Arts debate needs spark by Gunduz Kalic

It’s quiet on the Arts Industry front - all too quiet.  To be sure, "radical" grant-addicted arts organisations like The Australian National Playwrights Centre are vocally unhappy.

In the new political climate, however, such noise is not even an irritation to the Communications and Arts Minister, Senator Richard Alston, who is performing remarkably in steering the volatile arts - portfolio away from controversy.

Those decisions that are being made, such as the coming restructuring of Federal-State arts funding arrangements, are being taken behind the scenes, with little or no public debate.

Thus, it is interesting to note that, in the UK Senator Alston’s ministerial counterpart, Heritage Minister Virginia Bottomley, has recently established a controversial new arts think-tank.  This body is intended to stimulate debate and to allow the Minister on an on-going basis, to consult a group of hands-on professionals from outside the Arts Council and the other arts quangos.

The think-tank is composed not only of representatives from the arts, but also from education, business and the voluntary sector.

Similarly, Australia has a crying need to open its arts up to fresh thinking.  Government spending on the arts peaked under the last Labor Government.  And now, following overseas trends, it appears to have entered a period of long-term historical decline in real terms - the death by a thousand cuts that has our official playwrights suffering withdrawal pangs already.

Indications from the US, the UK and also Australia, however, are that a new generation of bold and vigorous creative product can and will follow from artists working outside the arts bureaucratic payroll.  Yet to make the most of this sea-change - which has already commenced - broad debate is necessary.

The recent 10 per cent Australia Council budget cut was accepted with scarcely a murmur by the cultural mandarins, who seem to have quietly gone along in hopes of retaining the status quo in the medium term.  And the silence so far - despite the appointment of some 35 new faces to Federal arts boards by the Coalition Government - indicates that the arts managerial culture is prevailing.  However, it may be well to consider whether the corporatist model of quiet back-room negotiations between the main players - the institutions - is suitable for the arts.

Marshall McLuhan believed that in our era of rapid social and technological change art ought to be radar ...an early alarm system enabling us to discover social and psychic (problems) in time to cope with them.

It is in this function of the arts, in which the public as a whole has a great stake, which has atrophied under the centralised grants regime of the past two decades.  If Prime Minister Howard and his Government are serious about making an end to the political correctness which has so blinkered and divided Australian society, an excellent beginning could be made by establishing a noisy and robust arts forum or think-tank, with representatives drawn from far and wide.

This article appeared in the Australian Financial Review, December 6, 1996.