"Democracy is the key to cultural value…"

This article by Graham Hay is an attempt to reach some conclusions about arts funding. It emphasises the importance of the relationship between elite groups and the state and explores how Western Australian culture is "created".

Historically these relationships do not receive media attention or public scrutiny. While pluralism may involve the State consulting with all groups, corporatism occurs when the state and only a few groups share the decision making(Grant, 1985, p.3).

When I say "state" I refer to both the West Australian and [Australian] Federal Government, because in the arts there is a high level of co-operation between them. The [Federal] Australia Council spends over $3.3 million on the arts in Western Australia (including the WA Department for the Arts), and is legally required to take into account the policies of State Governments (Australia Council Amendment Act 1991).

Special interest groups are organisations promoting and protecting the interests of their members or cause. They can range from the Yokine Community Centre pottery group to the elite Craft Australia. Within the Western Australian arts there are approximately 2,000 such associations councils or groups.

Groups not only lobby the state on behalf of the Australia Council and WA Department for the Arts, they also lobby these departments to fund their group. Most of state funding goes to these groups, indicating that they negotiating the art-state relationship to their advantage, relative to individuals.

Source: Australia Council Annual Report 1993/94

Because elite groups receive a 'bundle' of project grands, it is difficult to separate them from the numerous smaller community groups. The continuous funding of elite groups enables the state department to overcome funding and staff ceilings, while continuing essential projects. For example, the Labor government funded the Artist Foundation of WA to employ a public art officer, following a Trades and Labour Council's black ban on public art and a large meeting of concerned artists. To stop this creeping informal civil service, the WA Minister for the Ants announced that his department will not continuously fund any new groups, forcing emerging groups to find alterative sources of fund.

As the elite groups become dependent upon continuous funding, they align their activities more closely with the state's objectives. The resulting shared objectives are reflected in the movement of employees between state and group; in the last year the Craft Council of WA has employed a Department for the Arts officer and 'borrowed' another, while the National Association for Visual Artists appointed a new Executive Director straight from the Australia Council.

The current grant system allows the state to also subtlety influence artistic content. Gough (1995) questioned Phillip Adams' argument that Australian artists' habitual larrikinism is proof that state sponsorship does not corrupt. Gough argues that, with the current "more purposeful drive towards national goals", intellectuals' and arttists' ridicule has increasingly focused on the "Left's favourite targets"(p.162-163). Gough suggests that state sponsorship of the arts in Australia swings the political party in power. However he does argue that the blame does not rest solely with Labor, as a change in government would not "make any difference to the system of patronage" (p. 165).

Source: National Association for the Visual Arts Annual Reports (various)
Craft Council of Western Australia Annual Reports (various)

These ideas are supported by data hidden in the appendixes of Throsby & Thompson's (1994) survey of artists (funded by the Australia Council). Figure 3 is a summary of Appendix 1 Table 10.3.

From this it appears that there is a preference for peer assessment panels, butt here is also a widely held belief that these panels tend to give too much to too few, favouring an 'in-group' in individual art forms. These findings are consistent an elite group of people operating within the arts; a conclusion supported by the chair of the Australia Council who criticised a babyboom generation, who received free education and much more than any other generation ever had, and which has gone on receiving the lion's share of the funds available for creative -development (McPhee, 1995b).

This is because the different criteria for appointments onto the panels, and for making grants to Artists, have become too similar. Not surprisingly, the Council changed the peer assessment committee system, without widely consulting elite groups. Similarly the Department for the Arts has just announced measures to remove conflict of interest situations for panel members.

Most local craft and art publications have remain conspicuously silent about the whole issue, despite the public debate through the national media over these issues surrounding state funding of the arts.

Graham Hay is a member of CCWA, NAVA, aid is a member of a group of emerging Artists whom recently received a Department for the Arts grant.

This article appeared as "Democracy is the key to cultural value ...," Pyre: Journal of the Clay & Glass Association of Western Australia, No. 8, 1996, 18-9 (Reproduced with kind permission from the editor; Edward Arrowsmith).