Brandis shakes up nervous artists

Federal Arts Minister George Brandis’ curtailment of arms-length funding through the Australia Council has left many artists and cultural leaders reeling.

Senator Brandis will pull almost $105 million from the national arts agency over the next four years to set up his own excellence in arts program within his ministry.

The program announced in the Federal Budget would take the preferences and tastes of Australian audiences into account in deciding how to distribute funds to a wide range of arts companies and artists, Senator Brandis said.

It would support endowments, international touring and strategic projects, with an emphasis on attracting private sector support, he said.

“Arts funding has until now been limited almost exclusively to projects favoured by the Australia Council.”

The nation’s 28 major performing arts companies – including the WA Symphony Orchestra, WA Opera, Black Swan State Theatre Company and WA Ballet – would be quarantined from the cuts to the Australia Council, which would be left with $185 million to distribute in grants each year.

The Chamber of Arts and Culture WA said the “sleight of hand” move indicated Senator Brandis’ apparent lack of faith in the Australia Council.

“A critical challenge to building a vibrant cultural landscape is balancing the investment in the pursuit of the new with support of existing practices,” chamber chairman Warwick Hemsley said.

“These objectives should not be mutually exclusive. That is why a greater investment in the arts is required rather than this apparent sleight of hand approach by the Federal Government,” Mr Hemsley said.

It signalled a move away from the bipartisan policy of arms-length grants assessments by independent expert panels under successive governments since the Australia Council was established in the 1970s.

“Does the Minister know more about excellence than the Australia Council?” Mr Hemsley said.

“Increasing the scope and capacity of a parallel funding body also begs the question as to how efficiency savings will be made.”

Senator Brandis’ ministry also will take back control of the Visions of Australia and Festivals Australia programs, which the previous Labor government transferred to the Australia Council.

Independent artists and small to medium arts companies feared they would bear the brunt of the changes, with the major performing arts companies a protected species under Senator Brandis.

Kerry Sullivan, director of Perth’s independent theatre incubator The Blue Room, where Tim Minchin got his start, wondered who would develop the canon of tomorrow if the innovators of today were being deprived of support.

“In a lot of ways it is cutting off your nose to spite your face,” Ms Sullivan said. “In order to nurture excellence, you need to be able to have the opportunity to fail and to learn from that failure,” she said.

“This cordoning off of what is excellence in the arts rather than looking at the sector holistically is going to give a few a whole bunch of money and not look to the sustainability of the sector in the future.”

National Association for the Visual Arts director Tamara Winikoff said the changes were alarming.

“While we’re relieved that there haven’t been overall cuts to arts funding, the problem is that this change demonstrates that the minister is going to take much greater control of direct decision-making in relations to the arts,” Ms Winikoff said.

“It’s alarming that the minister would move to replace an arm’s-length body set up to remove political influence for arts funding decisions. Instead he is taking that decision-making under his own control.”

“Funnelling support to focus on conservative populist programs like festivals, touring and the tried and true, inevitably impacts negatively on the new generation of artists and the small to medium arts organisations which are the engine room of experimentation, innovation and critique. What we need is an investment in the future, not just the past.”

The intervention by Senator Brandis comes with the Australia Council already working through the biggest internal reforms in its 40-year history.

It has chopped an unwieldy 140 grant categories down to just five and introduced more simplicity and flexibility for artists in a bid to encourage excellence and diversity, respond to the rapidly evolving way art is made in the digital age and to foster more collaboration across borders and art forms.

Council chairman Rupert Myer said it would give careful consideration to its priorities as a result of the measures, and their implications for the council, as well as the artists and arts organisations it funded.

“The announcement of the 2015-16 Budget last night included measures which will significantly impact the work of the Australia Council on behalf of the arts sector,” Mr Myer said.