DISCUSSION PAPER: The Proposed Cultural Unit

STATUS: Unsolicited

Background

Funding ‘culture’ in a local cum regional context is a concept that is ever likely to raise issues to do with relevance and affordability. In a ‘public art’ context in the 21^st Century there are the age-old challenges in defining just what it is that is being funded. 

Australia saw a boom in ‘arts funding’ in a much broader context in the 1970s. Cultural practises somewhat differently that before were defined in a ‘coal-face-up’ context with ‘peer assessment’ increasingly leading to the de-siloing of cultural practise. 

The Australia Council in particular led the way in Australia sometimes referencing funding models elsewhere and at other times generating new models and paradigms.

From the relatively low level of cultural funding to the new seemingly heady heights increasing amounts of public funding for ‘cultural development’ money began to find its way into various budgets in various contexts. 

After the initial euphoria, gradually the number of funding agencies burgeoned as State Governments mimicked the Federal model. Local Gov. tagged along in a relatively uneven way depending upon

• The ‘place’, its geography and social circumstance;
• The cultural landscape – current and historic;
• The size and shape of a town/city's/region's economy – current and historic; and
• The cultural realities and their dynamics;

Local priorities can be determined in accord with these factors. Over time, local governments have increasingly found the means to ‘add value’ to community life via investments in cultural infrastructure and the programming that goes with the ‘cultural commitment’.

In larger communities Local Govt sometimes committed a set percentage of their annual budget to cultural activity –  similarly with sport. Sometimes contentiously various genre jostled for precedence and priority. The visual and performing arts often took their competition into the public arena.

In the Federal sphere, bureaucratically ‘The Arts’ – along with Aboriginal Affairs and ‘The Environment’ – were seen as the ‘nice-to-have’, and spare cum leftover portfolios – and variously around Australia this still pretty much the case. 

Typically, the funding dedicated to cultural development didn’t always find its way into the pockets of practitioners and producers. Rather it tended to be swallowed up by the so-called facilitating agencies as salaries and on costs with very little finding its way into studios, theatres, workshops etc. At one point the almost a third of Australia Councils budget was spent servicing itself as an operation. About that time the comparable Tasmanian circumstance was somewhere between 14% and 18%.

Interestingly, curators, administrators and their like receive significant salaries while artists by-and-large struggle to make a living. Moreover, the ” ‘middle management’ of arts organisations and even museum/commercial galleries exist on the pretext that they are “assisting” Australian artists but the evidence suggests they and the government are simply exploiting them”. And “The government receives much more money from the sale of an artwork than the artist.”… John Kelly in the Daily Review.

John Kelly goes on to ask “has the Australian government created a form of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP) where the carers keep the artists financially sick in order to continue to get funding to show how supportive they are of the arts? …. However, there is another perspective; one that factually shows artists create wealth for Australian society and the government.”  … https://dailyreview.com.au/business-money-artists/43333/

It would seem that in moving to ‘supporting the arts’ in a local government context it is ever likely to be a contentious move even if it seems to be a deserving cause. For the support to be equitable and relevant the primary focus probably should on be funding the producers as directly as possible while curtailing administrative costs as much as possible.

In other words, the ‘performance indicator’ would be more practitioners and fewer bureaucrats, administrators and their support staff. While accountability may be an issue the question hanging in the air is “who holds the facilitators accountable and who measures the bean counters accountablity”? The question arises as typically they consume the resources the producers need and crave in order to be productive and add value to their practices – and by extension their communities.

The proposed Launceston Cultural Unit has all the promise of being just another money soak. If worst fears were to be realised, a very percentage of allocated funds would be expended keeping itself in existence as a non-income generating cost centre. There is nothing to be found in the contextualisation documents that overly mitigates against such a scenario.

What Could a Regional Cultural Unit Look Like

The current proposal for a cultural unit, and its contextualisation, does not set out:

• A clear unambiguous purpose  – reason for being;
• The objectives that such a might have;
• The reason for having one given its purpose and objectives; and
• The strategies it would employ to fulfil its purpose beyond its own existence.

Nonetheless, a cultural unit is being envisaged and apparently to do whatever there is to be done while growing the Launceston Council’s level of cultural expenditure across a range of cultural activities. 

Also, there does not appear to be a clear understanding of what culture is understood to be in order that the unit might service it or some aspect of it. 'Culture' is notoriously understood in multiple ways.

Looking at what the city and Tamar region, and speculatively, and in a very general way, it is conceivable that there be a ‘Projects & Publications Unit’ purposed to:

• Generate new opportunities for the region’s cultural producers;
• Facilitate the possibility of cultural producers and their audiences to engage with new experiences; and
• Develop new and expanded understandings relative to cultural production in the region.

Ideally, such a unit would operate collaboratively and cooperatively across the various forms of cultural production and the region's various cultural communities. Such a unit would need to be working towards an agreed set of objectives for reasons determined in the community/ies. Likewise, the strategies implemented would need to devised and determined across the community and region – ideally collaboratively.

In order to ‘succeed’ such a unit would need to be entrepreneurial and;

• Working with communities;
• Working toward common, ideally collaborative, goals set in the region; and
• Structured in an organic and rhrizomic way rather than hierarchically. 

Imposing strategies and programs from outside would arguable have an inbuilt element of dislocation. Operating without a clear and unambiguous purpose would likewise be sheer folly.

Publicly funded operations of the kind being contemplated in the form of a Launceston Cultural Unit needs to be accountable. Arguably, the best way to achieved that outcome would  be to establish it a standalone corporate entity with its own board of Trustees/Directors/Governors:

• With a membership appointed rather than elected;
• Appointed for the skill and knowledge sets they bring to the operation;
• Appointed with limited tenure; and
• Drawn from the region and where appropriate beyond it relative to their expertise. 

If this is seen as unachievable the funds anticipated as being expended would be more productively employed granted to producers to deliver targeted outcomes. Given that such unit could have recurrent cost running to $150K to $200K this kind of alternative has a range of advantages.

In Conclusion

In Launceston Tasmania, with the proposal to development of a 'cultural unit' there is much to consider. Those consideration need to be out in the open with the community closely engaged in the discourse.

Interestingly in Launceston, Tasmania's local government area, it is possible to closely track what the cost of funding cultural activity is if it delivered via local government -and attribute the cost almost down to an individual's contribution.

The funds are conscripted from the community and therefore the community must be closely engaged in the discourse.

In the end the operation delivering whatever whatever dividends that are on offer must be accountable not just notionally accountable, but functionally accountable.

      

Ray Norman April 15 2018