A vibrant future for performing arts
Media Release | Spokesperson Christine Milne
Thursday 12th August 2010, 10:13am
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in Communications & the Arts Arts
The Australian Greens are today launching a policy platform to help ensure a vibrant future for the performing arts in Australia.
The platform includes grants programs for innovation in the arts and for touring domestically and globally, policies to support artists through periods of unpredictable work, and a commitment to begin political engagement with the challenge of cleaning up copyright law.
“The Greens recognise the wonderful role artists play in our society, helping us to understand our world, bringing us together as a community and challenging us to see it from a different perspective,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator Christine Milne, said.
“To make sure performing arts has a vibrant future in Australia, we need to encourage innovation, support artists and make sure as many Australians as possible get to share the experience.”
The Greens’ vibrant future for performing arts policy:
establishes a $5 million a year Arts Research and Development Fund to support new Australian work, risk-taking work and truly innovative social artistic ventures;
increases the Playing Australia fund for touring Australia and establishes a new $10 million overseas touring fund;
includes artistic engagement with recognised arts organisations for the purposes of meeting social security requirements; and
commits to initiating roundtable discussions to reform the copyright regime.
“Every industry needs innovation to survive and thrive and the arts is no exception. But while in the sciences it is acknowledged that some experiments fail, experiments aren’t given the same chance in the arts.
“The Greens would provide grants to projects from performing arts in community development such as Big hArt’s brilliant work in north west Tasmania and in Indigenous communities to bringing together small companies with major performing arts groups for innovative work.
“Touring is vital for the performing arts to have a vibrant future. The more widely exciting and beautiful and challenging work is shared across the community, the more we all gain from it.
“But touring is also vital because it creates the holy grail of longer term work for casts and crew in an industry where jobs are sporadic and highly unpredictable.
“Another part of helping to deal with that uncertainty is changing Centrelink rules to allow artistic engagement with recognised organisations to be counted in social security requirements. This will improve the employment prospects of performance artists in the arts and help them to make ends meet when between jobs.
“Copyright is one of the most important mechanisms to nurture and reward creativity and to secure an income stream for artists, but many argue it hasn’t kept pace with the times.
“We need a serious political conversation about the future of copyright and the Greens are committed to starting one.”
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