15 January 2010

The National Cultural Policy consultation is a major opportunity to reform and renew Australia's commitment to the arts, its creative industries and the broader areas of cultural life and value in innovation and heritage and social cohesion.

The Council urges you and your organisation to contribute to this policy work.

Launched at the National Press Club last October during the HASS on the Hill event, the Australian Government opened an on line forum and called for ideas and submissions. But the deadline for contributions is 1st February.

Minister for the Arts Peter Garrett offered a discussion framework - Towards a national cultural policy- as a foundation for understanding the nature and role of Australian culture and governments' role in supporting it. CHASS will urge the government to ensure the policy becomes part of its policies in industry, education and community services, as well as the heritage and arts portfolio. The new national cultural policy will need leadership from the Prime Minister as it becomes part of programs in universities, schools, local government, new media and long standing media and cultural institutions.

CHASS' submission needs your input and ideas too. Contact Helen O'Neil, Executive Director, director[at]chass.org.au about your input, send us your submissions to publish and share with colleagues and networks in CHASS.

Closes 1 February 2010   National Cultural Policy

Towards a national cultural policy

The discussion framework identifies the role of government as "not to directly shape culture but to enable all Australians - whatever their background, beliefs and abilities - to explore and nurture their creativity and draw in the wealth of our culture to enrich us all."

The key questions the Government is asking in its consultation process are:

• What do you think should be priorities for a national cultural policy?
• What positive steps would you like to see to advance Australian culture?
• What other issues do you think are important?

In the history of Australia's arts funding, the word 'culture' has been essentially equated with the arts, particularly those from the non-profit sector. The Australian arts industry is a success story and shows the strength of commitment of successive Governments in investing in the arts since the 1940s. We have built solid cultural institutions, and have won all sorts of international awards.

The time has come, however, to recognise that cultural policy and arts policy are not synonymous. A broad ranging cultural policy needs to start by asking the fundamental questions about culture. It needs to set a broad range of objectives, a vision, of Australian culture - what it encompasses and the tools by which to facilitate its development.

David Throsby's conception of culture as a series of concentric layers, with arts at its heart, is a useful tool in thinking about how the National Cultural Policy should operate. Programs built on the basis of the national cultural policy should provide ways of building the connections between Australians, and various organisations and communities.

Culture and connections

A National Cultural Policy to 2020 and beyond must not dwell on the arts models which led to success in the past, but use them as a basis for nurturing new audiences and participation in cultural life.

Such a cultural policy will include support for our schools, where the government is already committed to a national curriculum which will include exploration and learning of our culture in history, the creative arts and languages. It will include our core cultural institutions currently supported by federal, state and local governments, recognising that the national government needs to work in partnership with other levels of government who have invested in building community based art and creative industries clusters of activities and organisations. It will focus on investment in new Australian art work. It will also include recognition of the arts, humanities and social sciences in innovation policies through investment development of new products and services based on IP.

The discussion framework begins to do this, and sets out four notions of culture - heritage, innovation, creation and expression.

Innovation, creative industries and arts policy

There are two significant threads to an Australian cultural policy relevant to the Council's membership and strategic direction - innovation and creative industries, and arts policy. We urge that a national cultural policy should refrain from making a choice between the two, or prioritising one above the other.

• The Council thus welcomes the broad definition of culture contained in the discussion framework, and the layers it encompasses - supporting not only the means of reflecting our culture, but also those additional elements that foster its preservation and regeneration.
• It should be engaging, inclusive and all-encompassing, allowing for the preservation of those unique characteristics which shape our national identity, as well as allowing for new and changing characteristics to reflect Australia as it moves through the 21st century.
• Arts based industries continue to contribute strongly to economic growth, and provide significant employment, so cultural policy should recognise that entrepreneurial spirit of the arts exists in both the non-profit and commercial sectors.
• Recognition that creative thinking can extend beyond the arts into transdisciplinary approaches to meeting the challenges before Australia implies that the cultural policy should recognise that creativity may be nurtured in arts areas of research and education, but should also be contributing to management, technology and hard science research.

Education

The Government has a role in facilitating the connections between the layers of culture, and between practitioners and audiences, between traditional art forms and new technologies. For this reason, the Council believes one of the main priorities of the National Cultural Policy should be on education, particularly in the arts.

• It is through education that the young Australians can be empowered to develop the capacities to fully engage in the new technologies that allow us all to express our creativity and be participants in cultural development.
• A National Cultural Policy should look to develop crucial relationships between universities, vocational training, schools and industries; between profit-orientated creative industries and not-for profits arts industries; and to develop partnerships with major companies involved in digital technologies and foster philanthropic relationships to garner additional support.

Positive steps

CHASS agrees with the Minister's suggestion that investments in the arts side of policy shift from institutions to artists.

The success of Australia's investment in the arts means that we have strong institutions making a strong contribution to our cultural life which should be supported into the future where they demonstrate strong connections to both creative producers and their audiences.

However with the emergence of new technologically based participation in the arts, and of new live performance venues and model, investment in research, design and development of these new models is a major priority in our cultural life. Developing the talent which will drive both community based and for-profit cultural work is a major responsibility for the Australian Government which is committed to productivity growth and an inclusive society. Funds for commissioning of new experimental work and building of creative teams will be central to the success of this policy.

Heidi Hutchison
15 January 2010

 

 

For more information, please contact:

Executive Director

Council of the Humanties, Arts and Social Sciences

Phone: +61 2 6249 1995

director@chass.org.au