Oh, Melbourne, you little creative petri dish, you; you’ve outshone Sydney again.
On Tuesday, Daniel Andrews’ Labor government pledged an extra $115m in funding for the Victorian creative industries, to be spent over the next four years. On the eve of the 3 May federal budget – that time of year our Canberra leaders now traditionally celebrate by giving the arts a good booting – the Victorian government has stolen the show, strengthening its claim as Australia’s arts mecca.
The Andrews government’s pledge will grow Victoria’s cultural capital through new talent development programs, commissions of work, provision of co-working spaces and the announcement of an annual creative industries summit, among a list of 40 initiatives.
There are two crucial lessons here. First, these policy positions were arrived at by a taskforce kept at arm’s length from government. The taskforce of 25 industry professionals – including TV presenter Shaun Micallef, comedian Eddie Perfect, showrunner Tony Ayres, Melbourne University Press director Louise Adler, and Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Acmi) CEO Katrina Sedgwick – held 21 consultation workshops over five weeks, which approached the creative industries as a broad rubric that includes game development, graphic design, fashion, filmmaking, performing arts, publishing, architecture, advertising, media, music, comedy and craft.
Second, the emphasis was on access and inclusion for creative people and for audiences, rather than viewing culture as the province of elites.
By contrast, under former federal arts minister George Brandis, $104.7 million over four years was ripped from the independently managed Australia Council in 2015 to be specifically placed instead in a National Program for Excellence in the Arts (Npea) that would sit under his ministerial control. There was next to no consultation prior to this move.
Artists at the lower end of the earning scale alleged Brandis was favouring the likes of ballet, opera and international touring orchestras, by quarantining funds for the major performing arts companies. He was also accused of pursuing political favours.
When Malcolm Turnbull replaced Tony Abbott as prime minister, Brandis was elbowed out of the arts portfolio in favour of Mitch Fifield, who pledged to be more consultative, and returned $32 million to the Australia Council.
Yet with the remaining funds the Npea was simply rebranded as Catalyst, with Fifield announcing last week a $400,000 grant to help bring international artists to Australia.
Tell us you’re dreaming, Mitch. Those funds should be for the development of Australian artists.
As these two vigorously contrasting approaches of the Victorian and federal government continue to be analysed, the NSW Baird Government’s approach to arts and culture has attracted less attention. In February 2015 it released Create in NSW, the state’s first arts and cultural policy framework, with an emphasis on “excellence, access and strength”.
Last October, it announced $19 million to be spread across 160 NSW arts and cultural organisations in 2016. Nineteen western Sydney arts and cultural organisations would get $3.4 million in 2016, up from $2.4 million last year. Mike Baird and his arts minister, Troy Grant, have pledged to “increase opportunities for people to take part in and shape arts and culture” over the next decade.
But in the meantime, the NSW premier’s greatest cultural contribution has been enforcing lockout laws that harm the city’s cultural nightlife and push more people – including the violent ones – into casinos instead.
There is culture high, middle and low in Sydney, but it is spread out; there need to be ways to bring it together, ways that encourage emerging and mid-career artists, and help them reach audiences struggling with the expense of the place.
Sydney is certainly blessed by its topography; the city can offer a harbour setting for opera, open-air cinema and a writers’ festival, an art Biennale across several major sites, a city council that throws open urban creative spaces, and the future promise of the Sydney Modern redesign of the Art Gallery of NSW – if it ever gets funded.
Although a NSW creative industries action plan in 2013 shied away from recommending budget increases – opting instead for the triumphalism of creative branding for the state – there have been welcome pledges of infrastructure funding since then. But the $202 million the Baird government offered last year to upgrade Sydney Opera House will neglect the smaller opera theatre, and the $139 million for the revamped Walsh Bay arts precinct won’t help audiences get there without the extension of light rail.
I found myself one of the elites recently, feted about on a media bus for a preview of the 20th Sydney Biennale to see the art at Cockatoo Island, the Art Gallery of NSW, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Artspace at Woolloomooloo and Carriageworks at Eveleigh. At the time I wondered: why doesn’t a transport service like this exist for the public, every day, connecting Sydney’s cultural institutions for comprehensive art enjoyment?
Central Melbourne has been blessed by better planning, even if the flat grid structure makes it a less exciting landscape. In one central area, within walking distance, you have Federation Square, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the National Gallery of Victoria’s two locations, the Melbourne Arts centre, Melbourne Recital centre, Melbourne Theatre Company and the Malthouse theatre. A true creative cluster.
Sydney, home of developer greed, has had much less luck. It is unfriendly to pedestrians and cyclists, and now dead in many pockets at night. I remember former Sydney Theatre Company artistic directors Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton telling an audience at Sydney Town Hall a few years ago that the major requirement of a healthy future arts precinct at Walsh Bay is public transport. That hasn’t changed, save a few straggling additional buses.
You could hardly be surprised then, Sydney, to find your mojo drained by creative types fleeing to Melbourne, where art is allowed to experiment – even to fail. When those artists who migrate south have artistic triumphs, it may well be thanks to Victoria’s foresight and encouragement.
