This piece was written last week, and didn’t make it into print among the plethora of musings on the Australia 2020 summit. It should be noted that after I put pen to paper, the stories about the final communique having a rather tenuous link with the discussions in the stream emerged. That’s disappointing, but hardly surprising. I learnt a long time ago that whoever writes the minutes of a meeting is in an incredibly powerful position. It might also be interesting to compare the outcomes with pre-summit commentary.
Cate Blanchett was in danger of being upstaged by her new son Iggy, and 2020 Summit delegates were treated to a plenary session featuring Prime Ministerial favourite Hugh Jackman’s comedy stylings. The arts crowd were delighted to be back inside the tent, while culture warriors were licking their lips at an opportunity to resurrect slogans about “Keating era luvvies” – when they could take time out from watching La Bohème, that is.
But what did the Creative Australia stream achieve?
As Professor John Warhurst noted in Eureka Street, one difficulty in assessing the ideas put forward to the Prime Minister is a conceptual confusion about “the difference between ideas, policies, visions, aspirations and general directions.” As with other summit streams, the interim report of the Creative Australia summitteers is something of a mixed bag.
Ideas such as digitising national collections, incorporating creativity into a national school curriculum, and recognition of cultural output in research funding are all good in their own way. But the big picture aim of leveraging creativity as a core component of Australia’s international competitiveness won’t be achieved solely through ideas such as artists in residence and cultural design policies.
It’s an undoubted positive that creativity and innovation have been placed squarely on the national agenda. But the composition and background of the delegates also led to a certain narrowing of focus which could be counter-productive. In New Matilda, Professor Stuart Cunningham observed that the synergies between creativity, science, business and the economy were something of a rhetorical afterthought.
It’s not surprising that a stream made up largely of administrators and practitioners of the traditional arts would come up with a “big idea” like a National Endowment Fund for the Arts. But if our national aim is to raise cultural investment to the level of comparable OECD countries, that still leaves the question hanging of whether a goal such as enhancing creativity is best secured through pouring more money into the flagship performing arts companies who continue to suffer from declining if cashed up and cultivated and classy audiences – as do Australian films.
If we’re serious about nurturing creativity, we need to get beyond a “picking winners” model – because “rewarding success” ignores how we manage failure, as QUT academic Terry Flew points out. We also need to recognise that culture and creativity extend far beyond the temples of high art. As Centre for Policy Development Fellow Ben Eltham observes at the blog PollieGraph, much cultural activity – for instance, in small galleries and in pubs and clubs across the nation – isn’t measured as “cultural output”. He rightly asks whether a goal of doubling cultural output misses a lot of what is happening without public support or statistical scrutiny and means only more productions and more grants.
There’s a broad consensus in the literature on creativity and cultural industries that audiences can’t be summoned up “from the vasty deep” but that government cultural policy works best when it brushes with the grain. Some of Australia’s strengths in creative output lie in areas that rarely get a look in when the stereotypical debates about arts funding are restaged for the umpteenth time – visual effects, popular music and the computer games industry, for example. Those successes have mostly been achieved without much state support. And often in the face of policy barriers – zoning and noise regulations and a narrow definition of “Australian content” in film funding stifle bands and big budget films respectively. Slow broadband and education department bans on access to social networking sites both work against the spontaneous creative expression of the YouTube generation. There’s a real danger that the star power of the summit’s leading lights might blind us to the less glamorous task of facilitating the creativity already embodied in so many corners of the country.
The appointment of academic and editor Julianne Schultz and the inclusion of policy thinkers such as Marcus Westbury were welcome additions to the Creative Australia cast list. It may well be that we owe them, and participants such as Cunningham and economist Saul Eslake, a round of thanks for the summit’s laudatory commitment to a broad vision of creativity. The momentum is there, and a whole of government approach is also desperately needed, but we’ve only just begun the hard work of asking serious questions about the purposes and impacts of cultural policy. Harnessing the potential and the contributions of everyday creative citizens whose names aren’t up in lights should be a major component of the debate beyond the 2020 summit.
Elsewhere: Marcus Westbury’s initial impressions, Alison Croggon’s take, and Lyn’s view at Public Opinion. Alison also provides some links to other coverage of the Creative Australia stream.
Cross-posted at PollieGraph.
Govts should not spend a dime on subsidising “the Yartz”. Thats taking money out of the hands of poor people such as Aboriginals and giving it to pampered wankers.
Although I dont have a problem with state support for elite arts schools such as NIDA or VCA. Sort out wheat from chaff.
The most creative investment that an artist can dmake is to spend a year doing it tough and living rough in an Occidental metropolis. The spur of poverty, exposure to the traditions of antiquity and modernity and the lure of making it avante or en garde are a great stimulus to the creative juices.
All my arty friends and relatives spent ages down and out in London, Paris and Berlin in the early eighties. Since then they have generally prospered without living off govt hand outs or in state sponsored sheltered work shops.
I, being more prosaic, only took three months off at that time for the grand European tour. Made up for it by spending the better part of a year working my way from LA to NY in the early nineties. That was an eye opener from a “humanties and social science” point of view.
After that artists should spend at least a few months knocking about out back on on the road in AUS, if thats where they want to live and work. Get to know the real people in real jobs.
Thats the trouble with most artists these days. They have little real world experience outside their comfort zone in the inner-urban dens or Melbourne and Sydney. So their art has a shallow social foundation and narrow emotional range.
Thats why ordinary people treat AUS contemporary art – literature, film, fine arts – with such derision and disdain.
The art that has real world contact with the public, such as pub music and broadcast tele, gets a much better response from the public.
You seem to have missed a number of points, Jack, though that’s perhaps reflecting what I’ve criticiced as being a restaging of tired debates. Ideally the summit should have been about the broader issues of creativity rather than yet another rerun of the “subsidise art to what extent” debate. In many instances, it’s about government getting out of the road rather than acting as funder, as I’ve suggested.
If we’re talking about the narrow issues of arts funding, the continued tension that exists is that a large percentage of that funding goes into rewarding failure rather than success. That is to say – with the exception of funding for public broadcasting – which takes up the lion’s share of federal expenditure in this area – most of the available money goes into subsidising major performing arts companies that attempt to find audiences sufficient for commercial viability but fail. That’s what needs some rethinking – I don’t necessarily oppose continued funding for them but rather the inertia and lack of thought that sees the status quo prevail.
It’s also much better to think about publics and citizens as “produsers” rather than some passive audience/taste model, which simply doesn’t reflect the reality of what’s going on in terms of culture and creativity.
Mark, you’re up against it in wanting a good discussion about these sorts of things, not because of what you’ve written, but due to the nature of the animal.
In line with what Jack has provided, those in ‘creative’ fields who have “survived”, including that would mean they’ve been through and done enough to have something worthwhile to contribute, are too busy or keen to get on with their work. That they can work in their creative choice is enough reward, often, and so they just want to get on with it. These people are often highly specialised, so you won’t get an across the board workability necessarily. And like anyone else, you want something else to talk about other than work – certainly the last thing you want is that endless arty talk.
However, let me add something here which might be of interest for you.
After nearly 30 years of intense interest in creativity, a couple of things today ring loud.
Firstly, it was Keating who was our first Prime Minister to use – with not a throwaway meaning – the word creativity, in the frame of the national good, as and not limited to a resource. It might sound obtuse, but I waited for our Prime Minister to say the very word (in this way) which strikes to the most powerful centre within each of us. Creativity is what we build our lives upon, our nation and our world. The most essential thing, never voiced! To hear that word was a long time coming, grew vague, and then was taken away completely.
Now, we have the word being used again and it is utterly thrilling.
Secondly, the use of the term Creative placed into the national conversation – as an integral sector or individual of value – is bloody magnificent.
Thirdly, it is all as yet meaningless.
Here’s the thing, briefly and inexhaustively.
* The word creativity is too often used without knowing what it is.
* Hence the conversation goes round and round. It always sounds good to hear, and to say, but it’s mists amongst the trees.
* ‘Creativity’ is massively too often tied to artists.
Hence, removal of that tie is the first thing to achieve. This is done by teaching what creativity actually is. After that, real conversation can be had.
Let me give you an example. By all means, add your own. This example was one used three decades ago, so while it may appear socially coloured, it was born of a time when creativity was so not- or misunderstood – and that is just as true today.
A mother of three kids, away out in the suburbs, perhaps there is a local swimming pool five miles away, seven gum trees in the street, houses all looking the same, on a pension, sits down and draws a shopping list to feed her children something different every day. That is creativity.
It’s of just as much value as what Michelangelo did. No? Then take away his sandwiches and see how long he lasts.
Understanding the principles of creativity shifts the conversation away from one, though often spectacular, sector or individual of the community and brings it back home to where everyone can relate – because everyone has it.
Making that shift is vital for, and before, anything of real value can be done, because until then the conversation is already lost.
Agree wholeheartedly, Robert.
And that, in a nutshell, is where the summit stream erred – as I argued in the article.
“A mother of three kids, away out in the suburbs, perhaps there is a local swimming pool five miles away, seven gum trees in the street, houses all looking the same, on a pension, sits down and draws a shopping list to feed her children something different every day. That is creativity.”
Interesting example, in that one of the creative-expressive forms most available to most people is culinary. The others being sex, dancing and singing of course.
I think there’s a gap between the policy wonks and the practitioners when it comes down to arts, as there probably is in lots of other places as well. Policy wonks seem to see practitioners as self-interested and short-sighted. Practitioners tend to see policy wonks as having little knowledge of reality. Both of these tropes represent a dead-end when it comes to discussion.
Of course, there’s a difference between ‘arts’ and ‘creativity’ as Robert so rightly points out. So, I think there’s some confusion about what the purpose of ‘Creative Australia’ was about. Reading Alison Croggan, it seems as though there was some disappointment in the whole process and outcome, as well.
But there’s a few issues I’d disagree with you about, Mark.
I don’t know that a National Endowment Fund for the Arts does mean just more money for the flagship performing arts companies, as you seem to be implying. Is that stated anywhere? Perhaps it could mean more money for small companies, non-traditional arts and individual artists.
” most of the available money goes into subsidising major performing arts companies that attempt to find audiences sufficient for commercial viability but fail.” I don’t have a great deal of time for the major supporting arts companies either. But I think you have a misunderstanding of ‘failure’ here. My understanding is that they’re funded because it’s acknowledged that they can never get sufficient box-office to survive, and that’s the same all over the world. That doesn’t constitute ‘failure’. Of course there’s a very strong argument that they shouldn’t get so much funding, but that argument should be had on different grounds, I think.
You also state that there’s a narrow definition of ‘Australian content’ in film funding. It’s a definition that’s always going to be open to argument and ‘Australian’ is a very slippery concept. But I wonder what’s your basis for thinking that? Have you read the FFC’s definition of Sufficient Australian Content?
I also wonder why you choose policy people to pick out for thanks. Surely, you don’t think that practitioners have nothing to offer this converstion?
FDB, interestingly, that is another loaded word, which greatly misleads, when attempting a dialogue on ‘creativity’, and is often similarly misused in its place: “expressive”. It is too often loaded towards art and artists, and too loaded with judgement. You’ve picked up other ways in which all-encompassing ‘creativity’ has grown a social focus, and pulls against meaningful discourse.
Everything one does is an act of creativity!
Mark, I didn’t mean to take away from the thrust of the article, indeed it was that very thing which moved me (refreshingly!) to comment.
When Rudd chose Blanchett to head up the ‘Creatives’, unless she was to perform the function above, ie, making that shift of awareness, it was clear we’d end up with mists amongst the trees, as lovely as that can be at times, in the area of creativity. Lovely because at least the word is on the national table.
But I wonder if yet more damage has been done by promulgating all those misconceptions, no matter the positive intention. That it happened, though, and wasn’t guillotined off as has long been the way, is good news.
As you say.
(I imagine it was:) Rudd moved to head off both political and that stream’s huge PR prejudgement disaster by not calling it ‘Arts’ or ‘Arts and Culture’ or somesuch.
And hope upon hope, he used the title and the occasion to instill the word ‘creative’ once again in the national psyche, to be developed.
But we’ve a long, long way to go on it.
Fine, thanks for the comments.
Well, it could. But experience suggests that it’s unlikely to do so, absent of the re-examination of principles and goals that I think is necessary, because otherwise inertia prevails.
I think it’s important here to go back to the Nugent Report, and there’s discussion of this in the Craik monograph to which I posted a link in my pre-summit post. There was an explicit acknowledgement that such companies had to aim for independence from recurrent subsidy – a virtuous circle is supposed to be put into motion whereby more audiences for productions leads to the ability to stage more productions and … Unfortunately, it’s not been the way it’s transpired for a majority of the companies. What Terry is talking about is that there are effectively no benchmarks for re-assessing the achievement of these objectives as the new level of funding just gets reinterpreted as a baseline.
Does that make sense?
On the film funding, yep, have read the defn’s. I was thinking of areas where FX work, for instance, doesn’t get counted.
Far from it, but I don’t think that the mix was right (see Ben and Marcus’ previous analyses) and I also think it shouldn’t have been just the arts crew – an interface between arts and cultural practioners and other exponents of creativity and innovation would have been a better model, as I’ve said a number of times before.
Ps – the fact that I have to clarify that I’m not slagging off at practitioners or trad arts types so much I think also says something about the sorts of grooves these debates are stuck in!
(Apologies above to David, who introduced the thoughtline regarding survivors being busy with work. Jack came to mind because of his beautiful comment recently linked and remarked upon elsewhere here).
Let’s remember Rudd is a force of political play. Overall, it’s very hard not to see the inclusion of Creative Australia as a means towards wiping the Howard backdrop clean, gathering information from public and media response, letting fresh air in, moving politics away from the LNP, some juicy photo ops with sexy and saleable celebs, and providing imagery of balance and colour, so as not to appear the ‘PM as bureaucrat’ back home.
For my bobs, it was extremely politically motivated. I guess that carries some forbearance in that those pegs have to be put in place.
Yes indeed. How true. These ‘artists’ with their ‘images’ and their ‘music’ and their ‘literature’. That’s not creative. Shopping lists, now that’s creative. Let’s restructure the fucking funding.
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What nonsense. This proletarian view of creativity as something everyone has both bucketloads of and a ‘right’ to be is CRAP. Most people are not creative. Want me to prove it? Sure – tell a good story, draw a beautiful picture, write a fine tune. Most of ye cannae do it. And that is the truth. Sad perhaps but true. The Culture
Subisdies For The Status DeprivedIndustries of this country are awash with mediocrity. Not to say there isn’t good stuff – there. It lives in New York.>
Actually seriously a lot of it lives here. I see heaps of good stuff. But I see heaps of utter shite too. Usually said shite is backed up with a mini-thesis on ‘questions of identity’ or some such nonsense. Most of the real artists pay lip service to this crap (whilst secretly deriding it) until they find themselves a market – usually overseas. Sadly however as the criteria for funding is usually how far one’s nose fits up the arses of various Kommittee Kamodes good artists tend to work in cafes.
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A lot of the funding is controlled by bureaucrats who distinguish themselves by an entrenched literal mindedness and some half-baked political philsophy that says the world will spring roses if only the government shells out for a shitload of, say, plays about ideologically sound topics, never mind that they’re a melange of witless refuse.
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But that’s the rub. We’bve the worst of both worlds. On the one hand we sing the praises of egalitarianism in the one place it doesn’t apply. Art is elite people. Few are called and most of them end up on the Crap Heap. Contrawise whilst this ‘egalitarianism’ is voiced we will find that 90% of those deemed ‘artists’ by the various committees that run Kulcha in this Country share institutional histories with the snottiest law firms in the country.
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But I don’t care. What’s happening on the street is that a viable creative culture is emerging and it’s slowly deciding that the Institution, the Committtee, the Report and the Conference are irrellevant zones of Public Masturbation. So to those who make their dosh doing the above – get a fucking job!
Sorry that was over the top. But equalizing domestic budgeting with the creation of Art is really not helpful.
Adrien, you’re conflating two things – judgements of cultural value and creativity as a learned practice across a range of everyday domains.
Actually Mark, with respect, I think Robert is and I think you’re helping him out. Here’s Robert:
Well the development of a culinary list is creative yes. A bit. Robert then goes on to some some basic material simplicity viz Michaelangelo’s capacities to work sans sandwiches. How is this pertinent to the development of a viable cultural industry?
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Let’s consider ‘creativity’; definitions of:
What the mother is doing in Robert’s anecdote is creativity number #3. The notion that we all have this kind of creativity is more plausible than any assertion that ‘we all’ possess the former two to be certain. And of course number #2 is more the province of science and not the arts.
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However the capacity to organize 21 menus per week, tho’ hard work is not ‘creativi8ty’ ion the level we should be discussing. It is also not something ‘we all possess’. Many of us are flat out organizing two menus. In any event the capacity of Mum to make breakfast, lunch and dinner, tho’ important generally, is irrellevant to cultural policy or practise. It is also an exprerssion of this ‘we can all do it’ bullshit which drags culture in this country into the bog.
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As I see it in Australia we have this fallacy when it comes to creative work. We wholeheartedly believe that it is somehow a social product, end of story. It is a social product but that is not the end of the story. Design, as any designer knows, happens best in the minds of one individual. The more cooks the worse the soup. Sorry: fact. Another fact: most people are mediocre or downright shithouse at cooking.
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In Oz we’ve got a famous egalitarian streak for which I’m often grateful but it will not help us to excel in any field in which creativity is required. It also seems as tho’ we feel we need permission, we need sanction, we need a rubber stamp to be an artist of some kind. I can’t count the number of ‘writers’, ‘filmmakers’, ‘painters’ I’ve met who expend the bulk of their energy and time attending various dos put on by various institutions in order to hob-nob with other wannabees and gonnas in order to convince them that ‘they’re creative’ like they’re going down the street, knocking at doors selling Amway or some shit.
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Meantime the Free Trade Agreement means that one needn’t bother with the (fairly easy to negotiate) Green Card even. Just go straight to Hollywood. The current appraoch is simply not working and we need a rethink. Start with the end – a viable Cultural Industry – and work backwards putting all our cherished notions of Social Art to the side.
I’m an “ideas” sceptic, so I’m not sure I agree with creativity #1, though I’m more with you on this, Adrien, than I am with Robert. But it does seem to me that creativity is related to information processing – kinda, sorta, but related.
I do want to oppose the notion that creativity is innate and can’t be taught. That doesn’t mean that everyone will be equally creative, mind, but I do reckon that it’s a good egalitarian principle to give everyone the chance to have a shot at it. That’s where the education recommendations make sense to me, though I’d like to see a lot more detail and thought.
I agree with that, I think, and that’s basically what I take Mark, Marcus, Stuart, Terry, Ben etc. to be saying. But I’m not sure what’s meant by “all our cherished notions…” – can you clarify please, Adrien?
Ok, sorry, I think you answered that question.
That may or may not be true, because certainly the “ideas” aren’t purely individual, but it still finesses the issue of the social conditions for creativity and indeed infrastructures which contribute to individual attainment.