What happens when an arts organisation suddenly loses funding? For two small arts organisations that have recently lost their cash, after the crisis comes resilience.
Australia Council
My Cup Of Tea: New cultural roadmap, but will there be a soundtrack?
The arts year will be dominated by key themes: the announcement of the National Cultural Policy, the deflation of the music festivals bubble, and fraught times at many smaller companies.
Australia Council review secret and hopelessly compromised
Arts Minister Simon Crean’s review of the Australia Council is much needed. But it’s been hopelessly compromised already by the choice of the man leading it.
Nothing changes in opera — and nobody seems to care
The reason opera is a “heritage” artform is that its audiences don’t want to see new operas. Time to abandon the fiction that it deserves more public funding than anything else.
Money and art: should businesspeople run the creative space?
The common message from much of the social sciences is that the arts and culture are more than just industries exchanging goods and services. They are constitutive parts of our everyday life.
My Cup Of Tea: Arts policy converging into a government hash
Government arts policy is a hash. The now its Convergence Review — which is posing serious questions about the future shape of cultural policy — is making the National Cultural Policy irrelevant.
My Cup Of Tea: The costly disease in our backing orchestras
An Australia Council-commissioned report into Australia’s ballet and opera orchestras reveals an unsustainable business model. But where will efficiencies come from?
Save the Australia Council, at least for the music: academic
Some have argued to abolish arts funding body the Australia Council altogether. But that could kill classical music, argues academic Justin O’Connor.
My Cup Of Tea: The plan to provoke a profound shake-up to the arts
A new report from the Australia Council has big implications for Australian cultural policy, says Ben Eltham. Its conclusions imply a profound shake-up in the current status quo.
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Where does Australia’s arts funding go?
Last year Opera Australia received more funding than all the 781 other arts boards and projects combined. Marcus Westbury breaks down the Australia Council arts funding fiasco.
Hussein: I don’t buy Quadrant — but I still pay for it
How do you reconcile the need to know what the enemy is saying with the prohibition against tipping money -– even small change -– into their war-chest? asks Shakira Hussein.
Guy Rundle: Windschuttle screams blue murder over Quadrant funding cut
Quadrant has had its Australia Council Grant cut by $15,000 and is screaming blue murder and about the fix being in, because every left wing magazine –- Overland, Meanjin(!), Australian Book Review (!!) — has seen its funding maintained or bumped up.
Quadrant blames political decision for funding cut
Conservative magazine Quadrant is accusing the Australia Council of a “patently political decision” in cutting its funding from $50,000 to $30,000, thus threatening its literary content. But was it politics that caused the cut?
graph pr0n Where Australia’s arts funding goes
Following up from his great piece on the Australia Council’s failure to adapt to the digital era, Marcus Westbury charts exactly where our country’s arts funding is — and isn’t — going. In a word: orchestras.
Sackwatch 12: Unemployment figures may be staying put for a while…
Crikey continues to track the job-loss carnage.
Australia Council strikes as @kathyinvenice tweets
Staff at the Australia Council are striking, angry over reduced conditions and wages, writes Nicholas Pickard.
Media briefs: Pirates capture the Australia Council’s Facebook page
Schweppes release hairy man bibs … Sun-Times cut non-union staff … PolitiFact.com wins a Pulitzer
Art Monthly editor plays into Hetty’s hands
Editor Maurice O’Riordan is a total fool for putting the image of a naked young girl on the latest cover of Art Monthly, writes Nicholas Pickard.
Your Say: Daily Mail readers' feedback: Comments, corrections, clarifications, and c*ckups
Saving the Murray River .. Alexander Downer … emissions trading … Zimbabwe … Gippsland … Greenwashing Greenland …
Arts grant applicant tells: the bureaucracy is killing us!
While sympathetic to the individuals who have lost their jobs, something has to give at the Australia Council, writes an arts insider.
Kevin Rudd’s efficiency dividend hits the Australia Council
The Australia Council is trimming its staff to appease Kevin Rudd’s bottom line. But will artists lose out? ask Nick Pickard and Ben Eltham.
US08: Romney’s out, unless of course Al-Qaeda step in…
Romney has suspended his candidacy, rather than withdrawn it – a technicality which means he’s still in the race. What’s he hoping for? Huckabee won’t split the ticket. He’s hoping, of course, that McCain will have a stroke before the Convention and be out of the running, and the party will have no-one else to turn to. It’s a long shot, but it sounds a hell of a lot better bet than the thirty million he pissed up against the wall in his lacklustre, America’s CEO, campaign, writes Guy Rundle.
Australia Council axes The Program
The Australia Council is axing its innovative youth arts website and email newsletter, TheProgram.net.au, in a move to “streamline” its resourcing of youth arts, writes Ben Eltham.
Where did ArtStart go?
On Saturday, Mr Garrett officially launched the ALP’s arts policy. But ArtStart suddenly disappeared from the official speeches and the press releases approved by Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd’s office, writes Nicholas Pickard.
Howard loves the arts, ask the Sydney Dance Company
If the Sydney dance Company was a housing mortgagee owing a lot of money in Sydney’s west, it would have been either foreclosed and sold up, or it would have had its loan re-organised with new terms, writes Glenn Dyer.
