If it wasn’t so deliciously ironic, you’d struggle to believe it. Quadrant, the staunchly conservative little magazine, has had its funding cut by the Australia Council. Who is to blame?  Lefties, of course! As Crikey and the Sydney Morning Herald have variously reported, the journal’s controversial editor Keith Windschuttle has written an outraged letter to subscribers slating home the funding cut to the perfidious progressives on the Literature Board (the drop-quote is from the SMH):

Quadrant’s editor, the historian Keith Windschuttle, a key protagonist in the history wars who denies that the removal of Aboriginal children from their families was racist or deliberate policy, has written to subscribers saying the decision by the council’s literature board was ”patently political”.

”Throughout the 11 years of the Howard government, its appointees never reduced the funding of overtly left-wing publications like Meanjin, Overland and Australian Book Review,” Mr Windschuttle says in the letter. He says the entire Australia Council grant is used to pay writers and does not fundQuadrant’s political commentary.

While I agree with Windschuttle that Overland is overtly left-wing, it’s hard to describe Meanjin under current editor Sophie Cunningham in the same terms. As for the generally poker-faced ABR - well, it’s actually difficult to pick up any “overt” political discussion at all in what remains a journal of book reviews. Guy Rundle had great sport with the story yesterday in Crikey (the link is firewalled), pointing out that:

… the even funnier thing about Windschuttle’s letter is that, since the departure of Robert Manne from the editor’s chair, Quadrant has made its economics firmly neoliberal, and come down hard on the whole notion of subsidised culture at all. Here’s Michael O’Connor,Quadrant’s online editor, in a ringing jeremiad (about 65% of which I agree with)on cultural policy and funding:

“Whitlamesque pork-barrelling of the arts obtains the artists’ vote (of minor importance) and their amplified voices (of incalculable benefit). Public money flows to culture, and its associated artists and carpetbaggers, from all levels of government—local councils, state governments and federal governments. Even individual government departments give away money and undermine the workings of a free market.”

Ah, the good old free market – ever the friend of the neo-liberal, except when he’s applying for government grants.

UPDATE: Imre Salusinszky has fired back in today’s Crikey comments. Salusinszky is understadably annoyed at Rundle’s insinuation that his political views contributed to Quadrant’s funding increase while Salusinszky was Chair of the Literature Board, pointing out that in 2008, “all the major literary magazines supported by the Board, not just Quadrant, received a boost to their funding,” and that “the Chair is one of seven members of the Literature Board, and that all decisions are taken on a majority basis.”

Salusinszky ends with this zinger:

I note, in closing, that the goateed little grub finds non-Anglo names hilarious. Is this what it has come to, for the far Left?

The culture wars. They shall not die.

Sâmbătă, la Palatul Republicii din capitală, primul Congres al oamenilor de cultură s-a desfăşurat cu sala arhiplină. Statutul artistului în societate, schimbarea mecanismelor de finanţare a culturii, prin instituirea unui fond naţional – au fost chestiuni de prim-plan ale congresului. După investiţiile oamenilor de afaceri în ultimii opt ani, prin presiuni şi şantaj în interesul ideologiei comuniste, ei sunt îndemnaţi să sprijine adevărata cultură.

R. Moldova continuă să se afle în afara procesului cultural european. Statul nu are politici culturale coerente, asta în condiţiile în care foste ţări socialiste şi ex-republici sovietice au devenit încă pe la începutul anilor `90 parte a agendei UE şi în domeniul culturii. Congresul a fost precedat de dezbateri naţionale la Cahul, Bălţi şi Chişinău. În ultimii opt ani, structurile de stat de profil au fost transformate în secţii de propagandă politico-ideologică ale partidului de guvernământ. Statul a impus un control absolut asupra finanţării produselor culturale. Participanţii la congres au acuzat fosta guvernare de alocări bugetare iraţionale, în proiecte anticulturale, precum „Caravela Culturii”.

Compozitorul Ghenadie Ciobanu, ministru al Culturii în perioada 1997-2001, susţine că n-a fost continuat primul raport naţional privind politicile culturale, prezentat Consiliului Europei în perioada sa. „Vrem să fim cei care vom sensibiliza toate organele puterii, pentru a face schimbările necesare. Ne referim la recomandările agendelor culturale ale forurilor politice naţionale, ale Parlamentului European şi UNESCO. Doar instituţiile competitive pot avea acces la proiecte culturale internaţionale”.

Ministrul Boris Focşa nu înţelege ce are de făcut

Pe de altă parte, ministrul Culturii, Boris Focşa, nu ştie dacă „e vorba doar de o criză financiară, de una spirituală sau de o perioadă de trecere. E nevoie de un studiu profund al situaţiei, ca să pot întreprinde nişte măsuri nu doar superficiale”.

Mai mulţi oameni de cultură sunt sceptici vizavi de speranţa că problemele din cultură ar putea fi rezolvate, în contextul „lipsei unui ministru competent”. Scriitorul Vladimir Beşleagă susţine că „Boris Focşa e total deplasat în totul ce discută. E un om întâmplător în funcţia de ministru al Culturii şi n-o să facă nimic”.

Mihai Ghimpu, preşedintele interimar al statului, a promis că nu „va lăsa oamenii de cultură şi artiştii în mizerie”. El a făcut un apel către businessmeni să sprijine această sferă şi să fie primii în formarea Fondului culturii. În context, Philipp Dietachmair, directorul Programe de vecinătate europeană al Fundaţiei Culturale din Amsterdam, a promis un sprijin consistent R. Moldova.

“Timpul”, 14 Decembrie, 2009

Angelina Olaru

Tilting at windmills? Australia's attempt to impose a so-called "clean feed" on ISP's is bound to fail, claim experts

Like Cervantes’ bumbling knight Don Quixote, most people would regard trying to censor the internet as a modern-day tilt at a windmill.

That hasn’t stopped Australia’s Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, from trying.  Speaking on Tuesday at the release of a report into the trial of the government’s controversial plans to force ISP’s to filter a blacklist of RC-classified (refused classification) material from their users, Conroy announced that the government was pressing ahead with the censorship plan. Conroy was quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald’s Asher Moses as saying:

”Most Australians acknowledge that there is some internet material which is not acceptable in any civilised society. ‘It is important that all Australians, particularly young children, are protected.”

Moses’ article goes on to point out that:

It is not clear how or if the filters will distinguish between banned material that is illegal and that which is legal.

A version of the Government’s list of banned sites was leaked on to the web in March, revealing that the scope of the filtering could extend significantly beyond child porn. About half were not related to child porn and included links to poker sites, YouTube, gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia, euthanasia sites, fringe religions, fetish sites, Christian sites, a tour operator and a Queensland dentist.

Over at Marcus Westbury’s blog, his brother Stuart (an accomplished sysop and network engineer) has analysed the report of the filtering trial by Enex Testlab, and concluded that none of the proposed filter technologies can prevent determined access to RC material. You can read his full assessment over the fold:

Here is a bit of background. The Enex report (which is fucking big) on the live trial explains that there were 3 technologies used by the participating ISP’s. Some in combination with each other.

Proxy server

The simplest solution. Just blocks web traffic based on a blacklist using a standard proxy (caching) server. This would work in small scenarios but is extremely simple to bypass unless they block other network traffic. They have not said that the proxy trial participant did this. I do this at work to block known malware sites based on a blacklist. In larger implementations this is just not feasible due to the massive amounts of data you would have to pass over these servers. It is not scalable and not suitable for ISPs the size of Telstra or Optus.

Pass by filtering

Not all traffic is inspected. This would need to be used for much larger implementations. Instead of funneling everything via the proxy, they maintain a list of IP addresses that are blocked using border gateway protocol (i wont go into that) on border routers. If you are attempting to access an IP address that is on the blacklist, your traffic is then funneled through a proxy server to filter it for the actual URL. You cannot just block an IP address for undesirable content. This is due to shared hosting environments that often have the same IP. Blocking the undesirable IP would potentially result in blocking harmless stuff on the same web host. This also just relies on a blacklist anyway. Again, there is no mention of blocking ports or protocols like bittorrent, P2P technologies, IM, VPN or anything else that could be used to transmit smut.

Pass through filtering

Pass through filtering is the scariest one. It performs DPI (Deep Packet Inspection). This one can identify undesirable content inside individual packets of data but it is also by far the most resource intensive to implement. It has the potential to inspect torrents, IM etc but will still be defeated by encrypted technologies live VPNs. Without the ability to decrypt, then inspect a VPN packet (making the “Private” in virtual private network redundant), the only way to stop it accessing nasty content is to block them all. The economic implications of this are huge. They just won’t do it.

Some other stuff

Of 37 circumvention tests performed against the filters. The successful block rate ranged from 8.1% (proxy / pass by) to a much higher 94.5% in the case of hybrid proxy / DPI methods. You can be assured that a) this method will not be implemented without the government subsidising banks of super computers and b) the circumvention that worked against it is the holy grail of defeating this thing. VPNs. It will also be capable of serious false positives.

Results

I looked mostly into Participant ISP #5’s results as it had the most success in blocking circumvention attempts – 94.5%. It also had by far the worst results in terms of performance degradation. I didn’t do any number crunching but the graphs show at least 50% in a lot of cases. This will not be implemented as the final solution. It would be insanity.

It’s also important to note that these tests are also ludicrously based on people getting access speeds of 8mbit (FTTN specifications) / sec in a trial that involved very small numbers of real clients. What happens when the NBN rolls out and is supposed to supply most of the nation with 100mbit connections? This whole thing will need massive reassessment.

The good people at Meanjin have just published my December 2009 CAL Essay on Australian arts festivals, entitled Is the carnival over?

You can read the entire 5,000 word piece in all its glory over at Meanjin right now.

Beautiful Places-Florida-Mellander-Stolarick 2009As a cultural planner, I spend a considerable amount of time thinking about culture and community development, culture and our economy, the arts and culture as community priorities. Heading into the new year, I’ve been seeking new inspiration along these lines. I’ve found that inspiration, and want to share it!

I just finished reading the research paper “Beautiful Places” written by Richard Florida (University of Toronto), together with Charlotta Mellander (Jonkoping International Business School) and Kevin Stolarick (University of Toronto), published by the Martin Prosperity Institute. The three studied the role of aesthetics and beauty in community satisfaction and determined that both beauty and perceived aesthetic character have a highly significant positive impact on perception of a community by residents. They also tested the importance of these so-called “higher order” factors in location choices – for example, how important these might be in selecting a community in which to live, or in a corporation’s selection of a new location and how perceptions of aesthetics and beauty relate to other community elements such as quality schools, transportation, and cultural offerings. Does the aesthetic quality of a community improve civic engagement, and to what degree? (Answer from the study: YES, and HUGE.)

To answer their questions, the trio worked with the Gallup Organziation, which conduct telephone surveys of 28,000 respondents throughout the US.

This extensive level of surveying is rarely afforded within arts and cultural realms, so its import is high. This large sample made it possible to study perceptions of the importance of aesthetics based on demographics and as related to jobs and economic security and positive or negative expectations about the future. The key question they asked was: “Taking everything into account, how satisfied are you with the city or area where you live?” And they asked: “How would you rate the city or area where you live on” a whole host of factors, ranging from the ability to meet and make friends to cultural opportunities, quality health care, quality colleges and universities, nightlife, climate and more.

Here’s one of the really interesting outcomes: they found that there is NO relationship between community satisfaction and life stage factors such as age, presence of children, length of residency and other demographics. This contradicts many other studies that have found community satisfaction increases with length of residency, or that have found young adults to be less satisfied with their communities than older residents.

On the other hand, they found aesthetics, beauty, and culture to have statistically important relationships with levels of community satisfaction. Beauty and aesthetics appear to be the among the very most important factors contributing to community satisfaction, right up there with economic conditions and what I’d call community friendliness – a place to meet people and make friends. Cultural opportunities rank nearly on par with affordable housing, and are more important than climate, job opportunities within the respondent’s own field, and the “urbanicity” of the area. Cultural opportunities did not rank as important as “religious institutions that meet your needs” or as important as outdoor parks, playgrounds and trails. Of note, the respondents rated their own communities “vibrant nightlife” and “quality of colleges and universities” negatively – but but important.

What does this mean in cultural development and planning?

1. Aesthetics, be they natural or built, are obviously very important to community satisfaction, but are often under-considered and stressed within the context of cultural plans, development, preservation, and funding.

2. There is a considerable linkage between community satisfaction and cultural opportunities – remember, on par with or ahead of other critical factors. The authors were surprised that cultural opportunities didn’t rank higher. I wonder if question wording/understanding played a role in this. “Quality parks, playgrounds and trails” is very easy for a respondent to understand and rank. I find most people have difficulty when asked to quickly do a mental sort of “cultural resources” and almost never come up with similar or thorough lists of what these include. That said, culture offerings came out of this study as clearly very important.

The rubber hits the road in cultural planning when the finished plans, complete with aesthetic and cultural development aspirations, reach the desks of community prioritizers – city councils, county executives, key local foundations, and the many other stakeholders who weigh the investment importance of each priority they fund. Many a time I have heard them say flat out that cultural development can’t possibly be as important as affordable housing or job opportunities, but this huge Gallup survey sample shows that they are wrong. Culture matters. And aesthetics and beauty are right up there – ahead of “being able to get from place to placd with little traffic,” quality health care, and parks – in a cluster of the high ranking important factors: 1) current economic conditions; 2) Beauty; 3)quality schools; 4) good place to meet people and make friends.

This means that historic preservation, design regulations, landscape, public art, street scapes, civic facilities that facilitate public gatherings and interaction, cultural districts, and wide ranging cultural amenities are all of demonstrated and tested high order importance to communities throughout the US, with implications for any community, anywhere. It also means that the creators, the artists, the nonprofits, the cultural entrepreneurs whose enterprises create meaningful aesthetics, civic gatherings, and cultural infrastructure are vastly more important than most civic leaders have dreamed.

Our field often uses what can be, and is often dismissed as, a basic level economic justification – the jobs and economic impact of cultural organizations and particiaption. This study finds a much higher economic justification in the elements we plan for in cultural development – the very future of community satisfaction, growth, and choice.

The impact is huge. To every civic leader, every developer, every funder, planner, and prioritizer: beauty matters, aesthetics matter, culture matters.

Radio National has now posted the podcast of my discussion with Amanda Smith, Hilary Glow and Lydon Terracini at Radio National’s Artworks page.

It’s a wide-ranging discussion on the basics of cultural policy in this country and I try to get a few good points in! Hilary Glow, whom I met for the first time at the studio, has done some fine work in the field of performing arts audience research and points out some of the implications of her research, while Lyndon is uncharacteristically restrained, especially compared to his normal ebullience

UPDATE: I got a call from Cathy Hunt this morning saying she’s working on a new piece of research related to Australia’s cultural funding priorities, so that’s something to look forward to in the new year.

Join me, Deakin University performing arts management academic Hilary Glow and Opera Australia’s Lyndon Terracini on Amanda Smimth’s Artworks program.

Congresul oamenilor de Cultura 2009

Melina Mercouri

To lose one culture minister may be regarded as a misfortune.  To lose nine in ten years looks like carelessness.  In the latest round of musical chairs, we have lost a minister who was in command of the culture brief and have reverted to what looks like the latest in a round of temporary incumbents who no sooner begin to understand culture before they are moved on.  Successive First Ministers from Jack McConnell in his St Andrew’s Day Speech in 2003 to Alex Salmond now have been passionate about the vital importance of the arts, culture and creative industries to our success as a nation. If the latest change is not to be regarded as a lack of commitment to culture then it signals a lack of understanding about the pivotal importance as to how the role is discharged.

Mike Russell was the best culture minister we have had, with a firm grasp not only of the issues in his portfolio but with a fluency in the language of the arts and creativity without which no culture minister can expect to engage with and lead the sector.  That fluency comes both from his own experience in the arts, as a writer and filmmaker and through long term relationships with people in the arts community.  These are characteristics of successful culture ministers across the world. They are not things that can be achieved during one of the cursory tours of duty undertaken by other ministers.   The cultural community doesn’t fit neatly into the public sector boxes which characterise the landscape of most ministerial portfolios, like education, health and justice.  The powerful voices  – those who command respect locally, nationally and internationally – include independent and freelance artists, games designers, architects,  writers, broadcasters, performers, composers, entrepreneurs and volunteers as well as the more orderly national cultural institutions. Russell built up trust with the sector -  a trust that is not easily transferable to a new Culture Minister perceived to have been demoted.  The cultural community will of course welcome Fiona Hyslop, induct her into their world and explain their agendas in what might be seen as a further diversion from getting on with generating great art and creative experiences.   And as a seasoned politician and theatre attender, there is no reason why she should not be good at the job   - until the next reshuffle.

Successful culture ministers must have both legitimacy and authority.  What previous Culture Minister would have had the clout demonstrated by Mike Russell as he quashed in one fell swoop years of arguing by firmly stating to the cultural community that  “Creative Scotland must put behind it the old and false dichotomy of culture and the economy as both are essential” ? None.

If he is serious about Scotland’s success as one of the world’s most creative nations, the First Minister must appoint a credible leader for a reasonable tenure. That person should have legitimacy – so perhaps should be an artist or creative entrepreneur.  That is certainly what other, culturally confident, nations have done.

The culture minister with most credibility internationally now is perhaps Australia’s Peter Garrett, former member of the band Midnight Oil,  renowned for  its protest shows, notably the anti- Exxon performance on a truck top in New York.

Nicolas Sarkozy, recognising the need for cultural cred, has appointed Frédéric Mitterand, TV showman, writer, film producer and gay activist.   Mitterand has already created controversy not least because of a colourful personal life.  He follows in the tradition of the film goddess Melina Mercouri, who ruffled British feathers with her impassioned demands for the return of the Elgin marbles during her tenure as Greek Culture Minister.  Jack Lang, theatre and festival director, during his tenure as Culture Minister, created the Lang Law, fixing the price of books.  The Brazilian musician and activist Gilberto Gil, as Culture Minister, pioneered programmes to increase access through technology and music.

Of course the Culture Minister should not be the only champion and leader of  the arts, culture and creative industries in Scotland  This is a role for Creative Scotland but the timing is such that the Chair of the statutory body cannot be appointed until the Public Services Reform Bill is passed by Parliament, and neither has the first  CEO been appointed. These vacancies only exacerbate the void left by Russell.

What Scotland needs now is a Cultural Leader in the Scottish Government who will be in it for the long term, speak the language, maintain the relationships – and then be bold.  When artists take the helm it might not be plain sailing –but they may stay the course.

As our cities and towns across America face massive unemployment and what is likely to be long term joblessness, we hear a great deal about “green” jobs and shovel ready jobs, everything from weatherizing homes to building roads. But as many have observed, these are not long term re-training and employment solutions. It seems America has forgotten one of its most important training and employment opportunities, and perhaps THE most important career building direction for the future economy: creativity training and employment.

When the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act was enacted in 1973 as the precursor to the Job Training Partnership Act, literally thousands of arts and culture nonprofits emerged launched by artists who were moved by the opportunity to create the jobs – including summer jobs for unemployed high school students – that CETA made possible. CETA can be credited with supporting the first wave of non-profit media jobs as it supported community access television and the training of thousands of youth in media production. If you look across the landscape of nonprofit arts organizations in your city, and track them back to their founding dates, you will find scores of theatre companies, neighborhood cultural centers, festivals, dance companies and more that began through CETA. I look around today and see a generation of executive nonprofit leaders whose start in cultural and nonprofit management came thanks to CETA. It was used to train and create jobs, and along the way it created and sustained then-fragile new nonprofits until they were strong enough to survive and thrive. The training was typically on-the-job, and in most cases the trainees went on to employment in the field, and thousands have stayed to lead the nonprofit sector to this day.

Good as those weatherization jobs are, and as vital as they are to the low income families whose homes need the benefit the weatherization can provide, how will the training and employment impact communities in 10, 20, or 30 years? As I lead cultural plans or work on cultural districts I find over and over that it is those special community-oriented nonprofits – most launched through CETA – that create the critical mass of cultural opportunity, engagement, learning, afterschool programs, diverse programming, and new/forward looking creativity that supports culturally rich communities.

We need to launch the next generation of similar cultural and creativity job training and employment, with the same opportunities as were established 36 years ago, to train another generation of creativity workers, enable them to learn on-the-job in ways that also create community engagement and audience and support neighborhood wellness. Creativity is proven, highly effective community aid. We know it works. It creates lasting jobs, training that truly engages youth, supports the development of new community-oriented nonprofits, transforms run-down neighborhoods into cool and hip cultural districts, and builds the local economy. All this, plus we know that creativity is the future of the American economy – the most important ingredient behind new innovation, new intellectual work, and new product development.

Why, then, is it so undervalued as a key antidote to unemployment and underemployment? Creativity needs the chance to work its miracles, now.

Auction houses like Christie's are the main targets of the new Resale Royalty law that will collect an extra 5% fee for resold works of visual art

Many of us didn’t notice it – what with the entire Liberal Party melting down over the emissions trading scheme – but last week, the Australian Senate passed the Resale Royalty Right for Visual Artists Bill 2009. This marks the passage into legislation of an Australia droit de suite style law, giving artists a 5% royalty on the second and subsequent resale of their artworks.

How will it work? Much like other copyright royalties, the government will tender out the collection of the royalty payment to a government-sanctioned monopoly called a collection agency. Australia, like many other industrialised nations, has several of these that variously collect rents on economic activities related to copyrighted material – for instance the playing of music on radio and television, or the reproduction of newspaper articles by media monitoring businesses. Most industry insiders expect the existing visual royalties collection agency Viscopy to get the gig, but ther is a possibility other agencies could tender, like the publishing agency Copyright Agency Ltd.

Who pays? In the main, it will be auction houses, art dealers and commercial galleries. However, the legislation broadly covers basically any 2nd or subsequent resale of an artwork, so this could potentially expand to cover all sorts of interesting areas, like big businesses liquidating their corporate art collections or trustees of deceased estates. On the other hand, since most of these kinds of sales are generally sold at auction or through a dealer anyway, the likelihood is that these larger vendors will be the main payers of the new royalty fee.

What’s covered by the new legislation? A broad and very interesting range of material, defined in section 7 of the bill:

Section 7(2):  Works of visual art include, but are not limited to, the following:

(a)  artists’ books;

(b)  batiks;

(c)  carvings;

(d)  ceramics;

(e)  collages;

(f)  digital artworks;

(g)  drawings;

(h)  engravings;

(i)  fine art jewellery;

(j)  glassware;

(k)  installations;

(l)  lithographs;

(m)  multimedia artworks;

(n)  paintings;

(o)  photographs;

(p)  pictures;

(q)  prints;

(r)  sculptures;

(s)  tapestries;

(t)  video artworks;

(u)  weavings;

(v)  any other things prescribed by the regulations.

That’s a lot of stuff. It also covers certain digital media artworks in a way that could eventually prove quite controversial. For instance, video and digital artworks aren’t really defined in any detailed way. Is a “digital artwork” an artefact containing the digital artwork? Is it the source code? Is it any copy or instance of the digital artwork? If I put my digital artwork on eBay and sell it, retail, to all comers, for $1001, can I generate an endless stream of $50 royalty payments?

The history of copyright laws in other areas suggests that case law tends to expand the scope of the legal domain of copyright ownership, generally pushed by zealous litigation from copyright agencies. In Australia, for instance, we’ve seen a big push recently by music publishers to gain access to revenue streams from nightclubs on the rather flimsy (but none-the-less legally accepted) argument that nightclub patrons are attending in order to hear music – a craven but successful cash-grab that I attacked in this 2007 article for Arts Hub. Emboldened by their win in the nightclubs decision, music publishers are now going after gyms and fitness centres.

What sort of areas could copyright law push into in the wake of this bill? I suspect there will be plenty of work for aspiring copyright lawyers in coming years.

Elsewhere: the Australian Copyright Council has a good primer on the issues at hand. It points out that many fewer artworks are likely to generate royalties than the government thinks, because resale rates of Australian artworks are comparatively low in what remains a thinly-traded market.

Salvaţi Liceul „Ion Creangă” din Bălţi! Sute de profesori, elevi şi părinți cer anularea deciziei fostului Minister al Educației şi Tineretului privind sistarea procesului de admitere pentru anul de studii 2009-2010 la Liceul teoretic regional „Ion Creangă” din Bălţi, la profilul arte.

Arheologie, Patrimoniu Cultural, Istorie, Turismul in Moldova – toate in viziunea lui Corneliu Cirimpei

Again the “Feria Internacional de Teatro y Danza de Huesca” has met the challenge of being the showcase of contemporary dance and theatre, and with this, to foster their touring extensively by the theatres and arts centres.

Feria de Huesca 2009 . Photo: Marta Marco

Along with the presentation of the works of the performing artists,  the “Feria de Huesca” have reviewed the new ideas that should help to give content to the production and dissemination of contemporary performing arts.

Feria de Huesca 2009. Photo: Marta Marco

The “Performing Arts International Conference” was marked by the expectation of the emergence of a new paradigm of performing arts touring. Hoping that this new paradigm has to change many of the uncomfortable realities that is immersed the management of culture today, the “International Conference” shelled one by one the “Reasons for Contemporary Dance and Theatre Programming in Times of Crisis” and in the future.

Feria de Huesca 2009. Photo: Marta Marco

Now you can read the papers (in English and Spanish) presented at the Conference downloading from the link: http://www.feriadeteatroydanza.com/en/jornadas/. A very valuable documentation that will project the debate far beyond  the Conference.

As promsied, this week I’m looking at the fine print of Australian cultural funding.

Today I’m looking at funding by artform category. As you can see from the graph below, the big ticket items are parks and environment funding, public broadcasters, libraries and art galleries.

Australian cultural funding by artform category, 2007-08, all levels of Australian government, operational figures only (excludes capital funding). Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics data, collated by myself.

You can get a bigger jpeg of the graph above by clicking through on the image (it’s a link to a bigger file).

Here is the data table for the graph, which helps you understand the breakdown.

A few notes on definitions: I’ve collated this data from the publication Cultural Funding by Government 2007-08 by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. (I’ve used operational funding only, ignoring capital funding for this purposes of this exercise.) Being the ABS, it has collected this data from various state, territory and local governments, as well as Canberra. As such, the data is what has been provided to the ABS. The very large figure for “Other arts” reflects this problem: it is principally made up of a big figure from local government sources that obviously weren’t able to break their figures down for the ABS survey. In addition to this, some of the states and territories have classified their “Other arts” slightly differently. And, of course, none of this even gets into the conceptual difficulties of classifying converging, hybrid or cross-over artworks (for instance, is a program to fund VJs at a rock festival visual art, is it multimedia, or is it musical performance?).

Some of the categories are not immediately obvious. “Radio and television services” basically means the ABC and SBS. “Film and video production and distribution” is largely made up of Screen Australia and the various state film funding bodies. The ABS doesn’t really explain what “Archives” consist of – for instance, is the National Film and Sound Archive part of this category? I’m assuming so, but I don’t really know.

Further more, and this is quite interesting, the ABS states that

Funding by government for major institutions which specialise in education of a cultural nature, such as the National Academy of Music, the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), the Australian Ballet School and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) has been included. Funding for special libraries (e.g. Parliamentary libraries), libraries in higher education institutions and schools is excluded.

I’m not sure I really understand this one – while most of us would agree that NIDA and AFTRS are pretty cultural places, the Parliamentary Library is also nothing if not a cultural institution, and in fact does a rather good job of researching Australian cultural and media policy.

But, as you can see, the big dollars are going to the big public sector cultural organisations: parks and wildlife departments, public broadcasters, libraries, museums and art galleries. Another point worth making is that the entire Australia Council budget is only $175 million out of this total figure of more than $5 billion – more than half of which goes to 29 major performing arts organisations. We can infer that relatively little funding goes to ordinary working artists – something I’ll have a look at later this week. I’ll also attempt to match these funding figures to some of the other cultural data the ABS provides.

Australia COuncil funding by category, 2008-2009. source: 2008-09 Annual Report

Over at Marcus Westbury’s blog, he’s posted a graph breakdown of the Australia Council’s funding by artform category, from the Australia Council’s 2006-07 Annual Report.

I was intending this post to be a detailed breakdown of Australian government cultural and arts funding, drawing on the public sources and drilling down into the detail of the funding to describe the distribution of that funding in various ways. But after glancing at this year’s Australia Council Annual Report, I am going to write instead about the decreasing transparency of that document.

While I mention cultural funding, though, here are some top-line figures. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, cultural funding across all levels of government in Australia exceeds $6 billion (it was $6,311.4 million in 2007-08, to be precise):

The Australian Government contributed $2,358.9m (37.4%) to total cultural funding while the state and territory governments contributed $2,952.2m (46.8%) and local governments provided $1,000.3m (15.8%).

Where does the money go? Mostly to parks and environmental heritage, broadcasting (the ABC and SBS), libraries and museums, in that order:

Environmental heritage was the largest recipient of funds, with funding of over $1.4 billion ($1,466.4m) or 27.6% of total cultural funding from the Australian Government and state and territory governments combined. The other major recipient of Australian and state and territory government funding in 2007-08 was Radio and television services at over $1.3 billion ($1,355.0m) representing 25.5% of Australian and state government cultural funding. Libraries received $1,036.4m or 16.4% of total funding, including $653.4m from local government while Other museums and cultural heritage received $630.4m (10.0%).

Once you drill further down into the figures, it becomes quickly apparent that the majority of cultural funding is channeled through relatively large government cultural departments and agencies, while grants and subsidies to artists and non-profit cultural organisations – the kind of thing most people would recognise as “arts funding” remains a relatively small proportion of total cultural spending by the government sector.

Part of the difficulty with reporting on this area is the aggregated nature of the statistics available. The Australia Council’s annual statement (this year branded with the embarrassingly Orwellian slogan “One Arts Sector: One Arts Council”, which must make the artists and organisations in parts of the sector not supported by the Australia Council feel wonderful) has become noticeably less transparent in recent years, and the Council has also had a less than consistent approach to which statistics it reports.

One glaring omission from the 2008-09 Annual Report is a breakdown of its grant recipients. You can find these breakdowns in earlier reports, and mighty useful they were too. It might seem like a minor point, but the list was in fact a key data source for my 2007 investigation of financial and governance irregularities in the Noise festival. Noise is a major initiative funded by the Australia Council as a national youth media ‘festival’ (even though it is no longer a festival), but which actually involved the payment of large sums of money to the private company of Sydney promoter Brandan Saul. Noise continues to receive funding, by the way, but you have to drill down into the entrails of the report’s financial statements to find reference to it.

The Annual Report has a few other notable omissions and unexplained inconsistencies . Owing to a new system for classifying artform data, there is a new category called “cross-artform” which is presumably the successor to the category which used to be called “multi-artform/other.” Is it the same category, or a different one? We don’t know because the Australia Council doesn’t explain it, or publish the funding breakdowns which would enable us to independently verify it. One of the highlighted projects from the Inter-Arts departmental description in the Annual Report is the commendable Splendid project, which included some real talents of the emerging Australian scene, like Alice Lang and Mish Grigor. Splendid is definitely a “cross-artform” project – but what else is? We don’t know.

Tomorrow, I’ll get around to that special post breaking down Australian cultural funding, and I’ll discuss some interesting factoids that fall out form it, like the fact that support for individual artists at the Australia Council appears to be falling, and that funding to public agencies and cultural organisations dominates cultural funding at nearly every level and category of funding program.

UPDATE: Marcus informs me the grants breakdown is to be forthcoming in a future document.

If you haven’t seen Monday’s Wall Street Journal special section Report on Philanthropy and Charitable Giving, go find it on line. Make sure your favorite funder gets a copy.

Pablo Eisenberg’s superb and provocative cover story, “What’s Wrong with Charitable Giving and How to Fix It” hits the nail on the head in calling for nine fundamental changes in the way that foundations of all sizes give out their money to all types of nonprofits. (See link in blogroll to the left.) His top three priorities are to increase the amount of payout from 5% to 6%; to increase general operating support; and to increase multi-year funding. The first priority takes an act of Congress. The other two are common sense. So are his other points, including simplifying application and reporting procedures and adopting rolling grant making.

Let’s get the first priority dealt with first. Eisenberg argues that “an increase in the payout rate to 6% in all grants would eventually add about $10 billion a year to the coffers of nonprofit organizations, to the approximately $40 million that it is estimated that foundations now give.” Yes, you read that right. $10 BILLION would be added to the $40 million. He goes on to say that “Foundations claim that such an increase would jeopardize the perpetuity of their assets, yet a number of studies argue that their assets could be maintained with a payout of 7% or 8%. The Obama administration and Congress should act quickly to increase the payout to 6% in grants, and the President should use his bully pulpit to pressure foundations to give much more than they are currently giving.” (Well, my sense is that most foundations are giving as much as they can to save nonprofit organizations in this dire time. But I fully agree: Congress has to let the payout go up to 6% or we will simply lose our vital nonprofit sector.)

As for Eisenberg’s other key recommendations – increased operating support, multi-year funding, and rolling grant making – they are essential changes that have to happen to keep the arts sector alive. Many foundations, to their vast credit, have already scrapped their various grant programs in favor of general operating support – at least through the predictable future. But the very notion is still politically charged among funders who have traditionally used grant making to address their own priorities. Equally charged is the idea of multi-year funding and overall larger annual allocations so that organizations have a chance to really do what they set out to do, rather than accomplish only a fraction of their goals.

In the arts, the past/current model has been proven, and proven, and proven to not work. In her report to Grantmakers in the Arts – the association of foundations and public agencies that fund the arts – Holly Sidford recently wrote that “the nonprofit arts business model is shaky, for many reasons. One important reason is that the practices of both nonprofits and funders have not recognized that there are different kinds of money (in the Nonprofit Finance Fund’s terms: build, buy, and burn capital), a financial diet too rich in project grants erodes the fundamental viability of any nonprofit organization. A commitment by more funders to better understand and respect capitalization principles in their grantmaking, coupled with more open-minded exploration of ways funders can support hybrid and alternative financial models, would increase responsible practices in the future. A corollary to this is the need to adequately capitalize collaborative ventures.”

For decades and through a number of recessionary cycles everyone involved in arts funding has known that the emperor has no clothes – the funding approaches adopted and used in both the public and private sector do not and have not and will not work to create a healthy nonprofit arts sector. It was 1966 when economists William J. Baumol and William Bowen first studied and wrote about the fundamental earnings gap within the performing arts and here we are today, still with the same earnings gap and the same undercapitalization and underfunding of the arts.

Write a letter to the President. We need that 6% payout rate.
Talk to your favorite foundations. It has been 44 years since the earnings gap was documented as undeniable. Isn’t it time to fix charitable giving so that the arts survive and (maybe) thrive?

An entire generation has come of age since many of us could feel very positive about trends in cultural policy. If you came of age — or even moreso, to consciousness — since, say, 1978, you’ve been breathing the thin air of lowering expectations and post-’60s reaction.

After the inspiring 2008 election, we’re supposed to have hope again, despite the noise of everything-falling-apart. And truly, when things are as misbegotten as they have been, falling apart can be a very good thing. But Mr. Hope and his co-conspirators have yet to grock the cultural-policy paradigm. I believe he — and we all — have it in our hearts; but our minds have yet to follow.

Happily, progressive cultural leaders have taken advantage of this time to continue working on democratic visions of cultural policy. Now we have a tool for educating our erstwhile fellow travelers: Art and the Public Purpose: A New Framework. This site proposes a cultural-policy framework forged by a group of cultural activists involved in a White House meeting in May 2009.

Check it out. Endorse it, by signing the petition. And then let your friends and colleagues know about this fresh discussion: check out the “Act Now!” page for ideas — then ACT!

We need our national leaders’ attention focused squarely on progressive cultural values, if we’re to have any hope of lifting this country out of three decades of public-sector destruction and decay. Without this clarity of purpose and practical action, how can we resist falling back into the hands of right-wing policy pirates? Here at last is a good place to start!

Lyndon Terracini (source: Opera Australia website).

The former Director of the Brisbane Festival and incoming Artistic Director of Opera Australia, Lyndon Terracini, has orchestrated a well-publicised spray at Australia’s major performing arts sector in today’s Australian.

In an article by Michaela Boland, Terracini previews a speech today to the Australian Business Arts Foundation, which will dovetail with a forthcoming publication with Currency House:

Lyndon Terracini, the former artistic director of the Brisbane Festival, has arrived at the opera company with a bold vision to make it more accessible and more representative of the community. He believes storytelling in Australia has become predictable and conservative, and is concerned it lacks creative inspiration.

Even productions acclaimed as visionary, such as Benedict Andrews’s epic War of the Roses and the plays of Barrie Kosky, fall short of his expectations.

“I don’t think they have the element of daring that Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll had,” Terracini told The Australian on the eve of his speech.

Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, staged at the Melbourne Theatre Company in 1955, was the first mainstage Australian production, and signalled the end of British domination of the Australian theatre. Such a landmark effort is difficult to replicate.

“The work we are doing now is much more professional, even sophisticated, but where is our core ethos?” Terracini said.

“What has happened to the boldness and cavalier daring of our performing aesthetic? We’ve become comfortable, the art we’re making is very comfortable and we’ve become mean-spirited.”

In a speech in Melbourne hosted by arts publisher Currency House and the Australia Business Arts Foundation, which will be repeated in Sydney next week, Terracini will accuse contemporary artists of lacking courage in their work. He intends to pour scorn on the major performing arts companies for selecting performers from a limited ethnic pool.

“How many indigenous faces do you see in the SSO, MSO, Brisbane’s orchestras or the ACO? We’re not seeing them, and we should ask why,” he said.

Terracini intends to rectify the racial sameness that is obvious at Opera Australia.

“Opera companies have remained the same since their inception and the world has changed dramatically,” he said. “Yet 200 years ago the role of an opera company was very different to now. Opera used to be what the movies are now. People for all sorts of reasons may have had a prejudice about coming to opera, but once they come you can bet they will adore it,” he said.

Oh really? I’m not sure  if the stats would back that assertion up. To begin with, let’s acknowledge that Terracini is right about a number of things. Australia’s major performing arts organisations, with some notable exceptions like Bangarra, are very white, very middle-class and the art that  many of them produce is indeed “comfortable”.

However, I argue that this has nothing to do with a lack of vision of behalf of many of those involved in the sector.

Rather, the chief reason is related to in-built structural problems in the industry itself. One of the biggest problems is the major performing arts organisations’ audiences. Richer, whiter, older and better educated than the broader Australian population, the audiences for the MPOs are generally ill-disposed towards “daring”, “bold” and “cavalier” performances. As any marketing executive at one of these organisations will tell you, their audiences prefer classic repertoire and safe interpretations. So do many critics, like our old friend Peter Craven.

And what about Terracini himself? A glance at the back catalogue of the Brisbane Festival and Queensland Music Festival programs he directed does not exactly reveal a cavalcade of bold, daring and cavalier productions. On the contrary, Terracini’s programs are generally stocked full of crowd-pleasing community events with the occasional high culture commission thrown in.  Bob Cat Dancing was certainly popular, but could you put it up against Benedict Andrews or Barrie Kosky? And … Summer of the Seventeeth Doll? Yes, it was a ground-breaking play. It was also fifty years ago.

It will be interesting to see how Terracini’s tenure progresses at the top of the biggest tree in the Australian cultural forest. His tenure as a festival director in Brisbane was marked by canny political manouvering – but also some brutal power plays that left many in the sector feeling bruised and even bullied. Will that conduct continue in the big house in Sydney?

This paper, written with Taryn Bloom and published in the International Journal of Cultural Policy, volume 7, number 3, 2001, brings together three aspects of my research at the time:

1. The links between art and creativity
2. Arts advocacy, or more specifically arguing for government support of the arts
3. The economics of the arts

The paper examines how the concept of creativity is used by to advocating government expenditure on the arts. It  paraphrases the main creativity argument used by arts advocates – that, through encouraging creativity, the arts encourage innovation and economic growth. It then critically examines the argument, first by clarifying what creativity is and how it relates to art, then by evaluating the argument against theory and evidence from Psychology and Economics. The argument is found to be weakened both by a lack of ‘hard’ evidence and by the way in which
it is used by arts advocates. The analysis suggests ways in which arts advocates can improve the persuasiveness of their creativity arguments and provides insights into the design and delivery of arts policies.

The pdfs of the paper are in two parts:

Part 1 looks at creativity, its links with art, and how arts advocates use the term in lobbying governments. It pulls the advocacy argument apart and critically investigates each stage: the links between art and creativity; between creativity and innovation; and between creativity, innovation and economic benefits (both microeconomic and macroeconomic).

Part 2 considers the costs of creativity and summarises the outcome of the critical analysis. It then assesses the advocacy arguments from the view of market failure, comparative institutionalism and strategic issues.

The critical examination finds that:

• Evidence suggests that creative potential may be realised, but not expanded.
• ‘Hard’ or ‘scientific’ evidence to support the arguments is inconclusive and at best supports only correlation, not causation.
• Artistic creativity may or may not be transferable into other spheres of life, such as inventive approaches in the workplace.
• Inventiveness may or may not be successfully realised as innovations. Innovation is, nevertheless, pivotal to economic betterment. (Using a convention from the economics of innovation that distinguishes between invention and innovation: an invention being something new; an innovation being something new and useful.)
• If the advocacy argument is to be targeted to government, advocates must address market failure and at least be aware of comparative institutional issues (in particular, that the advocate’s own comparative advantage in delivering non-market benefits is clearly established in the argument).
• Arts advocacy would be improved by a clearer understanding among arts advocates of what creativity is, and the relationship between art and creativity. This includes understanding the costs of creativity.

Advocating Creativity part 1>

Advocating Creativity part 2>

The paper was originally published in the International Journal of Cultural Policy>

This probably should have been my first post, but I have been doing a little shifting around of blog spaces which has led me to transplant some old blogs onto this new site.  The whole point of this blog is to explore the intersection of the arts and culture.  For those of us not immersed within the world of art everyday the definition of culture might be synonymous with art.  When we talk about being cultured many times the arts are what is being referred to.  As an anthropologist my definition of culture is a little different (but this is simply because I spend 4 years of undergrad studying the foundations and applications of what culture means).  I recently attended a conference on Public and Cultural Diplomacy in which the definition of culture seemed to be directly linked to the arts and art initiatives.  For the purposes of this blog I will define culture as a system of learned and shared beliefs, values, institutions, and practices among a community of individuals.  There are hundreds of definitions for culture, but this is the simplest for our purposes.

What I hope to accomplish with this blog is the create an forum for discourse on the issues facing the arts, culture, diplomacy, and policy.  Sometimes the post will be well researched studies on current or past issues, other times they will simply be my thoughts on issues, specific art pieces, and many more topics, of that I am sure.

I  hope that those who follow will participate in discussions whether you agree with me or not.   Mainly I hope to use this as a space for my own exploration of the topics facing the field today.

Thank You All

There’s a must read column in today’s on-line Forbes by Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant Saramana Mitra. Anyone who thinks about the role of creativity, of invention – the absolute thinking processes we learn from and through the arts – should ponder it.

Writing about our economy, Mitra says,

“We’re not having any recovery. We need the innovators, the entrepreneurs, the creators, the scientists, the technologists–those who build value, those who create jobs–to lead us out of this nightmare. Not a bunch of speculators who make money regardless of whether value gets created or destroyed. In fact, many of them are incentivized to destroy value by spreading fake rumors about companies and stocks, and they do so often. Some get caught, most don’t.

And our talented youth gets seduced by this profession of speculation known for its easy and abundantly flowing financial rewards, avoiding those that require much greater intellectual capacity. Most importantly, very early in their lives, our talented youth come to realize that fields that may earn them a Nobel Prize–cancer research or multi-core computing–may not make them rich. But moving money from here to there will.

And thus, we lose Berkeley Ph.Ds in nuclear physics to hedge funds and MIT computer scientists capable of delivering computing to 6 billion people to derivative manipulation on Wall Street.”

Mitra’s focus on nuclear physics and computer scientists could well have included the documentary film maker, the author, the composer, the designer whose creativity and innovation should also lead the way.

Until we see that creativity is fundamental to economic as well as social progress, and make creativity a fundamental (and attractive) value throughout our culture, we’re stuck. Intellectual property is the currency of the future. What drives its creation?

Creativity and innovation.