What if Malcolm Turbull’s conception of “21st-century government” imagines a healthy civil society and a responsive economy that values debate, imagination, difference and surprise - all provided by the arts.
The more the 2015 arts budget is examined the less sense it makes. The changes contribute little strategically or politically – they just make an entire sector nervous. And culturally, they will improve nothing.
There were no truly nasty surprises in last night’s Budget for the arts – but clear discomfort was expressed with the “arms-length” approach that hitherto has guided the allocation of arts funding.
Australia today is very different to the place I grew up in: our culture has changed and is changing, but public discussion is still framed by old tropes. We need a new shorthand to capture the reality…
Malcolm Turnbull’s well-telegraphed announcement yesterday that the ABC’s funding will be cut by A$254 million over five years is no surprise. But, broken election promise aside, this is actually something…
Gough Whitlam’s legacy in the arts first hit me as a little indie-music nerd in the 1990s. The inner-city Sydney band The Whitlams made a funny little music video about their namesake, a bloke who was…
Culture, as described by one celebrated critic, is among the most awkward words in the English language. So it comes as no surprise that cultural value is an ever-elusive, indefinable thing. The broad…
At the end of July draft Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were released by the United Nations-appointed Open Working Group. Those of us hoping to see culture identified as part of those goals were…
As with other emissions of choice opacity – horoscopes, Bible stories, RBA economic forecasts – cultural policy announcements invite construal of their mystical meaning. Nothing is quite as it seems. On…
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) last week released its 2014-2018 forward work plan. The work plan confirms the June media release that arts and sport data will disappear from the ABS-funded component…
Regular readers of this column will know that I’m neither an artist nor a cultural expert, but something much more déclassé: I’m a cultural economist. Part of this involves studying the incentives that…
In the lead-up to the budget, the story of crisis has been hammered home, but there’s more to a country than its structural deficit. So how is Australia doing overall? In this special series, ten writers…
As Europe votes on a groundbreaking directive to help facilitate the return of stolen cultural treasures, the United States moves forward with legislation that would prevent claimants from recovering their…
We are finally starting to see an emergent consistency in creative economy policy in George Osborne’s budget statement. The chancellor’s key innovation was the introduction of tax relief for theatres from…
Professor of Social Inclusion - UTS Business School - Centres for Business and Social innovation, and Business Intelligence and Data Analytics, University of Technology Sydney