the old Literature Board) and project grants for small presses, smaller journals and magazines, and for literary events in regional areas away from the major festivals. </p>
<p>Sensibly enough, the Australia Council Board, which is <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2015/05/23/inside-george-brandiss-australia-council-arts-heist/14323032001913#.VWz3mVOUevV">rumoured to have</a> considered resigning en masse following the announcement of the NPEA, seems to be biding its time, leaving necessary policy and funding changes until after the establishment of the NPEA. </p>
<p>The Council will likely adjust its own guidelines and focus in light of the NPEA’s activities and the bite-sized chunk that the Minister’s new program has eaten up. Brandis might see the Council and the NPEA as competitors in the funding landscape, but eventually they are likely to be complements. </p>
<p>The bottom line for literature is that, even if the sector maintains its modest share of the Australia Council funding (around 3%), it will receive a smaller overall serving of government funding.</p>
<h2>Book Council of Australia</h2>
<p>The other cannibal at the Australia Council feast is the Book Council of Australia (BCA). First mooted <a href="https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-218/when-they-come-to-save-books-what-will-they-save/">four years ago</a> and <a href="http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/item/31949">announced late last year</a>, little is known about it. </p>
<p>There was a squall of complaint from the arts sector last December when it was revealed that the BCA is to be funded by cuts to the Australia Council, but no-one knew then that this was just the entrée before the NPEA sat down at the table. </p>
<p>Maybe, under Brandis, we are to witness the Australia Council being eaten bit by bit.</p>
<p>The Book Council’s immediate brief would seem to be to <a href="http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/item/31949">support publishers and reading</a> rather than the supporting more radical elements of literary practice. This reflects a government interest in the sustainability of publishing industry and encouraging young people to read. These are both laudable goals. </p>
<p>The risk is that they will come at the expense of two other categories of literary activity and funding: grants for individual writers and grants for political forms of writing in magazines and journals.</p>
<p>The riskiest grant investments by government in the literary sphere tend to be the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/last-literature-grants-before-australia-council-clears-the-quagmire-david-brooks-a-100000-fellowship-winner-20141206-121s2w.html">A$1.5 to $2 million spent each year on individual grants</a> (last year there were 42 grants). About 50% of such grants bear fruit as published works down the track, but these schemes are not beloved by government. </p>
<p>Who wants to fund an obscure poet or novelist for an unwritten work, when government literary prizes, the real growth area of the past decade, ensure only the best are rewarded and the politicians get to hand out public money while out in their best frocks? </p>
<p>Prizes are useful income for writers and are useful for symbolic signalling to readers, but addressing the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-times-are-authors-worth-as-much-as-athletes-29249">generally penurious circumstances of writers</a> means individual grants to create new work are important too.</p>
<p>A genuine target of this government, and one that might need to be most in the mind of Australia Council and the Book Council, is funding for literary journals and magazines. Going back to the politicisation of the <a href="http://www.menziescollection.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/biogs/E000077b.htm">Commonwealth Literary Fund</a> in the 1940s and 1950s, and most recently complaints about the <a href="https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2013/01-02/the-literature-board-s-new-low/">funding and de-funding of Quadrant</a>, funding for small magazines has been an ideological sore-point with both the left and right. </p>
<p>In 2012, Quadrant, the largest right-wing journal, <a href="https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2012/12/a-new-low-from-the-literature-board/">received a haircut</a> from the Literature Board. But now the funding for the left wing of the small-press magazines – such as <a href="https://griffithreview.com/">Griffith Review</a>, <a href="http://meanjin.com.au/">Meanjin</a> and particularly <a href="https://overland.org.au/2015/07/freethearts-this-friday/">Overland</a> – is less certain. </p>
<p>As a spectator on literary policy and funding, I’d suggest the biggest casualty of Labor’s restructure of the Australia Council, including the demise of the Literature Board, the subsequent Brandis cuts to the Australia Council, the arrival of an NPEA and the tardy emergence of the Book Council of Australia, is the idea or possibility of sensible and co-ordinated policy-making. </p>
<p>Policy-making for the literary sphere has always been a bit haphazard, but one advantage of the old Literature Board was the existence of a single expert body that had some overview of the development needs of the entire writing sector. </p>
<p>The Board could seek to spend its relatively modest <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/workspace/uploads/files/news/annual-report-2013-14.pdf">A$5.4 million budget</a> in light of what it saw. Our best hope for this kind of overview is now from the still-to-arrive Book Council of Australia. </p>
<p>But the last 18 months has seen first Labor destabilise literary funding and policy in its re-invention of the Australia Council and now the LNP Government turn the boat right over in the water. Maybe it was time for radical change, but at the moment it seems to be change for change’s sake with no point on the horizon marked out and no charts drawn for how we should get there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44842/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Glover is a former member of the now defunct Literature Board of the Australia Council but remained a peer assessor for Literature for the Council in 2015. He was also, until recently, Chair of the Queensland Literary Awards Association Inc.</span></em></p>It’s hard to work out how funding for literature – if at all – fits into the draft guidelines of the new National Program for Excellence in the Arts. So what are the politics, and problems, at play?Stuart Glover, Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/443092015-07-07T02:06:56Z2015-07-07T02:06:56ZNo country for new videogames: Brandis and Abbott are playing with our creative future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87429/original/image-20150706-17490-160c82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Escape From Woomera is renowned as one of the forebears of "serious games" – what chance would it stand under new government funding guidelines?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">By Escape from Woomera development team, via Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recently-published draft guidelines for the <a href="http://arts.gov.au/sites/default/files/about/Draft-Guidelines-National-Program-for-Excellence-in-the-Arts-Consultation-2015.pdf">National Program fo Artistic Excellence</a> (NPEA) make it clear the body – under the direction of Arts Minister George Brandis – will not fund “interactive games”. That news comes on the back of the government’s <a href="http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/05/government-pulls-funding-for-aussie-video-games-industry-in-federal-budget/">cessation of the Australian Interactive Games Fund</a> in the May 2014 budget, removing A$10 million from the Australian games industry. Such moves are counterproductive to Australia’s justifiably renowned games development industry. </p>
<p>If you ask a member of the international videogame industry to name a videogame created in Australia, chances are the game they name won’t be a commercial blockbuster, but a small art project released more than a decade ago. Created in 2004, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/arts/blog/Daniel-Golding/videogames-politics-Escape-From-Woomera-130901/">Escape From Woomera</a> shone a light on the state of the Howard government’s refugee detention camps.</p>
<p>While media were not allowed to enter those camps, the Escape From Woomera team collaborated with journalists and inmates to reproduce the harsh environment virtually for Australian citizens to see what was being done in their name.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock was unimpressed that a situation the government tried so hard to hide was not only publicly available, but publicly navigable. More surprising, perhaps, was that refugee and human rights advocates (including then Human Rights Commissioner Dr. Sev Ozdowski) <a href="http://www.humanrights.gov.au/news/media-releases/escape-game-not-laughing-matter">condemned the game</a> for using the issue of asylum seeker detention as the topic for an entertainment product.</p>
<p>Such condemnation for a game that in hindsight is so clearly sided with the refugees stranded in detention camps such as Woomera (and now Manus Island and Nauru) is understandable as a popular connotation of “videogames” as “entertainment products” rather than “art form” persists even today. </p>
<p>Whereas cinema, literature, dance, music, and theatre can all be either entertainment product or serious and political artwork (or both), videogames have historically struggled to be considered by a broader culture as capable of serious, political messages.</p>
<p>Escape From Woomera’s international cultural significance is that it was one of the first videogames that showed a broader population that videogames can be artistic and political. It was not produced by a commercial publisher. Its developers received a A$25,000 grant from the Australia Council.</p>
<p>Despite the Howard Government trying to save face, and criticism from refugee advocates unfamiliar with the videogame form, the Australia Council <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/30/1051381998181.html">defended its funding</a> of the game, and history has proven it right.</p>
<p>Escape From Woomera is now renowned as one of the forebears of what are now sometimes called “serious games”. It regularly appears in art galleries and exhibitions around the world, and is held up as exemplary in numerous game design textbooks. It put Australian videogame development on the international map, and it put videogames internationally on the cultural map.</p>
<p>Now that Attorney General and Arts Minister George Brandis <a href="https://theconversation.com/arms-length-forget-it-its-back-to-the-menzies-era-for-arts-funding-41743">has gutted Australia Council funding</a> to fund the NPEA, we can confidently say that if Escape From Woomera was proposed in today’s climate it would never see the light of day.</p>
<p>For one, the ministerial approval that Brandis would have to personally give to any NPEA-funded project would be unlikely for any project that criticised the government’s brutal and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-27/unhcr-report-on-nauru/5118588">internationally condemned</a> refugee policy. </p>
<p>That the peer-review system of the Australia Council is likely to be replaced in many cases with Brandis’ office deciding case-by-case what art is funded is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/jul/04/australias-arts-funding-crisis-george-brandis-one-man-show?CMP=share_btn_tw">the major criticism the NPEA has received to date</a>, as it essentially replaces a strong funding body for Australian culture with state-sanctioned art.</p>
<p>As mentioned at the outset, <a href="http://arts.gov.au/sites/default/files/about/Draft-Guidelines-National-Program-for-Excellence-in-the-Arts-Consultation-2015.pdf">the draft guidelines</a> for the NPEA explicitly state that “interactive games” will not be eligible for funding. Even before the political considerations, that would instantly exclude projects such as Escape From Woomera from funding possibilities.</p>
<p>This explicit exclusion of games from artistic funding in this year’s budget follows on from the abrupt cancellation of the half-complete Interactive Media Fund in last year’s budget as part of the government’s cuts to Screen Australia. The fund provided an exciting boost to a range of commercial game products and studios; its cancellation with <a href="http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/05/government-funding-for-games-pulled-the-australian-games-industry-reacts/">zero industrial consultancy</a> left the local game industry – which was adapting to a post-GFC world where many international publishers had already pulled out of Australia – reeling, with A$10 million removed from the fund overnight.</p>
<p>Brandis’s office bypasses peer-review to hand out cash to the <a href="http://www.artshub.com.au/au/news.aspx?contentTypeCatId=114&CategoryId=5212&ListingId=244056&HubId=0&CategoryGroupId=$%7Bmapfile_categorygroups:%7D">Australian Ballet School</a> and classical music recording label <a href="http://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/features/grants-and-funding/ben-eltham/exclusive-brandis-275-000-grant-to-melba-bypasses-scrutiny-245881">Melba Recordings</a> with one hand, and withdraws both artistic and industrial support for newer digital art forms such as videogames with the other. That signals a government whose cultural agenda is naive and Euro-centric at best and maliciously self-indulgent at worst.</p>
<p>Games such as Escape From Woomera, events like the <a href="http://freeplay.net.au">Freeplay Independent Games Festival</a> (on which I was a programming committee member last year) and <a href="http://gamemasters.acmi.net.au/">GameMasters</a>, and venues such as the <a href="http://www.acmi.net.au/">Australia Centre for the Moving Image</a> have long given Australia a reputation for being a hotbed of artistic practices around new media forms such as videogames. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, commercial successes such as <a href="http://fruitninja.com/">Fruit Ninja</a>, <a href="http://www.crossyroad.com/">Crossy Road</a>, <a href="http://www.appunwrapper.com/2014/11/19/framed-walkthrough-guide/">Framed</a>, and <a href="http://armello.com/">Armello</a> (the latter two of which were funded by the Interactive Media Fund before its cancellation) has given the Australian videogame industry the reputation of a community constantly adapting to difficult industrial situations.</p>
<p>The current government, it seems, has no interest in this reputation. One silver lining is that last month the Greens <a href="http://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/06/the-greens-secure-an-inquiry-into-the-state-of-the-australian-games-industry/">secured an inquiry into the Australian videogame industry</a> to see why the local industry has experienced contraction while the global videogame industry continues to grow. </p>
<p>This has been broadly met with cautious enthusiasm by the local industry, but any chance of this inquiry influencing the current government’s conservative cultural agenda seems slim, at best.</p>
<p>The actions of the Abbott government generally, and Brandis in particular, across their two budgets to date show nothing but ignorance and carelessness when it comes to Australia’s cultural and creative future, especially in regards to videogames.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44309/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brendan Keogh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This exclusion of games from artistic funding in this year’s budget follows the cancellation of the Interactive Media Fund in last year’s budget. Where to now for the Australian videogame industry?Brendan Keogh, PhD Candidate, Game Studies, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/441762015-07-05T20:14:41Z2015-07-05T20:14:41ZWe have a ‘show tunes’ government, with an arts policy to match<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87085/original/image-20150702-27118-1vf1n7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stage musicals, such as the Rocky Horror Show, don't necessarily make sense. Nor do recent changes to arts funding. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Paul Miller</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I’ve never liked stage musicals. But a few years ago I started to see what makes the genre tick. It isn’t the stories, which demonstrate little logic. It is the feelings, reflected in big, emotion-laden “numbers”. What musicals lack in coherence they make up for in exhilaration. The idiocy of the plotting is thus disguised. Only later do we realise it doesn’t make any sense. </p>
<p>Last week the <a href="http://arts.gov.au/sites/default/files/about/Draft-Guidelines-Nat-Program-for-Excellence-in-the-Arts-Consultations.pdf">draft guidelines</a> for the proposed National Program for Excellence in the Arts were released. Interested parties have until the end of the month to deliver feedback. So far the response from the arts sector to George Brandis’s overhaul of its funding has been unenthusiastic.</p>
<p>Ted Snell <a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-council-changes-will-also-affect-university-museums-42486">has described</a> the catastrophic impact of the cuts to the Australia Council budget on university art museums. The culture industries are highly differentiated, composed of many micro-sectors, distinct yet interdependent. So expect more such reports, as the effects of the arts minister’s ill-conceived restructure continue to ripple outwards. </p>
<p>There’s nothing like a front-row seat for observing a disaster. </p>
<p>I am currently directing a play at <a href="http://redstitch.net/">Red Stitch Actors Theatre</a>, a small Melbourne-based company, now in its 14th year of operation. It’s interesting listening to the foyer chatter, which is far from entirely negative. This is the overwhelming response of artists to recent ministerial pronouncements: an attempt to make sense of them.</p>
<p>That’s proving hard because they don’t make sense. </p>
<p>The only thing clear is that for the performing arts the brunt of the cuts will fall on small companies. For anyone in doubt about the signal contribution these organisations make to our national culture they can read the 2002 <a href="http://mcm.arts.gov.au/sites/default/files/report-to-ministers-on-an-examination-of-the-small-to-medium-performing-arts-sector.pdf">Cultural Ministers Working Party Report</a>, my own 2005 Platform Paper <a href="https://currencyhouse.org.au/node/91">Trapped By the Past</a>, or the varied posts of <a href="http://www.theatrenetworkaustralia.com/">Theatre Network Australia</a>, the peak body for the sector. </p>
<p>Such theatres attract less than 30% of Australia Council funding, yet produce most of the new – that is, Australian – work. A parade of figures misses the point, however. Small companies are the pivot screw holding the art form together in this country. Historically they are the drivers of growth, philosophically the keeper of core values. </p>
<p>Which makes the minister’s casual destruction of his own policy framework all the more egregious. </p>
<p>Since the early 1980s the major problem confronting the council has been how to free up money for new projects and clients. This was the rationale behind so-called “ceiling funding” in 1983 (capping grants to major companies), the establishment of the Major Organisations Board in 1994 and the changes proposed by the Trainor Review in 2012.</p>
<p>One of the many non-sequiturs in the proposal for a National Program for Excellence in the Arts is that the Trainor Review was already pursuing that goal in its own reform agenda. If the government was thinking clearly it would see that the only justification for taking more money away from the council is to give it to the small to medium sector, predicated on the strategic values of innovation or diversity or both. </p>
<p>Instead, poor reasoning has been accompanied by an attitude of disregard, if not disrespect. Companies such as Red Stitch must mothball their government-solicited six-year funding applications – months of work – while the abrupt cessation of the council’s June grant round has sunk vital schemes and projects. </p>
<p>Artists who were doing it tough will do it tougher. For Red Stitch, an actors’ ensemble, it means another year of receiving well below the minimum wage. Inevitably, some will leave the business. And this company is one of theatre’s success stories, with less than 8% of revenue coming from federal subsidy (by contrast Opera Australia receives subsidies of around 20%). </p>
<p>Meanwhile the sector is engulfed in endless debate about the rights and wrongs of peer review. There are arguments on both sides. Peer review isn’t a religious tenet. It’s a decision-making mechanism. Like democracy, it is often seen as less worse than its alternatives. This means it needs reforming – something that, again, the Trainor Review was trying to do. </p>
<p>In cultural policy every good idea becomes a bad one if the timing is wrong or the context confused. Red Stitch must now work out what the Program for Excellence holds for them. The fact that there wasn’t initial clarity around the proposal is an indication it will probably do more harm than good. My guess is not that the minister is trying to do something contentious, but that he doesn’t know what he is doing at all. </p>
<p>As small companies are, yet again, dumped on from a great height, a key question is how the rest of the industry will respond. The Australia Council needs to stop obsessing about being seen as a captive of its clients and fulfil one of its most basic functions: being an advocate for the arts to the government, not the other way round. </p>
<p>Meanwhile the major organisations, where push-back has been minimal, must speak out. If this kind of incompetent ministerial behaviour remains unchallenged the chances are next time the shoe will be on the other foot. Major companies need broad support for their ever-burgeoning grant needs just as small ones need an expression of solidarity now.</p>
<p>Above all, the coherence of the government’s cultural policy needs interrogating, something <a href="http://artsreview.com.au/arts-sector-welcomes-senate-inquiry-into-npea/">the Senate review currently underway </a> will try to do and of which Robyn Archer’s <a href="http://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/artshub-conference/grants-and-funding/robyn-archer/the-most-important-thing-in-the-arts-248559">recent speech</a> to the ArtsHub conference is a good example.</p>
<p>Writing about the citizenship debate, Waleed Aly recently <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tough-talk-but-inconsistencies-lead-to-confusion-in-fight-against-terrorism-20150625-ghx86k">noted</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’re not on a search for consistency. We’re not committed to a series of carefully worked out principles … There’s lots of aggressive posturing that seems to regard any resistance … as vaguely seditious. Thus we end up with a collection of policies seemingly at odds with one another, unified only by their conspicuous toughness. Right now, that’s the only consistency you need. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Abbott government is all of a piece. What is true of its approach to terrorism is true of its approach to culture. The same meretricious rhetoric, the same divisive interventions. </p>
<p>All of which points up the lack of a coherent narrative in Australian politics right now, the triumph of melody-making over policy-making. What we’re getting are show tunes, duckie. What we’re getting is government we can whistle. </p>
<p><br>
<em>Dead Centre by Tom Holloway and Sea Wall by Simon Stephens directed by Julian Meyrick will run at Red Stitch Theatre from July 17 to August 15.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44176/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick is a freelance director currently working at Red Stitch Actors Theatre. He is not a member of the company and this article reflects his own views, and not the views of the company.</span></em></p>In cultural policy every good idea becomes a bad one if the context is confused. The fact there wasn’t initial clarity around the Program for Excellence indicates it will probably do more harm than good.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/441862015-07-02T07:02:03Z2015-07-02T07:02:03ZGetting with the Program: Brandis releases his draft arts funding guidelines<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87129/original/image-20150702-10603-1gedo2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Arts organisations will be supported if they can contribute to a 'confident, outward-focused arts sector'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Paul Miller</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Almost two months after the arts community discovered that A$104.7 million had been hived off the Australia Council’s budget and redirected to a new National Program for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA), <a href="http://arts.gov.au/nationalexcellenceprogram">the draft funding guidelines</a> have finally been released. Bearing in mind that the <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/media-centre/media-releases/australia-council-outlines-2015-16-budget-impact/">Australia Council’s first response</a> to the sudden reduction in its budget was to suspend six-year funding for arts organisations as well as cancelling its June funding round, this announcement can hardly be described as premature. </p>
<p>Arts practitioners, organisations and commentators are now anxiously parsing the document to try to see what is both written in the text and implied in the subtext. As actual knowledge of what is planned is relatively thin on the ground it is fair to assume there will be some fairly fanciful theories of the conspiracy kind. They may even turn out to be true – but no one (except perhaps the Minister for the Arts, George Brandis) actually knows.</p>
<p>There has been at least some effort to mollify those of us who support standard Australian spelling. “The Programme” is now “the Program”, a triumph for the Macquarie Dictionary and all who support it.</p>
<h2>Stability</h2>
<p>In more substantial matters there is some sense of continuity. </p>
<p>Those major organisations that were to receive six-year funding, thus enabling forward planning of major events, will now go to the ministry with a four-year schedule. </p>
<p>Exhibition programs for national and state galleries and museums (including the Asia-Pacific Triennial, the Biennale of Sydney and the Adelaide Biennial) will come under this program, as will Opera Australia, the Australian Ballet, Symphony orchestras and the major theatre companies. </p>
<p>There is a stated aim for the arts to become an aspect of international diplomacy. This is in line with Australian foreign policy directions for at least the last 50 years. </p>
<p>I understand that senior arts administrators were on the receiving end of discreet communications urging them not to protest at the cuts because they would be safe.</p>
<h2>Disruption</h2>
<p>Other areas of funding appear to be less secure. </p>
<p>While the Australia Council continues to fund individuals, NPEA will only fund organisations that have as their “principal purpose” the arts. This includes: the performing and visual arts, cross-artform and digital arts, arts training and collecting institutions whether at a national, regional or community level.</p>
<p>The schema would therefore appear to preclude most book publishers. Writers, who tend to be sole practitioners, are already disadvantaged in the funding game. As publishers are increasingly asking for a subsidy under circumstances where they used to offer an advance, this does not augur well for the national debate. </p>
<p>While experimental cross-disciplinary art forms will be supported “interactive games” are specifically excluded. Bearing in mind that some of the most innovative and creative narratives are now being spun in the form of games this is a fairly reactionary exclusion.</p>
<p>Arts organisations will be supported if they can contribute to a “confident, outward-focused arts sector”, which could be a problem for those creating reflective analytical works.</p>
<h2>Adding it up</h2>
<p>There is a problem with the money. The A$104.7 million deleted from the next four years of the Australia Council’s budget has been translated into A$80 million for the ministry. While A$24.7 million is not much in the big picture of a national budget, it is significant in the small arts budget. Is this A$24.7 million a reflection of the extra administration costs? If not, where is it going to?</p>
<p>Some of the draft guidelines sound familiar. </p>
<p>There have been many generations of arts policy documents since the 1970s and it is not a surprise to see that they have much in common. They all want to reward partnerships with private philanthropy. They all aspire to “excellence”. The real concern is how this excellence is defined – and who is responsible for choosing the selectors. </p>
<h2>No longer at arms length</h2>
<p>One of the reasons for the complexity of the Australia Council process is that it has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that funding remains arms length. It is separated from politicians, staff members and even individual board members. </p>
<p>By contrast, the Program has few safeguards. There are three assessors from the ministry and “independent assessors”, some of whom may be invited to become assessors by the ministry. </p>
<p>This is a fairly light process for those of us familiar with both the Australia Council and the <a href="http://www.arc.gov.au/applicants/assessor.htm">Ausralian Research Council</a>. </p>
<p>The person who acts on the assessors’ recommendation (or not) is the minister. This process gives to the minister far greater personal discretion than that given to previous arts ministers. </p>
<p>Of course, politicians in the past have intervened in the appointment of senior staff – John Gorton famously intervened to ensure that James Mollison became the first Director of the National Gallery in 1971 and it is unlikely that a Liberal prime minister would have made Donald Horne chair of the Australia Council in 1985.</p>
<p>But the last time a minister was able to micro-manage individual grants was when Menzies oversaw the Commonwealth Literary Fund – back in the 1950s.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44186/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn receives funding from the ARC through a Linkage Project on the History of Exhibitions of Australian Art and a LIEF grant for Design and Art of Australia Online.
</span></em></p>The draft guidelines for the new National Program for Excellence in the Arts have been released – now begins the work decoding of what’s written in the text and implied in the subtext.Joanna Mendelssohn, Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/433862015-06-17T02:22:12Z2015-06-17T02:22:12ZBeyond the inquiry: some notes on effective strategy to free the arts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85308/original/image-20150617-12977-bsso7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The capricious nature of this government’s approach to arts funding promises very rich pickings.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">chiaralily</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We have, it seems, some movement. Yesterday we learned the Australian Senate – through Labor and the Greens – has passed a motion in favour of an inquiry into George Brandis’s controversial plans, <a href="http://www.ag.gov.au/Publications/Budgets/Budget2015-16/Documents/Portfolio-budget-statements/PBS-Australia-Council-2015-16.pdf">announced in the budget</a>, to shift A$104.7 million from the Australia Council, already facing an “efficiency dividend” of A$7.2 million, to create a yet-to-materialise National Programme for Excellence in the Arts. </p>
<p>This “redirection” (which amounts to 27.7% of the total arts budget) will not affect the nation’s <a href="http://www.ampag.com.au/">28 major arts organisations</a>, whose funding remains ringfenced. But it will affect, hugely, independent artists and those working in the “small to medium” sector. If that terminology sounds a little abstract, Crikey has compiled <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/06/15/the-145-arts-companies-gutted-by-brandis-swingeing-cuts/">a list of 145 companies</a> under immediate funding threat. </p>
<p>Equally, and importantly, the redirection flies against the arms-length principle that has been integral to arts funding in this country <a href="https://theconversation.com/arms-length-forget-it-its-back-to-the-menzies-era-for-arts-funding-41743">since the 1960s</a>.</p>
<p>News of the inquiry will be welcomed by many. Tomorrow, representatives of some of the organisations most affected by the Brandis vivisection of the arts will descend on Parliament in an attempt to lobby politicians and others of influence in the hope that they see what is at stake. </p>
<p>As outlined by <a href="http://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/grants-and-funding/richard-watts/artists-converge-on-canberra-to-freethearts-248372">ArtsHub</a> and <a href="http://dailyreview.crikey.com.au/arts-sector-calls-on-parliament-to-block-funding-cuts/25414">Daily Review</a>, the group – comprising 60 arts industry leaders – has had some success in getting interviews with opposition members, including the Greens, but so far no government minister, least of all, the person responsible for the changes, Senator Brandis.</p>
<p>The strategy of a blitzkrieg on the Houses of Parliament <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2014/07/16/the-secret-life-of-lobbyists/">is well known</a> to industry lobbyists. But one of the problems with this kind of lobbying, especially in the face of the kind of cultural narrow-mindedness that appears to characterise the current arts ministry, is that it can at the best be futile and at the worst counterproductive. </p>
<p>It is not enough to <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/05/29/major-arts-companies-throw-little-guys-under-the-bus-after-brandis-shake-up/">passionately argue</a> that budget cuts mean small performing arts companies will be destroyed if the person being addressed is only concerned about sitting in the middle of G row at the Sydney Opera House – and getting free champagne at interval. </p>
<p>If the opera is La Bohème that person may even feel smug about stimulating the nation’s creative juices by ensuring its artists starve in a garret.</p>
<p>It is not enough to say that the arts have lost funding they need. With this government there is a long queue of people in the same position. </p>
<p>Nor can the arts argue they are the most effective cultural weather vane, interpreting the big issues of our time even before those who see themselves as political analysts. </p>
<p>Our current crop of governing politicians have shown they are not especially interested in vision. The international profile gained by some artists could sway those politicians wanting to bathe in the reflected glory of our shining stars, but the funding that has been slashed is to support artists who are most likely to be our future stars – as long as they are given a chance. </p>
<p>That’s a problem when we are governed by politicians who live only for the moment and who seem to be incapable of thinking through policy implications beyond the next election.</p>
<p>It therefore makes sense for the arts lobbyists to work out how to make politicians see that supporting their defunded organisations is in their interest. Because the funding cuts will fall disproportionately on <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-brandis-effect-on-regional-australia-just-look-at-bathurst-42420">rural and regional Australia</a>, it is worth speaking to the politicians who represent those constituents. </p>
<p>The National Party is in government as a part of the Coalition, yet only gained 4.3% of the vote at the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/party-totals/">last election</a>. The party has a shrinking power base, and needs to make new friends. It is worth remembering that when the Howard government launched its all-out attack on university student unions, it was country members who supported the needs of their regional universities.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-regional-arts-and-why-do-they-matter-34862">Regional arts organisations</a>, especially community arts and performing arts, are capable of both lifting the spirits and the educational levels of centres away from the big smoke. Their value is also seen in organisations on the suburban hinterlands of the big cities. </p>
<p>Some years ago, when I was on the Board of the <a href="http://www.casulapowerhouse.com/">Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre</a>, I remember that the case for having artists in residence was in part so that local school children would get a sense of what it meant to live and think creatively. At that time <a href="http://www.sydgram.nsw.edu.au/aboutgrammar/about/visitors-residencies/">Sydney Grammar</a> had begun an artist in residence program so that the sons of privilege could learn creative thinking. </p>
<p>Someone on the Casula Board quipped that connecting local children with artists would give them some educational parity with the Grammar boys. The next politicians to target therefore should be those on relatively slim margins, whose seats are in the western suburbs of Sydney. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.wsroc.com.au/">WSROC</a> (Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils) has some impressive statistics on the needs of their communities, including cultural needs.</p>
<p>The call for a Senate inquiry – <a href="https://visualarts.net.au/news-opinion/2015/artspeak-calls-senate-inquiry/">as outlined on ArtsPeak</a> – has clearly been effective. Oppositions, as we all know, love Senate Inquiries. </p>
<p>The capricious nature of this government’s approach to arts funding promises very rich pickings for any opposition or cross-bench senator who sees his or herself as a Grand Inquisitor. It might not return the funds to the arts, but it will be good sport. </p>
<p>When combined with a second inquiry into the same minister’s behaviour over the <a href="http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/national/2015/06/16/senate-to-probe-monis-letter-to-brandis.html">Man Monis’s letter</a> in advance of the Lindt Café siege, politics may well become a substitute for theatre.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>See also:</strong><br></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-arts-minister-has-wrenched-our-culture-away-from-the-artists-41681">The arts minister has wrenched our culture away from the artists</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/arms-length-forget-it-its-back-to-the-menzies-era-for-arts-funding-41743">Arms length? Forget it – it’s back to the Menzies era for arts funding</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-brandis-effect-on-regional-australia-just-look-at-bathurst-42420">The Brandis effect on regional Australia? Just look at Bathurst</a><br></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/brandis-is-waging-a-culture-war-artists-must-take-direct-action-42615">Brandis is waging a culture war: artists must take direct action</a><br></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-brandis-plans-to-insulate-the-arts-sector-from-the-artists-42305">How Brandis plans to insulate the arts sector from the artists</a><br></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/philosophy-vs-evidence-is-no-way-to-orchestrate-cultural-policy-42487">Philosophy vs evidence is no way to orchestrate cultural policy</a></li>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-money-for-the-arts-in-the-budget-but-with-strings-attached-41676">There’s money for the arts in the budget – but with strings attached</a></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43386/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn receives funding from the ARC through a Linkage Project on the History of Exhibitions of Australian Art and a LIEF grant for Design and Art of Australia Online</span></em></p>A motion in favour of a Senate Inquiry into the establishment of a National Programme for Excellence in the Arts has been passed. What more can be done by those artists and arts organisations lobbying against unpopular changes to arts funding?Joanna Mendelssohn, Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/426152015-06-02T02:25:45Z2015-06-02T02:25:45ZBrandis is waging a culture war: artists must take direct action<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83487/original/image-20150601-17839-fkd2y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The ambivalence which with artists have viewed the Australia Council needs to be put aside.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alvaro Tapia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As momentum builds behind the Australian <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/australia-council-cuts-sixyear-funding-in-wake-of-brandis-budget-cuts-dance-protests-planned-20150522-gh7694.html">arts community’s response</a> to the cultural surgery of the Arts Minister, Senator George Brandis, it is interesting to watch the ducks line up.</p>
<p>The recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/arms-length-forget-it-its-back-to-the-menzies-era-for-arts-funding-41743">budget announcement</a> that A$104.7 million would be used to create a National Programme for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA) has been met with protests and anger. </p>
<p>Those millions are to be taken directly from the budget of the <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/media-centre/media-releases/australia-council-outlines-2015-16-budget-impact/">Australia Council</a>, even though – as yet – Brandis has <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-brandis-plans-to-insulate-the-arts-sector-from-the-artists-42305">failed to explain</a> how this new version of “excellence in the arts” will be calculated. </p>
<p>Over the last week, there have been public protests in <a href="http://dailyreview.crikey.com.au/our-smaller-cities-stand-firm-together-against-brandis-arts-cuts/24427">Adelaide</a> and <a href="http://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/grants-and-funding/richard-watts/dance-protests-draw-national-attention-to-budget-cuts-248153">Perth</a>, a grassroots-inspired <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/australia-council-cuts-sixyear-funding-in-wake-of-brandis-budget-cuts-dance-protests-planned-20150522-gh7694.html">nationwide dance-off</a>, and numerous <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/arts/blog/Video/free-the-arts-from-further-funding-cuts-demand-dancing-protestors-15052015/default.htm">consultations</a> with industry and political operators elsewhere. </p>
<p>An <a href="http://www.australianunions.org.au/australians_for_artistic_freedom_signatories">online petition</a> from the MEAA calling for a reversal of the funding cuts has, to date, gathered more than 10,000 signatures, including prominent members of the artistic community such as Julian Burnside, Lisa Dempster and former chairman of the Australia Council, Rodney Hall. </p>
<p>As was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/jun/01/arts-groups-call-for-examination-of-brandis-105m-cuts-to-australia-council">reported in The Guardian</a> yesterday, a group of arts organisations – including the Australian Society of Authors and PEN Sydney – has called on parliament to examine the budget cuts to the Australia Council.</p>
<p>And, last weekend, Melbourne independent theatre-makers <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mkatheatreau/videos/vb.129779870388203/993708970661951/?type=2&theater">called out</a> the State Theatre companies on their failure to publicly oppose Brandis’ cultural insurgency. </p>
<p>The Artistic Directors of the State Theatre Company of South Australia and Perth’s Black Swan Theatre Company spoke at protests in the their respective cities in the last week, calling for support for the “<a href="http://dailyreview.crikey.com.au/our-smaller-cities-stand-firm-together-against-brandis-arts-cuts/24427">courageous forward thinkers</a>”, and arguing that the arts sector must <a href="http://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/grants-and-funding/richard-watts/dance-protests-draw-national-attention-to-budget-cuts-248153">stand united</a>. </p>
<p>Circus Oz released a <a href="http://www.circusoz.com/news-and-reviews/article/257/circus-statement-on-national-program-for-excellence-in-arts.html">strong statement</a> two weeks ago, arguing for funding for all parts of the arts sector:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Circus Oz has significant concerns about the broad potential impact of this decision on the fragile and symbiotic ecosystem of arts in Australia […] the success of Circus Oz is built on the incredibly vibrant work of all the individual artists, independent, small and medium companies that are eligible for the funding that has been moved.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Under the new funding arrangements the real winners will be the <a href="http://www.ampag.com.au/">Australian Major Performing Arts Group</a> (AMPAG), the 28 largest performing arts companies funded by the states and Commonwealth. Those companies are quarantined from funding cuts. Last week Opera Australia CEO Craig Hassall told the Sydney Morning Herald:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Speaking [for] Opera Australia, my first thought is that I am relieved and delighted that major performing arts companies’ funding hasn’t been cut […] I don’t really have a view on where the money comes from, as long as the government is spending money on the arts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As argued previously by this author, the failure of the AMPAG to <a href="https://www.bellshakespeare.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/3238277_19_AMPAG-Budget-15-16Final.pdf">actively defend</a> the space that is now manifestly occupied by Senator Brandis’ NPEA could be perceived as <a href="https://theconversation.com/without-independent-artists-the-major-arts-bodies-will-die-26924">collusion</a> with the neo-liberal values that are driving this new body. This is no longer a potential condition – it’s a fact. </p>
<p>The Australian Ballet and the Bell Shakespeare Company are among those to have already benefited from the changes. Last week Senator Brandis announced Bell Shakespeare would receive an additional A$1.28 million over four years, and The Australian Ballet was awarded A$150,000 to support a <a href="https://www.australianballet.com.au/news_and_reviews/news/china-2015-tour">tour of China</a>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile protests to the cuts by other major organisations may have been thwarted. Sydney Theatre Company <a href="http://dailyreview.crikey.com.au/major-arts-companies-reportedly-told-not-to-criticise-brandis-australia-council-cuts/24724">reportedly backed away</a> from making a statement critical of the cuts when Chair David Gonski was met by one or more advisors from Brandis'office. Not a good look.</p>
<h2>Momentum</h2>
<p>Momentum is an important issue for the Australia Council. Reportedly <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-13/eltham-brandis-extraordinary-raid-of-the-australia-council/6467534">blindsided</a> by Senator Brandis’ grab, the Council’s response was to rationalise its remaining budget by <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/media-centre/media-releases/australia-council-outlines-2015-16-budget-impact/">cutting programs</a> that directly support independent artists. </p>
<p>Note to Australia Council: the politesse that created the conditions for a politician to write the terms of engagement in the culture war need to be put aside. </p>
<p>In the wake of of Brandis’ budget announcement, it was reported – <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2015/05/23/inside-george-brandiss-australia-council-arts-heist/14323032001913#.VWz3mVOUevV">albeit based on rumours</a> – that the Board of the Australia Council had considered resignation <em>en masse</em>. They should do so. </p>
<p>The argument against is that the Minister would fill those positions with his own political appointments – I’d argue that he will anyway when the terms are up – and that this will worsen the situation for the Australia Council. But a line in the sand needs to be drawn. </p>
<p>Better for the Board to bring its expertise into the sector rather than waste it in muted resistance. Make history rather than be made history. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83485/original/image-20150601-17810-1vq2crg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83485/original/image-20150601-17810-1vq2crg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83485/original/image-20150601-17810-1vq2crg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83485/original/image-20150601-17810-1vq2crg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83485/original/image-20150601-17810-1vq2crg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83485/original/image-20150601-17810-1vq2crg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83485/original/image-20150601-17810-1vq2crg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83485/original/image-20150601-17810-1vq2crg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hernán Piñera</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And finally the artists need to continue the agitation.</p>
<p>On Friday, Dancehouse, a veritable force of nature in Australia’s contemporary dance community, released an <a href="http://www.dancehouse.com.au/">articulate and passionate argument</a> against Brandis’ measures and a request for the Minister to repeal his actions. It’s worth a read for its valorisation of independent art practice in the building of a healthy culture and society.</p>
<p>Artists need to seriously consider direct action. If it takes a withdrawal of artists’ labour from the major organisations to persuade them of the importance of their workforce, so be it. I’m pretty sure you can’t present an opera, a ballet or a play without singers, musicians, designers, actors, directors, dancers, composers. </p>
<p>Unless it’s a silent opera called the Dark Ages – a workable metaphor but an unlikely contender for NPEA funding.</p>
<p>The ambivalence which with artists and cultural operators have viewed the Australia Council in the past needs to be put aside, to see the matter as one of principle. Action is not based on support for <em>this</em> Australia Council which has served artists’ poorly for much of the last decade but for the idea of the Australia Council, a national arts agency that <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-australia-council-must-hold-firm-on-arms-length-funding-24460">operates at arms length</a> of the government. The principle is unassailable here.</p>
<p>Make no mistake: Brandis has made an ambit claim. His neutering of the national arts agency and his philosophical justifications are the first tangible moves in an ideologically-driven culture war. </p>
<p>Invoking Andrew Bolt as a <a href="http://dailyreview.crikey.com.au/brandis-the-arts-policy-he-cant-remember-the-australia-council-and-the-rather-marvellous-andrew-bolt/24633">credible arts commentator</a> in his Senate Estimates Hearing is as plain as it gets. Without protest and resistance Brandis will increase his slice of the funding pie in future budgets.</p>
<p>Who knows? Maybe that which Brandis fears most will actually be of his own making – a cultural revolution. Then he will be remembered as one of the great political artists of his time. Quack Quack.</p>
<p><br>
<em>This article has been edited to remove a section which could have been construed to suggest the Australia Council for the Arts has discretionary funding over the Major Arts Organisations. It doesn’t.</em></p>
<p><strong>See also:</strong><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-arts-minister-has-wrenched-our-culture-away-from-the-artists-41681">The arts minister has wrenched our culture away from the artists</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/philosophy-vs-evidence-is-no-way-to-orchestrate-cultural-policy-42487">Philosophy vs evidence is no way to orchestrate cultural policy</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-brandis-plans-to-insulate-the-arts-sector-from-the-artists-42305">How Brandis plans to insulate the arts sector from the artists</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/arms-length-forget-it-its-back-to-the-menzies-era-for-arts-funding-41743">Arms length? Forget it – it’s back to the Menzies era for arts funding</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42615/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Pledger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Momentum continues to build in the Australian art community’s response to changes to arts funding in last month’s budget. Is it now time for artists to consider direct action?David Pledger, Artist, PhD Student, School of Architecture, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/424872015-05-29T01:24:02Z2015-05-29T01:24:02ZPhilosophy vs evidence is no way to orchestrate cultural policy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83212/original/image-20150528-11319-b3kiey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The evidence of cultural consumption and production in Australia does not bear out the claims made by Senator Brandis.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia’s cultural sector has been shellshocked by the May budget’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-arts-minister-has-wrenched-our-culture-away-from-the-artists-41681">dramatic changes</a> to arts funding arrangements. Arts Minister George Brandis says he will end “arts mediocrity” by slashing more than A$100 million from the <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/">Australia Council</a> and reassigning the funds to a National Program for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA).</p>
<p>Citing the precedent of the <a href="http://www.afcm.com.au/">Australian Festival of Chamber Music</a>, Senator Brandis intends NPEA to be a “contestable” funding option for organisations or individuals who are not funded by the Australia Council.</p>
<p>But when Labor’s Jacinta Collins questioned Brandis during <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22committees%2Festimate%2F1691f703-a181-45c6-b912-4e571972691e%2F0000%22">Senate estimates</a> on Wednesday about what evidence actually supports the establishment of this new discretionary fund, he could offer only a “philosophy” (or two):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is, I think, when you say what evidence is there, a decision based on a philosophy of governance and a philosophy of the way in which arts funding ought to be administered.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Brandis also admitted he had concerns about various individual funding decisions, even referring to a list of grants criticised in recent days by News Corporation columnists Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt. </p>
<h2>Performance measures</h2>
<p>So what evidence is there for understanding the Australia Council’s funding decisions over, say, the past decade?</p>
<p>There is actually a considerable evidence base from which to form policy decisions in Australian arts funding. Both the <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/4172.0">Australian Bureau of Statistics</a> and the Australia Council itself collect large amounts of robust data on cultural audiences, cultural events and the output of artists and companies funded by the taxpayer. </p>
<p>One crucial metric of cultural funding is innovation, such as the production of new Australian artworks. Supporting the creation of new Australian product has long been a rationale for cultural decision-making. The Australia Council has developed a complex model it calls “<a href="http://2014.australiacouncil.gov.au/resources/About-Artistic-Vibrancy">artistic vibrancy</a>” that explains how it approaches the difficult task of judging the merit of a particular company or work. </p>
<p>Another available metric is audience numbers: “bums on seats”, as producers like to say. Indeed, in Senate estimates on Wednesday, Brandis used “the audience” as a rationale for the establishment of NPEA: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As I have always said, one of my misgivings about the exclusive peer-to-peer funding model is: who represents the audience around the table? The minister, being the responsible officer in charge of taxpayers’ money, has to be the voice for audiences. What are the shows, what are the performances, what are the concerts that the audiences go to? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In answer to his own question, Brandis argued that the major performing arts companies “provide the performances that the great audiences of Australia enjoy”. </p>
<h2>What does the evidence say?</h2>
<p>In terms of audience numbers, the minister is on rather shaky ground. The ABS data tells us that the sorts of things that the major performing arts companies produce – theatre, classical music and dance – are amongst the least attended types of cultural events. </p>
<p>The most popular remains going to the movies, as it has been for decades. Zoos, botanic gardens, art galleries and contemporary music concerts are all more popular than opera, classical music, ballet and mainstage theatre. </p>
<p>Even on an individual company basis, it’s not clear that the major performing arts companies are putting on “the performances that the great audiences of Australia enjoy”. <a href="https://opera.org.au">Opera Australia</a>, our largest performing arts company, sold 539,197 tickets in 2014. The <a href="http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2015/season/">Melbourne International Comedy Festival</a> (which receives no federal funding) sold more than 630,000. </p>
<p>The 2012 <a href="http://www.musicvictoria.com.au/assets/Documents/Victorian_Live_Music_Census_2012.pdf">Victorian Live Music Census</a> estimated more than 14 million patron visits to small Melbourne music venues in that year. </p>
<p>What about artistic vibrancy? Australia Council data allows us to compare the amount of new Australian work that major companies and the so-called “small-to-medium” sector produce. </p>
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<p>This data shows unequivocally that the smaller companies produce more new Australian works than the majors. They punch well above their weight when it comes to artistic innovation as measured by new work.</p>
<p>While major companies do make a contribution to artistic vibrancy, the data in the above table suggests that major companies are not really providing a national infrastructure for new works. Australia’s major orchestras, in particular, continue to perform a repertoire based on 18th- and 19th-century European composers. In contrast to these well-funded covers bands, it is the small to medium sector that is producing the majority of the new Australian work in the performing arts ecology. </p>
<p>This won’t be a surprise to Brandis. Back in 2007 he announced <a href="http://2014.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/items/pre-2010/smaller_arts_companies_benefit_from_big_funding_boost">an increase in funding</a> for small to medium arts companies precisely because of the “vital role” they played in the sector.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the 2015 budget will punish the smaller companies supported by the Australia Council with deep funding cuts, while the major performing arts companies continue to have their funding guaranteed. Indeed, the majors could even benefit at the expense of smaller companies, by accessing extra funding from the new excellence program. </p>
<p>The collected evidence of cultural consumption and production in Australia does not bear out the rationale proposed by Brandis for the establishment of a new National Program for Excellence in the Arts. </p>
<p>If we designed a cultural policy based on the available evidence, it would certainly look very different than the vision announced in the budget. But there is evidence available, if we wish to use it. While we neglect it, cultural policy is much more likely to remain beholden to the whims of individual arts ministers and their personal definitions of “excellence”. </p>
<p>What Australian cultural policy urgently needs is a philosophy for evidence, not Brandis’s “philosophy versus evidence”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42487/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Eltham has received funding from the Australia Council and the Ministry of the Arts in the past. He is not currently funded by either the Australia Council or the Ministry for the Arts.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deb Verhoeven does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What is the premise of recently-announced cuts to Australia Council funding, and the establishment of a National Programme for Excellence in the Arts? There is actually a considerable evidence base from which to form policy decisions in Australian arts funding.Ben Eltham, Research Fellow – Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin UniversityDeb Verhoeven, Professor and Chair of Media and Communication, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.