60Sox

I believe the following strategy could go some way in achieving each of the four goals listed above.

With the increasing prevalence of communication technologies as a tool for Arts and Creative Industries practitioners to share, inspire, learn and create new art forms, it also provides the opportunity to create a shared national resource to enable all Australian’s to expand their creative abilities and, if so desired, their abilities to commercialise their work to a local/national/international marketplace.

Working side-by-side with DEWHA and DBCDE, it is proposed to establish a national resource dedicated entirely to the facilitation of Australian Arts and Creative Industries practitioners to expand their craft and/or commercial outputs. This resource has a suitable international branding working title of ‘Creative Australia’.

The proposed network is a national program, with a strong emphasis on the nascent possibilities of regional Australia’s creative practitioners. With the roll-out of the National Broadband Network (NBN), Australian regional areas are being provided access to highspeed internet which will increasingly have a dramatic effect on the way most of us undertake our daily lives. Whether it be doing a bit of upskilling alongside thought leaders from around the planet through a course at MIT, conducting a multi-node video-conference with a geographically dispersed project team jointly (and Minority Report-esquely) manipulating data files or competing in a piano competition in Tuscany (all before breakfast), the tyranny of distance is at last foiled by the flick of a switch.

As regional areas come onboard, the opportunities for further presenting Australia’s unique cultural perspective to the world is only heightened. The regional areas of Australia sit across more than 99% of the country’s landmass and are home to over a third of the Australian population. (http://www.dfat.gov.au/facts/regional_australia.html). Widely diverse, over the last 230 years towns across the country have sprung-up in rain-forests, on agricultural lands, coasts, mountain tops, riversides and arid deserts – all with the capacity to present a unique outlook to the world and representing people of differing ages, cultures, religions , socio-economic status and ways of describing a beer at the pub.

A key aspect of our lives as humans is our creativity and if recent stats from the ABS can be believed, it seems Australian’s are increasingly engaging in creative pursuits. A recent report suggests that between 2001 and 2007:

“... work in visual arts activities nearly tripled from 0.5 million to over 1.4 million people. Creating art works with a computer contributed to this, as might be expected, but so too did more traditional art forms. The number of people doing drawing work rose by 440,000 people, or 348 percent. And if this seems implausibly large, it pales in comparison to the monstrous 672 percent rise seen in jewellery making.”

Source: http://www.artshub.com.au/au/news-article/news/performing-arts/australias-creative-revolution-181682

The growth in this market sector over the next few years will be exponential as it sits at the cross roads of business, technology and culture. Recent estimates from Deloitte Access estimates that the internet contributed $50B to Australia’s economy last year, giving it a 3.6% share of our GDP, which the report’s authors say is roughly equivalent to iron ore exports. (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-03/internet-rivals-iron-ore/2821324).

People in regional and remote areas are often more likely to feel removed from key networks, conversations and professional opportunities. Now, as the NBN rolls out in regional Australia, Creative Industries practitioners (including both existing creative professionals and part-time creative professionals) will have access to more contacts, more inspiration, more professional development (locally, nationally and internationally) and a strong opportunity for increased profile and higher engagement with peers and markets locally around the world.

Given the considerable contribution the Creative Industries continue to have on Australia’s GDP, and with it, the associated benefit creative pursuits have to mental health and general well being (for example: ‘Disseminate’ is an action based project aiming to demonstrate the valuable contribution that community arts activities make to the health, wellbeing and vitality of individuals and communities. http://www.disseminate.net.au/) the challenge now for the country’s policy makers is how to establish a framework for NBN-enabled regional creative practitioners to stimulate further uptake and increased professional development.

Although Australia enjoys a dynamic and active arts and creative industries culture in regional areas with support organisations, and existing partnerships, dotted across the continent (from the Tasmanian Regional Arts office in Hobart up to the Tank Arts Centre in Cairns, from Screenworks in Byron across to Country Arts WA’s work in Mid West Gascoyne and hundreds in-between), the barriers to broader and more inclusive access and participation have always been acknowledged. Our national institutions (inc. OzCo, AFTRS, COFA, NIDA, ABC, ACMI) and regional organisations, have specific informational and commercial initiatives targeted at regional development and plan for further extension of these once regional areas come online through the NBN.

As policy makers, it is our role to work with technology experts to help illustrate these opportunities and threats clearly and articulately to those whose expertise lay elsewhere (ie. most Arts and Creative Industries practitioners). It is only through a collaboration of expertise and a keen sense of knowledge transfer and information exchange can perfectly suited strategies be identified and enacted.

Therefore, any foray into this space must first take into account the thousands of (wo)man-hours so far invested in this space by people across the country over the past several decades (from the very big to the very small). In order to obtain suitable uptake and acceptance by Arts and Creative Industries practitioners across the country, a considerable level of consultation must be undertaken and taken into consideration in order to arrive at a productive conclusion.

In order to create the most effectively pathway for this resource to be created, a three phase process is recommended:

1. Preliminary Scoping Exercise

Noting the amount of stakeholders across the country who possess a strong understanding of the Arts and Creative Industries environments under their charge, it is essential to first obtain a contemporary road map of who is doing what for whom and how. From the activities currently undertaken by the smaller local arts organisations to the broader frameworks described by our national institutions and industry associations, it is suggested a preliminary scoping exercise is undertaken to identify the active support organisations and the existing policies and programs they are delivering. Once this material has been brought together, an expert analysis of the current Arts/Creative Industries environment in Australia would be undertaken to obtain a bird’s eye perspective to highlight areas covered, areas crossed-over, and possible gaps.  This would be done as straightforward, but probing, desk research over an intensive four month period. 

2. Stakeholder Forums

Having analysed the existing policies and programs provided to support Australian Arts and Creative Industries practitioners across the country, it is proposed a series of stakeholder forums would be held physically at selected venues across the country. Supported by digital media inclusion mechanisms (including live streaming, online discussions, twitter feeds etc), and facilitated by accomplished Arts and Creative Industries practitioners (together with technology experts) these forums would create the opportunity to present the findings of the preliminary scoping exercise to stakeholders at all levels and to drive discussion on how heightened levels of digital connectivity can further enhance the development, engagement, exposure, productivity and profitability of Arts and Creative Industries practitioners. These forums would bring together a national pool of contemporary comment and ideas (complementing, perhaps, the submissions received through this call for submissions on a Cultural Policy by the Office of the Arts) to help identify specific guidelines to inform the development of a final network strategy. Depending on how many venues it may be decided to conduct these Stakeholder Forums, it is suggested a collation of findings could be undertaken by a dedicated team over a six month period. A further two months would then be requested to analyse the suggestions to distil a series of topics, solutions and ideas.

3. Network Strategy

Working with a group of selected notables representing the Arts and the Creative Industries (both industry practitioners* and researchers), together with technology experts, and representatives of all levels of government, a framework would be established to create a conclusive strategy to create an online network catering specifically to the current future needs of Australia’s Arts and Creative Industries practitioners while raising visibility of our local talent to a global audience and encouraging heightened visitations to local art galleries, performances, book readings, film screenings etc, etc, etc.

*NB: outgoing Chief Executive of Screen NSW, Tania Chambers, has agreed to act as Chair of this would-be consortium.

Notes:

The resultant strategy would seek not to displace any existing support mechanisms, rather, inform the development of an umbrella framework for the end user to easily identify existing channels of support and to further enhance opportunities for education, funding, exposure, connectivity and market exposure. This network is seen as an institutionally and governmentally-agnostic initiative.

Some envisaged opportunities:

Retired Mentors
Was Mavis (who currently sits staring at a wall in a nondescript old people’s home) Australia’s preeminent leadlight practitioner? Is that old guy who feeds the pigeons everyday in the park the guy who used to run our country’s finest literary journal? Did that retired-postie really Line Produce Jedda? Sounds absurd, but it’s not really hard to imagine that there is an untapped wealth of Arts and Creative Industries expertise sitting around undertaking all sorts of septuagenarian activities. It is a thought that we could leverage this enormous intellectual capital to help guide those that come after them. As a cross-generational structure of mentor support, it would conceivably not only help instruct our current denizens of Arts and Creative Industries in the betterment of their craft, but could also help address seclusion and the mental health of oldies across the country.

Everything else ‘Unearthed’
Triple J is doing it for music, could we not expand this notion of ‘Unearthing’ to every creative sector in the country? Utilising a team of (possibly volunteer) curators, we could help spotlight emerging (and stellar) creative talent across all creative disciplines for local, national and international exposure.

Industry specific advisors
Taking your creative works to a broader market (be it locally, nationally or internationally) could be a somewhat daunting and fraught construct. Could it be the place for each creative sector (from pottery to film, from glass blowing to architecture) to have in place a dedicated (and paid) expert advisor who can help feed international knowledge to their emerging cohorts while acting as a local representative on a global scale? Local lads, Ocula http://ocula.com/ are doing a great job presenting galleries in Australia and New Zealand to worldwide audiences – what about our heroic screen print makers? How do they get a look in? To construct such a support framework within the one network would heighten audience and exposure on a huge scale.

Region / Sector Profiling
As members of the network identify themselves and we obtain information on their region and sector of creative pursuit, we are able to isolate stand-out practitioners and profile them across the site. This week, see the best the Riverina has to offer (including info on performances, screenings, exhibitions etc in the area for the upcoming months) or check out the best short stories of this week from across the country. Working with our team of curators, the network can help identify what is great across the country based on region or sector and profile it online through featured home pages and newsletters.