In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was “innovation” – at least, it was this time round. In 2015, the Word was “excellence”. And in the antediluvian era of the 1980s and 1990s, the Word was, variously…
Street photographer, c. 1930, part of the NMeM collection.
The decision looks like a reinforcement of the large imbalance in cultural spending between London and the north of England.
The ills that afflict any society can be dealt with much more effectively when the arts are integrated into the national conversation.
John Gollings/AAPONE
What if Malcolm Turbull’s conception of “21st-century government” imagines a healthy civil society and a responsive economy that values debate, imagination, difference and surprise - all provided by the arts.
Front doors closed as indefinite strike continues.
Andy Rain/EPA
Political discussion about the arts and creative industries is famously woolly ybland, generic and interchangeable. But Corbyn cuts through this.
George Brandis shocked the arts sector – and particularly the Australia Council – with his overhaul of the allocation of arts funding.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
The more the 2015 arts budget is examined the less sense it makes. The changes contribute little strategically or politically – they just make an entire sector nervous. And culturally, they will improve nothing.
Cultural leadership may not be the same as leadership in the other arenas.
Elliot Margolies
There were no truly nasty surprises in last night’s Budget for the arts – but clear discomfort was expressed with the “arms-length” approach that hitherto has guided the allocation of arts funding.
The Lowry Centre in Salford has seen cuts to its regular arts budget.
Andrew Dunn/Wikimedia
Australia today is very different to the place I grew up in: our culture has changed and is changing, but public discussion is still framed by old tropes. We need a new shorthand to capture the reality…
Not everyone is happy about Malcolm Turnbull’s cuts to ABC funding – but they may represent value for the taxpayer.
Michael Scott
Malcolm Turnbull’s well-telegraphed announcement yesterday that the ABC’s funding will be cut by A$254 million over five years is no surprise. But, broken election promise aside, this is actually something…
Gough Whitlam, Labor prime minister from 1972 to 1975, has died aged 98.
AAP/ Joe Hildebrand
Gough Whitlam’s legacy in the arts first hit me as a little indie-music nerd in the 1990s. The inner-city Sydney band The Whitlams made a funny little music video about their namesake, a bloke who was…
Culture, as described by one celebrated critic, is among the most awkward words in the English language. So it comes as no surprise that cultural value is an ever-elusive, indefinable thing. The broad…
Why don’t the new draft Sustainable Development Goals mention culture?
Ron SdotC/Flickr
At the end of July draft Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were released by the United Nations-appointed Open Working Group. Those of us hoping to see culture identified as part of those goals were…
The Liberal government didn’t need a fully-functioning cultural policy at the last election.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
As with other emissions of choice opacity – horoscopes, Bible stories, RBA economic forecasts – cultural policy announcements invite construal of their mystical meaning. Nothing is quite as it seems. On…
To understand Australian culture in all its diversity, we need data.
AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) last week released its 2014-2018 forward work plan. The work plan confirms the June media release that arts and sport data will disappear from the ABS-funded component…
Regular readers of this column will know that I’m neither an artist nor a cultural expert, but something much more déclassé: I’m a cultural economist. Part of this involves studying the incentives that…
The state of culture in Australia? Basically, it’s in rude health.
Ars Electronica
In the lead-up to the budget, the story of crisis has been hammered home, but there’s more to a country than its structural deficit. So how is Australia doing overall? In this special series, ten writers…
Would you like to see a stolen painting, like Schiele’s Portrait of Wally?
As Europe votes on a groundbreaking directive to help facilitate the return of stolen cultural treasures, the United States moves forward with legislation that would prevent claimants from recovering their…
Professor of Social Inclusion - UTS Business School - Centres for Business and Social innovation, and Business Intelligence and Data Analytics, University of Technology Sydney