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…
The BCA was probably doomed the moment Tony Abbott announced its creation out of Australia Council funds.
Nastya Shershneva
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.
Following a sustained and vocal campaign by the arts sector, the National Program for Excellence in the Arts has been canned.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
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?
If we have learned anything thus far it is this: one man’s excellence is another man’s mediocrity.
AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
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.
The 2014 Arts in Daily Life report found that 66% of Australians think the arts are important for child development.
AAP/Waltraud Grubitzsch
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.
Artists must take the opportunity to sharpen their minds as well as their rhetoric.
id-iom
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.
Making a splash in letters may be harder under changes to Australian arts funding.
Orange County Archives Follow
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?
Escape From Woomera is renowned as one of the forebears of “serious games” – what chance would it stand under new government funding guidelines?
By Escape from Woomera development team, via Wikimedia Commons
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?
Stage musicals, such as the Rocky Horror Show, don’t necessarily make sense. Nor do recent changes to arts funding.
AAP Image/Paul Miller
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.
Arts organisations will be supported if they can contribute to a ‘confident, outward-focused arts sector’.
AAP Image/Paul Miller
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.
The capricious nature of this government’s approach to arts funding promises very rich pickings.
chiaralily
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?
The ambivalence which with artists have viewed the Australia Council needs to be put aside.
Alvaro Tapia
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?
The evidence of cultural consumption and production in Australia does not bear out the claims made by Senator Brandis.
AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
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.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne