Changing cultural policy in Australia

Society is becoming more culturally diverse. Immigration, demographic change and new technologies and communications media have transformed the spectrum of cultural choices available. The large-scale infrastructure and mass subscription model that underpins the logic of many funded arts organisations is poorly equipped to respond to the plethora of new artists, art forms, audiences, genres and sub-cultures emerging in a rapidly changing cultural dynamic.

The proliferation of niche genres, markets and audiences is creating a greater demand for smaller venues. Yet these same venues are closing in response to tighter regulations from another part of the Victorian government that deals with liquor licensing.

Our funding-centric approach to culture largely ignores federal issues such as tax, social security compliance, copyright and media policy and state issues such as liquor licensing and public liability law and local government issues such as noise laws and urban planning.

As a result of the failure to adopt whole-of-government policies towards culture, much government cultural funding is wasted and the practical needs of most artists, small organisations and even entire cultural industries (such as the design industry) are falling through the cracks.

Iconic institutions or starving artists?

Spare a thought for the people who make Australian culture happen: the artists. The debate about Australian culture often ignores the great achievements of the individuals who create it. In 2003, the Australia Council distributed just 6.3 per cent of its grant funding to independent artists. The remaining 93 per cent went to organisations. Nearly all artists and creative workers need an extra part-time job or two just to survive. The long-term decline in direct funding for Australian artists and creative workers has damaging consequences for the Australian creative economy.

Despite their bohemian reputation, individual artists can often be highly efficient as they are excellent at leveraging and making the most of scarce resources. They can also be flexible and capable of building appropriate structures and mechanisms to create, present and promote individual shows or projects. Their way of operating allows for small-scale experimentation, innovation and risk taking. Individually and collectively, they are highly responsive to technological change, changes in audience dynamics, and the decentralised environment of cultural creation and consumption. They require little in the way of expensive infrastructure.

By contrast, the highly-centralised structures in which we invest most of our cultural resources have high overheads and are often conservative, risk-averse and place comparatively little value on experimentation or the creation of new work.

Five policy solutions:

1. Recognise that "cultural policy" is about more than funding for the arts. It's about policy frameworks across government including media policy, education, copyright and censorship law, tax, urban planning, liquor licensing and R+D.

2. Abandon the false divide between high art and popular culture. Art and culture of all different genres and types can be popular or unpopular, and good or bad. Cultural policy should not be based on preconceptions about which artforms are "worthy" of public support, but on cultural values that can manifest themselves in many ways and across many forms and genres.

3. Create a new cultural agency for contemporary Australian culture. Australia needs a new government cultural agency with a contemporary brief to ensure that we are a nation that is a creator and not merely a consumer of culture and that Australians are active and enabled participants in the global cultural pool. The Australia Council is not an organisation capable of this, or of becoming this.

4. Cut the red-tape that affects culture. Many artists and cultural organisations are constrained by access to appropriate infrastructure (venues and work space) as well as capital. The ability to put in place policy settings that allow them to perform, present and produce with limited capital is more important (and effective) in ensuring their success than direct subsidies.

5. Fund artists and production and not institutions. Ordinary working artists are the forgotten people of Australia's cultural policy debate. Their average income is well below median Australian wages. Yet individual creators and artists are the life-blood of Australian culture. Where new funding is created, it should be directed towards individuals and small companies - not large institutions. And because so many artists are so poor, small amounts of funding can go a long way.