With this budget, this government has sent a clear message that it does not trust the Australia Council to do its bidding – and that it will now pursue its own funding agenda for the arts.
The move away from arms-length funding represents a fundamental shift in the way arts funding will be administered.
Lukas Coch/AAP Image
Since the foundation of the Australia Council arts funding has been administered at arms length. The fine print of this year’s Budget is set to change that.
There were no nasty surprises for the arts in the 2015 Budget – but plenty of worrisome rhetoric.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
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.
Dog shows to be ring-fenced? Whittingdale (left) in 1993.
PA Archive
For artists and cultural workers, a change of government leads to a change of priorities – and often, opportunities disappear. So what do we know about the priorities for the current Minister for the Arts?
With car manufacturing gone and the submarine business looking shaky, South Australia is a state in need of an industrial transfusion.
HASSELL
Last week the South Australian premier announced major refurbishment of the Adelaide Festival Centre. The question is, what will these major works say about the kind of city Adelaide wants to be?
Cai Guo-Qiang is one of many artists whose work is showing at the Kyoto International Arts festival.
John
Unlike in Europe and Australia, the Japanese central government is relatively uninvolved in cultural funding, and there is little to incentivise private philanthropy. So how do they manage?
The arts have an important role to play beyond the major cities.
Tony Bartlett/AAP
NSW Premier Mike Baird is not the first politician to realise the political value of supporting the arts in western Sydney – and his current tilt at the west is well advised.
How can we assess whether or not Australian cultural policies work if we don’t have the data to measure participation?
AAP Image/Nikki Short
Our major performing arts organisations are Australian culture’s country clubs. Sponsored by a matrix of old money and old-school networks and infused with the new managerialism, the majors currently enjoy…
There might not be much more public art like this in Belfast.
Paul Faith/PA Archive
The arts scene in Northern Ireland is under serious threat as the government gives the appearance of placing less and less value on culture. The announcement before Christmas of funding cuts of up to 50…
Double J staff in the early days. The station’s been going strong for 40 years.
ABC Radio
Australia’s public youth radio station, Triple J, turns 40 today. On January 19 1975, Triple J’s AM predecessor, Double J, infamously burst onto Sydney’s airwaves with the track, You Just Like Me Cause…
Surely we can count on cultural institutions to be trailblazers in the quest for equality?
George A. Spiva Center for the Arts
Earlier this month The Sydney Morning Herald reported that certain major Australian cultural institutions, including the Art Gallery of NSW and the Sydney Opera House, were failing to achieve workplace…
The median year of composition of an opera performance at the Met in New York is around 1870.
EPA/Justin Lane
Last month it was reported that the 161-year-old Royal Melbourne Philharmonic (RMP) choir and orchestra has lost its annual grant from the Melbourne City Council and may also lose State Government support…
Twenty years on, Paul Keating’s Creative Nation remains a vital reference point in the history of Australian cultural policy.
AAP Image/Julian Smith
Today marks 20 years since the publication of Creative Nation. An ambitious and expansive project by Paul Keating’s Labor Government, it was the first Commonwealth cultural policy document in Australia’s…
Learning a musical instrument begins with the act of making music with our bodies.
AAP/Yonhap
Yesterday, Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne and Arts Minister George Brandis announced A$594,000 in funding for a new national music teachers mentorship program. The details have sent music…
Gough Whitlam, Labor prime minister from 1972 to 1975, has died aged 98.
AAP/ Joe Hildebrand
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…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne