Nuffnang Leaderboard

Research Proposal Writing Assistance Click on the picture for more details

Research Proposal Writing Assistance Click on the picture for more details
Reliable. Plagiarism-free

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Supporting the Arts Even When It’s in the Red



Introduction
            The arts and culture are a vital part of any country’s identity so it is not surprising that the government and the private sector of many countries allot a significant part of their yearly national budgets to supporting the activities of artists and the institutions that preserve the cultural identity of the country.  One of the main goals of Australia’s Office of the Department of the Arts, as they unveiled as they unveiled their National Cultural Policy is to “Support excellence and the special role of artists and their creative collaborators as the source of original work and ideas, including telling Australian stories” (Department of the Prime Minister Office of the Arts 2011).  Moreover, according to the data released on that Policy, the Australian Government makes a significant investment in Australian artists and arts organisations through a wide range of programs and activities. One can say that culture has at least as much claim as any other aspect of the Australian economy.  In 2011–12, more than $164 million was given to the arts sector, including the country’s orchestras, the opera, other music artists and organisations, visual artists and organisations, theatre companies and artists, dance artists and companies, writers, publishers and literary organisations, multi-artform artists and organisations, and activities involcing sector building and audience development initiatives and programs.  This funding has enabled the creation of 7656 new works and support for 1922 grants or projects, attracting 13 million people to attend art-related events, exhibitions and performances.  A significant number also accessed work online, in print and through broadcast.  Grants were provided to 908 individual artists, and funding to Major Performing Arts companies alone supported the employment of more than 2700 people.  Cultural funding in Australia totals $6.6 billion a year across federal, state and local governments. This figure covers everything from the ABC and ‘heritage’ funding  for museums, libraries, zoos, the environment, etc.; to the relatively small sums given to the arts.  In 2011, cultural industries directly employed 531,000 people, and indirectly generated a further 3.7 million jobs. Copyright industries were worth $93.2 billion to the Australian economy in 2007, with exports worth more than $500 million.  All these data shows the vibrancy of the interaction between the artists and the audience in Australia and with the government strongly backing the arts, this bodes well for the continued development and evolution of arts and culture in the country.
Why We Should Support the Arts Even When They Are Unprofitable
            However, not everything is rosy when it comes to funding the arts and culture.  Sure, many forms of art are supported lavishly and without question, but what if that type of artistic activity is not profitable, and not very attractive to the masses.  Should the government continue funding these unprofitable artistic endeavors and just cover the losses generated by them?  Are these artistic activities worthy to be preserved, studied and presented to the people, even if they don’t generate as much buzz as more profitable artistic endeavors?
Much like industry, art is basically a system too, essentially a network of interdependent relationships composed firstly of the artists with themselves and the world in which they live, and then with the artwork they create.  Then there are those who experience the art and who then create relationships between the art, the world and themselves.  There is a giving and receiving happening in this dynamic structure of exchange in which order and disorder are in constant tension and flux. 
If one relates arts and culture to research and development in relation to industry, one can be able to appreciate what it does to the common people. The restless experimentation of the artists generates vitality to the wider culture, and the arts, even if they are not always profitable in themselves, can lead to highly profitable innovations.
Samples of Artistic and Cultural Endeavors That May Not Be Profitable
Museums
            The most obvious example of a nonprofitable artistic institution is the museum. The most interesting observation the writer encountered when making this paper regarding the profitability of museums is this:

            “My observation, after thirty years of working in the field, is that museums have an amazing ability to survive in the most adverse environments. They are the cockroaches of the nonprofit world--sometimes it really does seem like you can’t kill them with an atomic blast. Most of the time some improbable deus ex machina saves the day: for example an unexpected cash gift or a free building. Mind you, this often only saves the distressed museum from closure—it does not cure the underlying dysfunction. The museum may simply struggle along for another ten years before the next potentially fatal crisis.” (Merritt, Elizabeth. 2013).

 

            For museums, it has come down to survivability, but the writer feels that museums have to succeed as well, and to be able to attract more people into their space.  To be able to attract more people, the museum can do the following. First, it can offer core services that people depend on and need to survive. These may include jobs for employees and programs that address a societal gap which other organizations or businesses are not able to provide. An example can be when a museum provides job training for at-risk youth and the community relies on the museum to be able to consistently do this.  By doing this, it raises the social capital of the museum in the eyes of the community it is in.  Second, the museum can provide services that make them look awesome.  The museum then has to identify what drives people through their door, identify the exhibits that got them excited, and allows the people who visit them to connect passionately with the content.  It’s not so bad to be labelled as hip and interesting. 

Indigenous Australian Art
Many Australians would like to think that a shift in how white Australians perceive, understand and respect indigenous art and culture has already happened but the reality is that most Australians allow past ideologies and outmoded beliefs to rule their judgments and opinions.  For example, one of the strongest of these beliefs has always been that the indigenous people must be kept in their place – on the fringes of the white society.  White society does not like it when Aborigines demand their right to be visible in their own land and to determine how they will be represented.  There have been many attempts by the 'white' art world to homogenise
Aboriginal art.  After all, images like a fish, is still a fish, which is wrong since all indigenous artists are connected to specific lands which contain sacred sites and are more identified as distinctive 'art. The styles and specific cultural meanings are given to the symbols and icons that each community portrays within their art.  Even though two communities may share a symbol, the exact meaning for the symbol is clearly defined and particular to each community's land, stories, traditions and creation myths. 
            Unfortunately, the white art world of Australia has arbitrarily defined and divided
indigenous art by divorcing it from its essence, the artists who actually create the work.  They have defined indigenous art as either traditional, meaning, created by indigenous artists who come from regional and remote areas of Australia and who are viewed as authentic and real.  Essentially, it means, that they look stereotypically ‘blak’.  (The term 'blak' was developed by
artist Destiny Deacon as a part of a symbolic but potent strategy of reclaiming colonialist language to create means of self-definition and expression.)
            Aboriginal art has been seen as being of value culturally and economically to the Australian white art world, but contemporary work has been totally devalued even though it is also created by indigenous artists who tend to come from the urban centres of Australia.  Their work is more often than not perceived as inauthentic/not 'blak' enough and culturally vague,
unspecific and far too political.  They are also often seen as unable to attract big buyers that can allow their work to fetch higher value prices.  That way of thinking defeats the real purpose of creating Aboriginal art, which is to represent the true soul and spirit of the aboriginal people of Australia.  By becoming some sort of commodity that can be traded and whose prices can be artificially fluctuated to support the whims of an elitist art world, it cheapens the contributions of Aboriginal artists to the whole art world in general and just puts it as a commercial activity and not really an authentic artistic endeavour.


Conclusion
Many local and international studies have outlined the benefits of funding culture and art, demonstrated its positive effects in educational results to raising real estate prices, improving mental health to urban and enabling regional renewal, promoting economic productivity and decreasing crime rates.  It is also a good thing that Australians have an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards the arts. In a survey that looked at participation in visual arts and crafts, music, dance, theatre and literature, all key art forms supported by the Australia Council, the results showed that 38 per cent of Australians describe themselves as art lovers, for whom the arts are an integral part of their lives and only 17 per cent reported estrangement, believing that the arts attract pretentious elites, and a tiny 7 per cent feel no connection at all. Overall, 93 per cent of Australians reported engaging with the arts in the previous year. In fact, in 2009, more than 11 million people attended art galleries, more than the ten million that went to watch football.  With this data, it makes for compelling argument to support public funding for the arts since that is the only way in which the pleasures, rewards and liberations of art become available not only to the wealthy, but also to the normal working people since high ticket prices can make it elitist.  Furthermore, state funding is crucial to arts education since it decentralises the arts, allowing regional Australians not only to encounter their own culture but to create their own work and reach their own potentials. It was this state funding that has permitted regional companies like the Geelong-based Back to Back Theatre company, one of Australia’s biggest international success stories, to create work with its ensemble of disabled actors and allow audiences in Europe and America to receive them and enjoy their work.  It is also the funding that has given international success to the Bangarra Dance Theatre, which works closely with remote Indigenous communities to create their performances, or the long-term community-based work of Big hART. It funds touring and stimulates arts practice in culturally deprived regional areas, as well as outreach and educational programs in schools and the wider community.  Without public funding, many people would never encounter art at all.
Finally, art should be supported even if they are not profitable because every human being has what one can call the cultural right, which is the right of any person to access their potential as intellectual and creative citizens of their region and the wider world.  Through funding, one can realize this argument on human possibility, as a society and as individuals.  It emphasizes that people have a right to culture as a crucial dimension of their lives. It’s this notion of culture as a human right that most underlies contemporary public and philanthropic support for the arts.  With this backdrop, it is heartening to note that Creative Australia has been aiming to build on that foundation.  It has proposed a plan for the next decade, to ensure that Australian artists continue to operate at the highest levels, that companies and institutions are sustainable, that cultural products are innovative and engaging, that Australian identity and stories are not swamped in a globe awash with cultural products, that the full diversity of our society is represented and that citizens have opportunities to be both creators and audiences. These artistic and cultural activities will further reinforce the Australia brand as a creative nation.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Nuffnang Rectangle