How Peter Garrett killed the music
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Last week Peter Garrett announced that the Rudd government intended to axe $2.6 million funding it gives to the Austalian National Academy of Music (ANAM). For $2.6 million ANAM trains 55 full-time elite young musicians, encourages international talent to visit Australia to give masterclasses etc., employs respected musicians and pedagogues, and offers over 170 public concerts a year. Yes, for $2.6 million. The cessation of funding means that ANAM will close in 2009. ANAM was set up by the Keating Government in 1994 as part of Creative Nation. The aim was to give young talented musicians the opportunity to train at an elite level without having to travel to Europe or America. It has slowed Australia’s brain drain by creating a stepping stone to professional orchestral appointments (all the elite symphony and chamber orchestras in Australia boast a healthy proportion of ANAM alumni). Likewise it creates appointments for our best musicians. Brett Dean, who runs ANAM at the moment, is a world-renowned composer and ex-viola player with some of the principal orchestras of Europe. If ANAM were to cease Australia’s musicians will be forced to go overseas again, and most likely stay there. ANAM is the musical equivalent of AIS. If the AIS were to close there would be uproar. A conservative estimate is that every gold medal Australia has won at the Olympics over the past 20 years has cost Australian taxpayers $40 million. Elitism is obviously admissable in Australia, but only for sport. The decision was not only poorly thought out but horrendously managed. ANAM staff were notified by a perfunctory fax. The decision has occurred too late in the Academic intake year to allow students to find alternative training for 2009. The reason Garrett has given for the decision is that ANAM is no longer the best model to train our young Classical musicians, but has given no alternative model, nor a promise of one. It is also the more insulting for having come in the wake of the 2020 summit, in which the arts were seen as one of the 10 important areas of Australia’s future. It all looks like a lot of hot air now. The ALP needs to remember that a vociferous and effective proportion of its supporters for the Kevin07 election campaign were from the arts community. The promise for the arts was improvement, not decommissioning of major arts training institutes. If this continues, Australia’s national landmark, the Sydney Opera House, if going to end up an empty, silent monolith — a testament to a time when Labor governments cared about culture. |
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10 Comments
At a tangent I noticed David Marr on the box jawboning with Trigger Trioli last Sunday arvo arts show on the Henson fracas and Marr calling Garrett’s credentials on artistic freedom or principle being “p*ssweak” said Marr, not speaking for himself despite the extra gravel in his voice, but quoting figures in the milieu.
Noticed too Marr took up view of moi blogged at that time that for better or worse (my words) the whole Henson thing was a bonfire built out of “kindling” of the Orkopoulos disgrace and criminality looking for an outlet and a convenient victim. Seemed to imply this was why the federal ALP were so quisling to the big meeja moral panic and distortions.
Apparently Garrett tugged the forelock to Rudd’s knee jerk revulsion and according to Marr this “killed Camelot” in terms of celebrity elite art affection for the PM. It was a strong interview on a thorny topic I thought, echoing all kinds of proxy issues like DOCS fatality rates, mad bad internet realities, child snatchers in the press every second day now.
Why should money be given to elite training programs for musical forms that do not attract significant public support.
I’ve always been amazed at how many of the advertisements in weekend newspapers, are for heavily taxpayer funded art forms e.g. opera.
Like rugby union, opera is dying on the vine. Why? because it is an enigmatic entertainment form. It’s no - one’s fault…it’s a simple fact. Ludo, silent movies, riding to hounds et al…..all gone…and no-one’s missing them.
Let the user pay.
Kevin - we should support the education of talented young Australians. Moreover the arts bring in significant tourism from Asia. The arts ARE paying for themselves. And not everything can be measured in dollars -as ‘user pays’. What is the value of each Australian’s life? At what point would we decide a life is not financially viable? The same with cultrue - you cannot put a monetary value on what the arts offer us as individuals and as a community.
Steven McKiernan - Firstly - ANAM is there precisely so we DON’T lose our trained musicians overseas. If we lose ANAM, we’ll be losing the investment we put into these students at high school and undergraduate levels. SECONDLY - ANAM is a training facility. A centre for education in Australia should be able to count on funding. This is not the third world. We are meant to fund education. Moreover, simply because you obviously do not appreciate Classical music does not mean it deserves to be underfunded. I don’t like sport, but I ABSOLUETLY recognise the value of sport to this country.
Gavin Moodie - good question. Already the Melba conservatory is being closed and amalgameted. The reason ANAM cannot simply be subsumed by the other tertiary training facilities in Australia is that it offers a completely different type of training to a musician in the same way that training at AIS is COMPLETELY different to getting a degree in Physical education or Sport Science at uni.
$2.6m for 55 students to get trained up to go overseas and play cover versions? Obviously talented musicians sawing away on two hundred year old scores might seem a worthwhile hobby, but it is hardly cutting edge. Complaining that your elite school missed out while other elite programs get more is really an example of poor lobbying/ weak engagement with bureaucracy/ a dysfunctional relationship with your funding body or a combination of all three. A systemic failure to consider that funding might not continue will turn turn around and bite ANAM on the A$$.
Why does Melbourne need the Australian National Academy of Music in addition to the Victorian College of Arts music school and the Melbourne conservatorium; why does Australia need the Australian National Academy of Music when it also has elite classical music schools in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth and Sydney?
Yes, (Kevin Herbert) you can put a monetary value on the Arts, just as you can on human life itself, but you have to be VERY careful how you do your sums. Much of the benefit is hard to measure in monetary terms, but that doesn’t mean it can be ignored.
The State Government is prepared to spend (?waste) $40m propping up the Melbourne Grand Prix (The Age 31/10/08) where the benefit is hard to justify in purely monetary terms. Much of this money ends up in the pockets of the already very rich. So it is a bit rich for ordinary Australians to complain about $2.9m spent on an elite training program for young professional musicians that overseas visitors describe as “the envy of anywhere in the world” (The Age 3/11/2003). Ordinary Australians are already well catered for, and if they wish to see their hard earned taxes evaporate in a cloud of petroleum smoke, I doubt that many professional musicians would complain.
However, “ordinary” Australians appear to be unaware of the need to show the rest of the world that we are more than just a nation of beerswilling barbecueloving beachbound sports fanatics as portrayed in second rate tourism commercials. Whether you like Wagner or not (I prefer Mozart), it is arguable that the fact that one of the pre-eminent Wagnerian sopranos in the world (Lisa Gasteen) is Australian does more for this country’s reputation overseas than Bernie Ecclestone and the Australian Grand Prix Corporation.
Opera lovers may be only 1% of the population (still a large number!) but they include the likes of former Australian of the Year, Gus Nossal. We have plenty of ordinary Australians, most of them great people, no doubt, but we also need our elite, rather than sending them overseas to perpetuate generations of cultural cringe.
The Australian National Academy of Music whatever its faults may be, has clearly demonstrated that we are capable of giving our elite a world class environment in which to develop their talents. It would be a pity if it were to be undermined by professional jealousy, penny pinching and political ineptitude.
Esmerelda, so it is a condition of the students enrolment that they destroy their Australian Passport? They will go overseas for better opportunities than offered in Australia particularly if they are exceptionally talented or do not want to deal with the inbred administrative and bureaucratic luvvie culture that persists in Oz Artz.
A centre for education should be able to BUDGET for longer than a one year funding cycle and not be overexposed to the withdrawal of funding from that one source.
I just wanna reiterate that I hate cover bands.
Garrett was a member of a grunge group called Midnight Oil which represented the lower end of music. No wonder he has axed this”elitist” organization.
Doubtless the AIS will get increased funding adding to the $40 million it cost us for every Gold medal earnt at the las Olympics.$40 million against $2.6 million for a year. You work it out.
Esmerald:
Your point about the arts paying 4 themselves in Australia is not supported by any data I’ve seen, although I’d be keen to see it for sure.
I agree we should support talented young Australians, but the amount of funds dedicated to classical music, are way out of proportion to it’s support by ordinary Australians. In the end, all diminishing art forms throughout modern history have been judged by their contribution to a society’s cultural life: therefore, if the current 1% of Australians who actively support opera, receive 12% of total arts funding, a decision eventually has to be made by politicians as to the merit of such overfunding, compared to the need for more funds in those strongly supported areas of contemporary arts.
As for the maxim that you can’t put a value on what the arts offer us as a community & individuals, I strongly disagree. If only 1 in 100 Australians ever bother attending the opera or classical music, it’s now very easy to put a societal value on what theses arts offer. At some point, a society must make such a decision.
But that’s not to say opera won’t surivive in some form. And Mozart, Bach et al will definitely be played in some form for as long as musicians are inspired by them.