New dictators, same old arty facts by Gunduz Kalic

The same conservatives who are part-privatising Telstra are bringing the arts more firmly under the wing of government than ever.

A recent Australia council advertisement invites arts organisations to "submit proposals for funding of up to $50,000 for a marketing professional" to assist in "implementing strategic initiatives for arts which explore, promote and utilise Australia's cultural diversity".

Is Australia really "culturally diverse"?  People have come to Australia from many nations, but this fact in itself does not mean, in the real world of suburbs and shopping malls, that Australia contains "multi" cultures.

It is at least arguable that, by lifestyle and intermarriage, migrants to Australia are, for the most part, blending into the Australian "mainstream".   And thereby, certainly, irrevocably causing that mainstream to change.

The Government's use of the arts to promote the archaic multi-culturalism ideology is itself a doubtful exercise.  However, the chief item of interest here is the heavy-handed marketing style.  To paraphrase the Australia Council advertisement, we know what kind of art is good for our public - in this case it just happens to be multicultural art.

Thus, what we require is innovative marketing talent and technique to attract audiences to the work we in our wisdom know they need to view.

Would not a better way of going be to simply make art designed to have commercial appeal to audiences in the first place?  Shakespeare did it.  So did Lorca.  And Graham Greene, to mention only a few of the classic names.  Andrew Lloyd Webber does it nowadays.

On the surface, it would seem that a "free market" arts policy would have much appeal to a Federal Coalition Government.  And, indeed, it would be pleasant to be able to dismiss the peculiar Australia Council advert for a multicultural arts marketing whiz as a mere throwback to the bad old Labor days. The more sensible Coalition Government will surely eventually get around to weeding out this sort of practice.  

Alas, despite a brief flirtation with a "free market" arts policy after the election, strong indications are now appearing that the same conservatives who are part-privatising Telstra are bringing the arts more firmly under the wing of government than ever.

In Victoria, in typical blunt fashion, Premier Jeff Kennett is corporatising his State's major arts institutions and taking direct control for their operations into his own hands as Minister for Arts.  Meanwhile, atop the Federal Department of Communications and the Arts, Senator Richard Alston's senior arts bureaucrats are planning a new era of  "commercial type outcomes", "audience development", and "market oriented models" for the nation's flagship arts institutions, which overall have had a poor year financially.

The buzzwords are meant to sound encouraging - but the arts market is not being "opened up" in order that audiences can have more real choice of diverse creative product.

Instead, to prop up the government subsidised sector, tricks of the marketing trade will be applied more systematically than in the past.  Further major rationalisations of arts business practice are already under way.  Additional mergers are possible.  In other words, the arts industry is progressively being placed on a more "business-like" footing - without any significant structural changes.  The unfortunate end result is that artistic content will continue to be dictated from above. 

This article appeared in the Australian Financial Review, January 16 1997.