The Speech of Angels Ignored

"There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more." George Byron


This is a travesty of epic proportions and should be on the front page of every daily rag around the country. A Current Affair should be stalking Arts & Education Ministers from Perth to Sydney. My mate Alan Jones should be concerning himself with something important like this. In fact, we should be on the street protesting.

"A major national review of Australian school music in 2005 estimated that about 10% of Australian schools have no music program of any kind," Stephen Crittenden has reported in his latest broadcast for Radio National's Background Briefing.

Crittenden interviews Richard Letts, the executive director of the Music Council of Australia, who explains that seven years ago they did a national study and "found that, on average, people who are training to be primary classroom teachers got 23 hours of instruction in music and music pedagogy. With that 23 hours, they have to be ready to teach six years of music."

That's right. A child in this country can be taught music for six formative years at primary school by people who have learnt the art in just 23 hours.

No wonder Richard Tognetti calls music education in Australia 'neanderthal'.

But wait. It gets better.

35% of primary schools have absolutely no music in New South Wales. The data across the nation, according to Crittenden's report, is not much better.

Crittenden compares what's happening in Australia with what is happening in a country just across the Pacific - Venezuela.

"Established in 1975, El Sistema [Venezuela's national system of youth and children's orchestras and choirs] was originally conceived as a social program for young people in Venezuela's crime- and drug-ridden slums. It's an intensive after-school program that takes children from 2 years old to 20, with much of the tuition provided by young people who are graduates of the program.

"Because of El Sistema, Venezuela is now a country awash with music — in fact it now has more than 200 youth orchestras," he reports.

But its not just quantity Venezuela is producing - it's quality as well. Gustavo Dudamel, a 28-year-old Venezuelan has just been appointed chief conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

It's worth taking an hour out of your day to hear this report which is quite an astonishing snapshot into the current state of affairs in music education in this first world nation known as 'Australia'.

I'd be very interested to hear how you think this compares to other arts education programmes - particularly theatre and the visual arts.

2020 Breakaway Group Itching to Fight Garrett

As first published in Crikey.

So incensed are the delegates that attended the Creative Australia strand of the 2020 summit, they are now forming an advocacy group from within to keep a check on the Federal Government.

What's angered the delegates to this point? The censorship of ideas within the Initial Summit Report, which have been replaced by other ideas that were never discussed.

"We got hints this was going to happen when the statement which came out bore no relation to what came from us," one delegate tells Crikey, "It is clear that it came from a pre-existing agenda."

Many of the delegates are still holding their tongues until the final report, which is due out in a few weeks. But that hasn’t stopped the delegates exchanging contact details and setting cyberspace alight with emails, proposals and furious debate about what to do if their real recommendations continue to be ignored.

Some of the ideas put forward by the delegates that have so far been gone missing include:

- The formation of an organisation to work with planners, developers and architects to ensure that good design is a core requirement for every building and public space

- To help develop a design-literate nation by including aesthetics/design as part of the school curriculum and by forming closer links between industry professionals and schools

- To promote creative organisations overseas as soft diplomacy and to assist in advocating with exports like education and business

- Remove barriers and bureaucratic red tape to make funding models and reporting requirements easier

- Increased support for new digital media technologies

- Mandate 80% quota for Australian content by broadcasters in digital delivery with a five-fold increase in support of public broadcasting as a brand for quality with distinctive Australian content

- Develop a whole of industry national screen strategy with government taking culture out of the US Free Trade Agreement

What has amazed the delegates is that the initial report somehow changed ideas like develop "closer links between industry professionals and schools" into "Creativity Summer Schools".

"No-one ever mentioned summer schools," Crikey has been told by another delegate. "And the first time I heard about the Indigenous proposals was when the report was released on the Sunday."

This is not to mention the contentious idea (also published in the initial report) which proposed that creative endeavours be funded "through a 1% creative dividend from all Government Departments for expenditure".

"Everyone in that room knew that Queensland had tried that idea and that it had failed. I don’t know how that got put forward either," the delegate explained.

"I went to the summit with an open mind," another stated. "But every now and again Peter Garrett would come up to each of the groups saying he didn't need to listen to us because he had total faith in us. My scepticism rose each time he said it."

Another delegate added that, "I don't believe that he [Garrett] is bearing ill will and I do think he genuinely wants to listen. But this is compromised by political ambition and his essential powerlessness within the ALP. I wish we had a smarter arts minister."

If 2020 was just a publicity exercise as some commentators have suggested, then the Federal Government may get a lot more than it bargained for.

"The summit has created a motivated group of diverse people who realised that we all have a lot in common," another attendee has told Crikey. "Everyone realised that other people outside the stream were saying they needed the arts."

If the make-up of the advocacy group is anything like the chosen delegates then there should be concern within the arts community at the real lack of practising artists. Almost all of the attendees were from funded institutions and the corporate sector, with gaping holes around music and new media.

Either way, 2020 provided a rare opportunity for the often fragmented Australian arts community to unite and share ideas. Let's just hope that Garrett’s short-staffed and over-worked arts advisers are on their toes because after eleven years of suffocation, the industry is more than determined to get some real results through Government policy.

PM calls on best and brightest?

It's all over the front page of The Australian today:

"The Prime Minister announced yesterday that 1000 of the nation's 'best and brightest' would be picked to attend a two-day summit in Canberra to articulate radical solutions to the 10 most pressing problems facing the nation over the next decade."

And to my general shock and amazement The Arts gets a guernsey, coming in at number 8 (just after Indigenous Australia and just before Democracy).

It does have to share a place with film and design, but I suppose that if The Arts are considered more important than democracy we shouldn't complain too much.

To be held in April, the weekend forum will aim to propose long term options for the development of Australia towards 2020. Rudd's press release goes on to explain that "this Steering Committee will select up to 100 participants in each of the Summit areas who will attend in a voluntary capacity. The participants will be drawn from business, academia, community and industrial organisations, the media and include a number of individual eminent Australians."

This is where you, dear reader, come in. The last thing we need is for the usual suspects to be lining up and representing 'the arts'. Can you imagine anything worse than a continuation of the status quo? It's enough to make you shudder.

It's very important that a 'real' cross section of the industry needs to be represented at this event in April, not just the institutionalised individuals at the top of the pecking order. You need your James Strong representatives in their bow-ties and jaguars, but you also need your fringe theatre artists. You need your Cate Blanchetts with their business sponsorship deals but you also need your regional arts organisation and their struggling relationship with state governments.

Unfortunately state premiers will be in attendance, so you can look forward to Premier Iemma of New South Wales having a chat with you about the merits of rugby league over opera. So the two day ideas-fest will spend at least one of the days discussing terms of reference.

Unless of course you convince Premier Iemma not to come, explaining to him that there isn't a sport category up for discussion. In fact, maybe he can just stay in Sydney that weekend and check out the footy. Doesn't the rugby league kick off that weekend?

I think there are a number key areas that must be addressed by the two day forum. The first is, of course, the funding structure of the arts with a greater integration of federal, state and local funding. The situation in New South Wales where funding keeps get cut and cut and cut, will soon enough spread to other states and territories. How can greater integration stop this from happening?

A new and fresh vision for the Australia Council must be discussed. The grant application procedures are at times ridiculous and anti-creative and the whole idea around 'peer review' needs to re-evaluated.

One of the other things that could be discussed would be an equivalent of the Australian Major Performing Arts Group (AMPAG). Maybe we could call it the Australian Minor Performing Arts Group (AmPAG), representing artists outside the gates of Troy.

The third area of importance is the state of arts education. This is an area that needs critical attention not only at a school level, but more urgently at a tertiary level. Arts faculties across the country have shrunk and a stream of subjects have disappeared at every institution.

And don't even start me on the National Art School which each year struggles to stay afloat. Just fund the damn thing.

The fourth area of importance is arts reportage. Is the standard offered by our media outlets (I'm looking at you Mr Fairfax and you Ms Rural Press and also you Mr Murdoch) really that good enough and how does it need to be renewed with vigour. And how do we stop the arts section from being just a pit stop for cadet journalists to practice their prose?

The fifth area of importance is greater integration of multicultural arts and collaboration on an international scale. Why is the AsiaLink programme so under utilised for cross-cultural collaboration? What does the Federal Government plan to do about expanding the touring programme for artists and arts organisations? What will be our vision for cultural exports?

There are more and you will be able to make your submissions online, when a website is created for the summit. So don't be silent and don't rely on those that are currently in the ears of government. It does make a difference.


Story UPDATED HERE.

I'll just pick up my easel and go to the arse end of the world...

It's been a long time since The Arts have made media headlines in Australia. All of a sudden, however, there has been parliamentary argy bargy, press club speeches, opinion pieces, public forums, letter page debates and a healthy banter occurring within the industry as a whole.

If anyone can recall a time since Don Dunstan (right) where The Arts has been discussed as a policy platform in the manner in which it is at present, I would be intrigued to know when.

All this debate and policy discussion can be put down to two simple events; the appointment of George Brandis as Federal Arts Minister and the appointment of Peter Garrett as Opposition Arts Minister.

Taking these two highly extroverted characters and placing them at each end of the arts portfolio has created some lovely looking fireworks, but how much of it is just hot air?

The positioning of Brandis on one side, with the conservative foot soldiers of Glenn Milne, Paul Kelly and the News Limited stable can be summarised by what the Arts Minister stated at a National Press Club address on 19 September:
The truth is that, in Australia today, the creative arts are in good shape, as those who actually work within the arts sector – as opposed to some in the commentariat who are unaffected by such quotidian concerns as budgets and programme funding – are the first to acknowledge.

On one level, the Arts Minister has a point. Since Howard was elected as Prime Minister in 1996, federal funding for the arts has risen in nominal terms from $410 million to $680 million which represents an increase of 65.8%.

To distance itself from the top-level funding approach, Peter Garrett, along with the left-wing chorus of ex-PM Paul Keating and the anti-Howard camp of opinion writers are taking the debate to a more theoretical level. The key themes of this angle are centred on themes of accessibility and sedition laws.

Unfortunately, the ALP's shadow-boxing election campaign won't allow for concrete proposals on exactly what a Federal Labor Party will invest in any of the major streams of the arts infrastructure (ABC, SBS, Australia Council).

This has fuelled commentators such as Glenn Milne to suggest that if artists really want a thriving industry they should support a Howard Government stating that, "at the same time as the federal Government has increased spending on the arts, Brandis points out that it's the states, the Labor states, that are actually letting down the ensemble. Only in Western Australia, according to the Australia Council, has there been a significant increase."

Hard figures really do speak volumes and that is what the Howard Government is very good at. While Peter Garrett holds grassroots forums, such as the one I attended last night at the New Theatre in Sydney, Brandis is screaming from the pulpit that the Liberal Party are the true arts party.

This is certainly true on some levels. Most specifically, on the institutional level. The way that the Federal Cabinet faced a backbencher revolt over reduced symphony funding is testament to many of its members enjoying the high arts. But the recent funding increase in this years budget, which came about because of Brandis' great political skill, is a much needed catch up for a sector that has been falling behind on a federal level since even before Howard. And this doesn't even cover the decreases in higher education funding, which can be seen as the beginning of artist and audience development.

So what does a Federal ALP offer the arts community? At this stage it's really hard to say.

At the Your Shout forum held last night, Peter Garrett certainly offered a theoretical point of difference to The Arts. The very fact that he was meeting with artists around the country and listening to the community's concerns is a big point of departure from previous office-holders who mostly listen to the arts elite.

The somewhat tangible things that the ALP is proposing are:
- a Dance Action Plan to be implemented by the Australia Council
- a Small to Medium Theatre Action Plan
- the implementation of ArtStart, a social security plan to assist artists' incomes
- a program of mandatory presentation by major performing arts companies of emerging talent
- further support of Regional Arts financing
- expansion of the schools touring programme
- major support of new media and digital technologies
- to continue 'adequate' funding of film and television
- an Indigenous Arts resale royalty scheme

Aside from the investment on digital technologies, there has been no commitment to additional funding.

The audience at the event centred a lot of their concerns on the ALP's refusal to re-implement universal student unions which is a major concern for the industry. Indeed the highlight of audience comments during the evening came Van Badham, a young playwright whose claim to fame is a successful residency at the Royal Court theatre in the UK. Her comments go to the heart of the problems of the arts industry, not just Voluntary Student Unions and I reproduce her comments below.

"I am heart broken to hear you reject re-instating student unions just because in my experience and with my career trajectory I understood what it meant to become an artist and to be a part of my community. Coming from the University of Wollongong, being involved in student unions and clubs and societies and an entire infrastructure for arts development which has just disappeared.

"And I feel betrayed by the Labor Party for your abandonment of universal student unionism. And it's not only artists but it's everything with the university system. Because the problem with the performing arts in this country is we are losing our place to develop and losing our place to fail.

"If we don't even have the access to university drama societies to learn our craft... and most people don't make their way through high school and say 'mum and dad, I'm 14, I want to become an actor or a theatre director'.

"The amount of pressure put on you as an emerging artist in Australia to do something for life is absolutely overwhelming. And we don't have the institutions here or the investment or the economic foresight to look how we develop artist so that we could culturally renew regional areas and look at arts production as an industry which can rescue places like Wollongong.

"What's been going on in Newcastle has all been coming from the ground up and through initiatives of the local council where you are looking at arts industries in Newcastle that are employing people that are bringing in a different kind of investment... looking at art as an export industry and at the long term investment in what we as Australians are to the rest of the world.

"I know it's not cool to talk about culture as an industry, but it's what other countries like the United Kingdom are very good at and recognised a long time ago how important it is to have that development in place as part of the educative process for artists.

"And this is the thing, we don't have the Battersea Arts Centre here, we don't have developmental labs attached to major performing arts companies. We have tokenistic education programs - they're tokenistic because they are under funded.

"When Universities got all their funding cut in 1996 and it's been on-going. The first thing to get cut where artist training programs. The squeeze got put on my university - the University of Wollongong where we went from having ten elite acting students to have it decline to an open door course.

"Since the introductory of Voluntary Student Unionism it now costs $50 to join the drama society and at least they have one! The ones in regional universities have all but disappeared.

"There is no infrastructure to provide people with the opportunity to become a part of an arts career introductory that is getting lower and lower and that's the crisis we have got at the moment.

"For people that came through that student uni experience... all of that's gone. We have been abandoned and I want to know why."