SUBMISSIO FROM PAMEL CLEMENT CLEMENT ACOUSTIC DESIG ASSOCIATES PRINCE HILL VI 3054

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1 The Australian Government is seeking views from a wide range of people organisations and sectors on the National Cultural Policy especially on the proposed goals and strategies. You can contribute to the development of a new National Cultural Policy by making a submission. SUBMISSIO FROM PAMEL CLEMENT CLEMENT ACOUSTIC DESIG ASSOCIATES PRINCE HILL VI

2 SUBMISSION TEMPLATE Please use this as a guide for your submission. Name* Pamela Clements Organisation: Clements Acoustics Design Associates Do you agree to your submission being made publicly available on the website?* Yes No 1. About you or your organisation 2. Do you support the development of a National Cultural Policy, and why? 3. What are your views about each of the four goals? GOAL 1: To ensure that what the Government supports and how this support is provided reflects the diversity of a 21 st century Australia, and protects and supports Indigenous culture CADA: Agree. The question is how this is done. Others have more expertise in Aboriginal policy, so comments in this submission are in relation to diversity and multicultural arts and culture generally. See detailed comments about society under goal 4, and related strategies. GOAL 2: To encourage the use of emerging technologies and new ideas that support the development of new artworks and the creative industries, and that enable more people to access and participate in arts and culture CADA: Agree. Have several comments: This goal mixes areas that can be related but are also independent or interdependent a) emerging technologies and new ideas which are a catalyst for b) new artworks and c) the creative industries, enabling d) improved access and participation in arts and culture. I would separate these out in order to generate more focused policies. Here s a try: I would focus goals and policies regarding IT, telecommunications and social media in terms of their impacts on arts and culture, including: changing communication methods, social media, worldwide interconnectedness, including connecting creative people across the world, information sharing at all levels, copyright and rights generally, and new electronic arts genres. No doubt the new media are changing the way we think and behave, and the implications for arts and culture are exciting, challenging, and possibly frightening. IT and telecommunications are tools and vehicles, and are dramatically changing the way we communicate, the way we access information, and even how we think. It s vital not to be carried away with the ease and novelty of all this, and instead for the policy to focus on the potential and the outcomes the content, the art and other creative, physical and 2

3 virtual products that are produced, access and participation issues, and the social and economic outcomes that these new communications technologies will help to generate. Experts in this area can focus this discussion better than I. Ultimately, despite the excitement and potential of the new tools, imagination, ideas, creativity, and the art and outcomes these generate these are still the things we need to value. I would acknowledge that new ideas are arising not only from IT and emerging technologies, but also from a much wider range of impulses local and societal changes in business, science, research, philosophy, political and environmental (etc). Looking at IT, communications and related art forms in this broader context will greatly strengthen goals and policies. I would cast the net for creative industries wider, to include other areas of innovation in thinking, discovery and process in engineering, design, building, infrastructure, environmental science etc, and in particular interdisciplinary interconnectedness between these areas. See Goal 4, where this is discussed in relation to business and society. I would also separate the goal of improved access and participation in society into a) the areas influenced by emerging IT and communications and related new art forms, and b) the social and economic context for new arts and cultural policies. For the former, others will have more expertise than I. For my thoughts on the latter, please see Goal 4. GOAL 3: To support excellence and worldclass endeavour, and strengthen the role that the arts play in telling Australian stories both here and overseas. CADA: Agree. Comments: Achieving the highest levels of excellence in arts and culture is among the pinnacles of human achievement. This level of excellence in the arts and culture is an inspiration, an encouragement, and has an enormous impact on our quality of life. We must support and major arts and cultural organisations orchestras, theatre companies, dance, opera, art galleries and genres, and arts production industries including film and video. We must also support growth of individual artists, performers, small arts organisations and generators of culture in experimentation and growth towards the highest levela of achievement, through education in the arts and fostering small arts and cultural organisations, individuals and experimental art forms with the aim of enabling them all to rise to their highest potential and recognition that some will grow to achieve very high levels of excellence. We also need to foster a more general expression of arts and culture that expresses the creative capability of most people in our society (and it should be open to all). This includes fostering the arts at school level, community arts centres and arts activities, as well as expressions of community identity and pride. 3

4 There is no conflict or competition between these levels, and all should be fostered, encouraged, supported, acknowledged, recognised, and celebrated. Expression of multicultural arts and culture, festival events, dance, film and video, circus, writing, publishing, architecture, design, craft, and all the multiplicity of genres and events can happen at all these levels. We should explore endeavours in which large cultural institutions work with and foster smaller enterprises in their genres; this could be a requirement of funding the large organisations. See policies Regarding Australian stories although the cultural cringe has lessened with globalization, Australia still often looks outside for validation and recognition. In terms of our national identity, it makes more sense now to think of telling Australian stories or Australian manifestations of artistic and cultural expression as part of sharing and expressing our contribution to the world s multi- cultural fabric. Why do we want to tell Australian stories? What are Australian stories? Perhaps in an increasingly globalized world we are really telling universal stories with an Australian point of view. Interesting that some of our great writers, like Elliot Perlman and Arnold Zable, write about Australia and the world, but they are still telling Australian stories. Looking to developing our multicultural arts within Australia can help us develop a more diverse expression of what it means to be Australian, and hence strongly influence our stories. Rather than fostering national pride or jingoism, can we seek an Australianness that expresses the life, traditions, achievements and concerns of who we are now as well as where we have come from? Can we find a particularly Australian way to express who we are gladly? I don t believe that increasing globalization will bring uniformity in artistic expression, although no doubt there will be more commonality among the world s cultures. Rather I see increasing globalization as providing an impetus for us to understand ourselves more deeply, to expand and refine our identity as we also root it in place. Promoting and sharing Australia s highest arts and cultural achievements internationally is also an important export market, which we should foster and celebrate. The future growth of the arts and cultural industries in Australia should ideally be supported by a mixture of government and private funding. Private funding should not replace government funding, but instead augment it. Australia has a few enormously wealthy individuals who could be donating on a large scale, as happens in the US. Small donations from many individuals seem to be a more natural fit with Australian society; there could be incentives for donations, such as tax deductions for donations to infrastructure (buy a theatre seat in a new or refurbished facility, for example), to shared sponsorship of a season or special event, for tickets costing more than $x, to rounding up ticket prices as a way of achieving multiple small donations. The benefit of increasing private sponsorship is that government funding will be released to help foster the more innovative and risktaking artistic enterprises and ensure that our arts and culture is widely representative of the community. 4

5 GOAL 4: To increase and strengthen the capacity of the arts to contribute to our society and economy CADA: Agree. Comments: This topic overlaps with Goals 13 above; the final goals probably need to be sorted out and separated so that the policies can be more focused. I have chosen to put most of my comments on Goals 13 under Goal 4, because it seems to me that policies re growing our economy and improving our society have enormous power to grow and improve our arts and culture, and vice versa. We can make a really big difference by focusing in this area. Thinking ahead to the future of Australia s society and economy, the large issues seem to be: expected large population growth, increasing multiculturalism, the changing world economy and power structure, the weakness of the Australian economy if mining and resources are excluded and eventually when the mines are exhausted, the effects of climate change, and Australia s place in the largescale rebalancing of societal and economic viability among all the world s nations. I believe that the National Cultural Policy should take account of all aspects of these issues, no matter that it is very challenging and complex. I believe we must to try grapple with these issues, despite the face that there is no crystal ball. For a start: try to imagine Australian society in 20 years approximately the life of this new policy. There will be a large population increase, combined with the need to densify our cities, reduce our carbon footprint, conserve water, and almost certainly significant changes our lifestyle and ways of working in response to climate change. More people are likely to live in country centres as the large conurbations become less liveable (witness Sydney already); lowlying areas of coastal settlements will probably have been moved to higher ground. We will need new types of buildings and modifications to the old. We will have a different urban structure, with new sense of neighbourhoods, different frequency and methods of travel. People will be closer together. Neighbourhoods will change. Will they be quieter with electrical vehicles, or noisier with the pressure of urban density? Will we glad and thriving in this new environment, or will social pressures and increasing economic inequality bring community divisions, ethnic tension, poverty and insecurity? It seems to me that the arts and cultural industries have the means to show the way and mediate the challenges of these changes that are ahead. For example: The development and implementation of multicultural arts and cultural policies will be incredibly important in social respect and cohesion as Australia moves into the challenging times ahead. We value individual cultures highly, respect the individuality and beliefs of different ethnic and cultural groups within our community. We no longer require immigrants to become Anglicised or Australianised. We have said sorry to the Aboriginal people who originally inhabited this land, and at public events we acknowledge the original owners of the land we have settled. We celebrate diversity at arts festivals and in community arts centres. Our country is not riven by the ethnic tensions of the US, Europe or many other parts of the world. And yet, we have a long way to go to 5

6 achieve true respect, true equality, true sharing of resources, true multiculturalism. There is not a lot of true cultural interaction and deep respect for others in Australia yet. There is not equality of opportunity yet. Even in writing about the we in this paragraph, there is inbuilt separation from the Aboriginal Australians and others who are not yet we. I believe that the National Cultural Policy should go beyond highminded statements about respect and cultural inclusion, and begin to come to grips with policies that will genuinely make a difference. What will Australian society look like when the Australian Aboriginal community has a genuine decency of life? Is fostering the production and sale of Aboriginal Art sufficient? Is encouraging Aboriginal children to stay in school sufficient? What else does the Arts and Cultural policy need to come to grips with in this area? And what does the Arts and Cultural Policy need to come to grips with for our most recent and disadvantaged immigrant community, for asylum seekers, for Muslim women wearing the burkha, for immigrant groups with historic tensions that go back generations in the lands they have come from. What does the policy need to say for older Australians who are living longer and who need and want to continue to contribute to Australian society? Similarly for disabled Australians and people with chronic illnesses, for people with poor education, family disadvantage. How can we improve our society by the way we build of towns and cities, our schools and cultural facilities, our workplaces and homes, by the way we generate community, by the way we share work and resources, by the way we create better lives? The arts and cultural expression have enormous potential to act as a catalyst for expression, respect, interaction, dialogue, learning to live together, and building much more meaningful lives and communities. The policy needs to address this. (See Goal 1) Another example: New architectural forms and urban fabric denser, more responsive to the environment, with solar power and water tanks on virtually all buildings, urban food generation, buildings designed to provide quiet and peaceful home and working environments, individual and collaborative work and educational spaces, greater importance of the local community, possibly much less travel. More people will likely live in country towns, regional centres will become more important, building types perhaps will become more diverse and responsive to the locality. Architecture and urban design are going to become increasingly important, and it essential to see them as part of the creative process. Architecture can make neighbourhoods liveable, can foster community harmony, can help children learn. See comments re the economy and business below. Another example: Perfoming Arts Centres and arts precincts. As the population grows and the urban fabric changes, PACs and arts precincts have the opportunity to change, to become more open to the community and become more embedded in the urban fabric. Large, highquality central facilities are essential for the excellence of the arts; in addition the quality of arts facilities in suburbs and country towns needs to be raised significantly. Unused infrastructure needs to be refurbished for new and creative uses. There is great potential in all this for significantly improving the quality of cultural and artistic life for all Australians. The Creative Industries. It s vital to foster creative industries and artistic generation of all kinds. Australia has a history of not funding its inventors, of losing its greatest brains overseas. 6

7 The recentlyestablished Australian Creative Industries Strategy is a fine first step, but there is much more to do. The Creative Industries Strategy focuses on creative businesses that are already of reasonable size and generating significant income and employment. It is wholly desirable to support these ventures to grow and become strong and viable industries, supporting Australia s economy and society. However, creative industries can be large, medium and small businesses, ranging from sole traders, through to manufacturing companies producing designed products and delivering to national and international markets. Enterprises vary from services to product design and manufacture, from applied research to interdisciplinary collaboration, from virtual and intellectual property to buildings. All levels and kinds of creative industries should be supported and developed. The nature of many arts and creativelybased businesses is that most will begin relatively small in size and many will remain that way. Small does not mean less than excellent in fact it can mean great excellence combined with greater flexibility and responsiveness than larger organisations. The Australian Cultural Policy needs to ensure that this wide range of enterprise types can be included in the structures and support systems for creative industries. New and flexible creative/artsbusinesses require a variety of business structures that support a creative environment for innovation, including some fairly flexible and innovative structures such as collaborating or associated enterprises, businesses that share resources, and creative business incubators. Models are needed to enable interconnected small businesses to flourish and grow. Interdisciplinary businesses or collaborative business structures are needed perhaps drawing engineering businesses, research facilities and artists/designers into collaboration (drawing aeronautical engineering research into architecture, for example, or suspension bridge principles into furniture design). These enterprises may require different business, funding and structural models. They have enormous potential for fostering individuality, creativity and flexibility and for designing and mediating change. The new Cultural Policy should make this supporting this flexibility of enterprise one of its major priorities. There is an urgent need to develop business models that will respect and work for arts and ideas based businesses, rather than focusing primarily on making the creative industries more business- like in the traditional sense. Can we develop of a way of valuing arts and ideasbased businesses that includes their soft value to Australian society quality of life, social respect, fostering harmony and the fullness of human expression, etc? Can we develop viable indicators so that we can value the arts and creative industries in a way that reflects their true value to society? Can we find a way for arts and creative workers to earn a decent living? Would that not immediately more than double the book value of the arts and culture to the Australian economy? And what would that mean for how Australian culture and the arts could be shaped in the future? I think the impact would be enormous, and beneficial for all Australians. The National Cultural Policy should be coordinated specifically with and interlinked to the Creative Industries Strategy and the National Design Policy, so that they can work effectively together. 7

8 4. What strategies do you think we could use to achieve each of the four goals? Strategies for Goal 1: see Goal 4. Strategies for Goal 2: Develop separate strategies for a) IT, telecommunication and social media and b) creative processes. See Goal 4. Foster sources of new ideas extend beyond IT and social media, to include engineering, design, building, infrastructure, environmental science etc. See Goal 4. Strategies for Goal 3: Support arts excellence at worldclass level, as well as at midlevel/community and individual levels As a requirement of their funding, require larger arts organisations and institutions to provide some access and opportunity for smaller experimental works and forms to be developed and presented. An existing example of this would perhaps be the Spiegeltent at the Arts Centre. Hamer Hall, the MRC, the State Theatre and the MTC, for example, could provide access at low cost to one or two experimental/innovative groups per year, to have the opportunity to rehearse and perform in their facilities, and to benefit from the organisation s mentorship and event marketing. Smaller experimental theatre, dance etc. could move to workshop and possible performance in the larger facilities. Foster a more comfortable selfawareness for Australian stories, in the context of world multiculturalism. Foster the export and touring of Australian arts and culture abroad. Develop ways to increase private sponsorship of the arts and culture not to reduce government funding, but to enable it to be distributed more widely. Target private sponsorship to wealthy individuals and to middleclass smaller donations and incentives. Strategies for Goal 4: Envision the growth and role of the arts and culture in terms of the large issues facing Australia in the next 20 years: large population growth, increasing multiculturalism, changing world economy and power structure, weakness of the Australia economy (sans mining and resources), the effects of climate change, densification of the cities, changed transportation patterns, the need to live closer together. Develop policies based on the ability of the arts and cultural industries ability to mediate these challenges and provide an enhanced quality of life for all Australians. Develop policies for growing our economy and improving our society in the light of their ability to grow our arts and culture, and vice versa. Develop multicultural arts and cultural policies to foster understanding, sharing of resources, respect and valuing the other, to make Australian society deeply welcoming and respectful of diversity. Include architecture and urban design more directly as part of the arts and cultural policy, as these design disciplines are integral to solving future social and cultural challenges. Plan to develop Performing Arts Centres and Precincts to become more open to the community and more embedded in the urban fabric; similarly improve performing arts facilities and precincts in suburbs and country towns. Reinvigorate blighted urban areas with refurbished and adaptive reuse of old buildings, combined with new, environmentally responsive building forms. 8

9 Foster interdisciplinary collaboration in the full range of the creative and research industries, including engineering, architecture, urban design, product development, scientific research, social change monitoring, new and emerging technologies, communications and IT, as well as directly arts and culturebased businesses. Expand the Creative Industries Strategy and link with the National Design policy to include enterprises of all scales and types, and to coordinate with the National Cultural Policy. Explore a wide variety funding and support models (such as seeding grants) for the creative industries of all scales and types. Develop flexible and creative business structures that support creative and artsbased industries to flourish; this includes finding new, relevant business models and practices. Undertake a detailed study of the economic value of the arts, including valuing the secondary effects of a vibrant arts and cultural life, including quality of life, and means of obtaining fair incomes for arts workers. Develop ways and indicators for properly valuing this soft contribution of the arts and culture to Australian society. Develop ways of paying arts workers so that they can earn a decent living. Revalue the contribution of the Arts and Culture to the Australian economy accordingly. Establish a working party/advisory body to look at developing the arts and creative industries in the context of the rapid social, environmental, economic and cultural changes that will be facing Australia in the next 20 years. This body could enable the National Cultural Policy to be responsive rather than static in the face of rapid change. 5. How can you, your organisation or sector contribute to the goals and strategies of the National Cultural Policy? Clements Acoustics Design Associates specializes in design of performing arts and cultural facilities, in feasibility and planning, client advice, and integration of acoustics design. Particular interests include changing building types in the future to accommodate densification and respond to environmental change, and changing building form to create more liveable human environments. In the arts and culture, we are especially interested in raising the acoustic quality of performance and learning spaces, so that artistic excellence can be fully realized and communicated to audiences. We are particularly interested in design solutions that respond to the challenges of: interdisciplinary collaboration urban densification and liveability of cities excellence in design of performing arts centres and precincts, major, medium and smallsized project, and education facilities Pamela Clements is also very interested in sharing expertise and participating in workshops or on an advisory body to explore more fully ways of developing creative industries, and integrating strategies for creative industries and design in the context of rapid social, economic and cultural change. 6 Are there any other goals you would like to see included in the National Cultural Policy? Yes. Include: Coordination with Education policies and improving the quality of arts education and school facilities in learning, arts and culture 9