Arts advocacy: speaking with one voice

     If you had to choose your top five policy issues to get the attention of arts politicians what would they be? Hmmm hard choice? Whichever way you look there’s an arts policy in gestation waiting to be born.

This was the challenge facing members of ArtsPeak (the confederation of Australian national peak arts organisations) in preparation for the year ahead and for a significant meeting held recently in Sydney with Sally Basser, First Assistant Secretary, Office for the Arts, Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport, and Libby Christie, Acting CEO Australia Council for the Arts.

For those of you who don’t know, ArtsPeak members (currently 35) have collaborated over fifteen years to speak with one voice on behalf of the sector about arts policies and contentious issues as they arise. For example, last year we jointly advocated on some hot topics as they came up to the ABC, federal Arts Minister and Office for the Arts, Australia Council and state and territory cultural ministers.

On January 31st, ArtsPeak colleagues from around Australia flew in to Sydney and met all day at the Australia Council’s offices in Sydney. In a spirited but collegial round table discussion to find common ground on priorities for the forthcoming election, the members painstakingly narrowed our thirty nominated key issues down to five. Next move was to meet with our high-level bureaucrat colleagues to gauge their response to these issues.

Firstly, ArtsPeak was agreed on the importance of a long term cultural framework and the necessity for adventurous arts policies. While we acknowledged that a National Cultural Policy has been long promised by the current Labor government, we emphasized that any such policy needs to be comprehensive and forward looking and has to secure all party support. Arts Minister, Simon Crean’s role in trying to progress the cross-departmental importance of arts and culture was given a big tick.

For any such long-term framework to have effect, it is clear that a much greater funding commitment is needed to sustain and grow arts infrastructure and to support the intrinsic and economic contribution of artists. By comparison with Canada at 0.156% and New Zealand at 0.198%, the federal government’s contribution towards the arts in Australian is much more modest at 0.10% per capita[1]. Of great concern is currently contracting state level funding.

Then we went on to look at the bedrock issue of how to bolster the viability of creative practitioners’ careers. We affirmed the need to ensure that they have appropriate professional development opportunities and the required skills to contribute to the economic and cultural life of the community over their lifetime.

We drew attention to the need for fair payment for artists and ethical conditions supported by appropriate legislation and regulation. We referred to existing and pending legislation which does or could have unintended deleterious effects on the sustainability of artists’ careers. This included areas of artists’ taxation, superannuation, copyright, social security and freedom of expression which need systematic and thorough scrutiny and address.

For all Australians, we agreed on the foundational importance of a good arts education from early childhood, through school and into higher education. While the sector is looking forward to the boost to arts participation resulting from the introduction in schools next year of the Australian Curriculum for the Arts, currently there is great concern not only about TAFE cuts to arts training, but also the gradual contraction of arts education options in universities.

In the cultural crucible that is 21^st Century Australia, we discussed the great need for better recognition of and support for the diversity of the arts including Australia’s unique Indigenous culture, multicultural communities and people with disability across the breadth of urban, regional and remote Australia. Looking further afield, we agreed the importance of international engagement and exchange and expressed enthusiasm for the possibilities opened up by ideas in the Asian Century White Paper and the revival of the government’s International Cultural Council.

We went on to address arts industry anxieties about some of the recommendations made in the recent Australia Council Review report. ArtsPeak was asked to keep an open mind and assured that the arm’s length and peer assessment principles will be comprehensively applied in any restructure of the Council and that what is contemplated could achieve greater flexibility and responsiveness to developments in the arts sector. 

ArtsPeak was keen to learn more about what will transpire from the merger of the Australia Business Arts Foundation (AbaF) and Artsupport and the ambition for it to be a ‘one stop shop’ in relation to private sector sponsorship and philanthropy for the arts. ArtsPeak is looking forward to working with Fiona Menzies, the recently appointed CEO of Creative Partnerships Australia, on inflating philanthropy and investment for the benefit of the cultural sector.

In going forward, all of us affirmed the importance of arts industry engagement in the policy development and implementation process and agreed that closer contact would be maintained in future. It was a spirit buoying meeting but the outcomes have to surf the cut and thrust of an election campaign already underway. A change of government could mean a whole new bag of tricks.