Session 5: Culture Seminar “John Fogarty” Buenos Aires, 27 April 2007

“Australian Culture”

Malcolm Gillies [email protected]

Vice-President (Development) The Australian National University

If you look at the twenty-first century’s most consulted lexicon of knowledge, Wikipedia, you find that the national entries on “culture” have some compulsory core elements, and then a series of distinctive national features. The core elements are generally arts, sports and food. The distinctive cultural “extras”, beyond this common core, include architecture, religion, education, language, hobbies, tourism and recreation.1 The entry on “Culture of France”, for instance, gives prominence to the crucial role of the French language to so many French manifestations of culture. The entry for “Culture of

Argentina” reflects upon the importance of sociability to Argentine society, as seen, for instance, in the celebration of Friends’ Day each year. “Culture in Australia” gives prominence to certain distinctive social values of mateship, suburban home ownership, cultural cringe and the tendency to back the “underdog” against those of undisguised wealth, status or talent, the “tall poppies”. While these Wikipedia entries are unauthorized and sometimes almost chance texts of individual authorship, none the less, they well capture some core pan-national elements of twenty-first culture – arts

(including film and cinema), sports and food (also variously described as “cuisine” or

“gastronomy”) – as well as such national variants as language, social relations or cultural

1 See, for instance, entries for “Culture of Argentina”, “” and “Culture of France”, in www.en.wikipedia.org. 2 cringe.2 Between Australia and Argentina the most common core cultural feature is a love of football, most distinctively a code known as Australian Rules as against

Argentina’s renowned love affair with fútbol (soccer). Culture, then, “is that which gives us a sense of ourselves”, concluded the Commonwealth Cultural Policy statement of

1994, Creative Nation.3

That very word “culture” has different emphases for our different nations.

Argentina and France, for instance, have Ministers for Culture – in France’s case the

Minister is also the Minister of Communications; in Argentina’s case, he is also the

Minister for Education. New Zealand adds another variant by having, at various times, a

Minster of Culture and Heritage and Britain currently has a Ministry of Culture, Media and Sport. Yet, Australia does not have – and, I believe, no Australian state or territory currently has – a Minister of Culture. The closest the Federal Government comes to such a minister, is the Minister for the Arts and Sport, safely overseen by a Minister of

Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. Why is this so?

One answer lies with the identity of a figure called “”. For a fictional character, invented by the Australian comedian , “Sir Les” gains a very large entry in Wikipedia.4 This entry helps to explain an Australian aversion to concepts of high “culture”, and a long-term national skepticism about the enduring value of most cultural enterprises. “Sir Les Patterson” is “obese, lecherous and offensive, this farting, belching, nose-picking figure of Rabelaisian excess is an antipodean Falstaff”.5 In fact, “Sir Les Patterson” is Australia’s cultural attaché to the

Court of St James in London, and a form of anti-cultural re-exported nemesis upon

2 In “Culture of Canada” (www.en.wikipedia.org) there is a deviation from this formula, with a particular emphasis upon multi-culturalism in Canadian society, as well as on Canada’s closeness to – sometimes domination by – American culture. 3 “Introduction” to Creative Nation: Commonwealth Cultural Policy, www.nla.gov.au/creative.nation/introduction.html. 4 “Sir Les Patterson”, www.en.wikipedia.org. 5 “Sir Les Patterson”, www.en.wikipedia.org. 3

Australia’s colonial homeland, Britain. (Indeed, so effective was his creation that when the Cambridge (Debating) Union staged a mock ceremony of award of an honorary doctorate to “Sir Les”, Cambridge University officials were most concerned that it might be interpreted as a real award of the University.) “Sir Les” is the antithesis of Barry

Humphries’ other fictional character, “”. While she is “female, refined, Protestant, and from ”, he is “male, uncouth, Catholic, and from

Sydney”. He is racist, sexist, and – coming from – hates Australia’s distinctive, and Melbourne-based, code of Australian Rules football. His common disdain of distinctive Australian arts, sports and food is seen when, as Wikipedia reports, “he coated a leather football in cream cake, and fed it to a camel”.6 With a higher visibility than almost any of Australia’s dwindling number of non-fictional knights, “Sir Les

Patterson” has, effectively, over the last three-and-a-half decades queered the pitch for the word “culture” in official Australian nomenclatures.7 He personifies one key manifestation of that distinctive “cultural cringe” in Australian society.

In this paper I look particularly at the arts and creative industries, not because they are the most important ingredient in Australian culture – sport would certainly have to take precedence there – but because they are most instructive of many of the changes that are occurring in Australian society in relation to the balance between “high” and “low” culture, and patterns in national, state, regional and community cultural engagement. Later, I look briefly at the emerging interrelationship between creative arts, culture industries, creative industries and concepts of “creative class” within the

Australian context of emerging creative and talent economies.8

6 “Sir Les Patterson”, www.en.wikipedia.org. 7 Although not originating the term, “culture vulture” is frequently used by Australians to refer to someone with more than a passing interest in, specifically, the arts. 8 See, further, Malcolm Gillies, “Rethinking Australian Innovation”, National Press Club Address, 17 August 2005, www.chass.org.au/news/items/270805.htm 4

One reasonably reliable indicator of the distinction between “high” and ”low” in

Australian culture is the level of government subsidy. “High” culture tends to be expensive and is accessible to relatively few, but often highly influential, members of society; hence, its generally high subsidy levels from government, although, with the visual arts, in particular, Australia is recently showing growing levels of private philanthropic support. “Low” culture is consumed by the masses. If successful, it has the opportunity to earn profits. If unsuccessful, it disappears or transforms, unless there is particular stray political or social reason why it should be supported. Most forms of sport and many of food fit the “low” cultural category. They involve a high percentage of the population, and gain (except for some areas of “elite” – perhaps “high culture” sports

-- such as track and field athletics) relatively low levels of per capita government subsidy. Because of the large numbers involved, business and media sponsorship is more often forthcoming than for “high” culture. Using this criterion of level of per capita government subsidy, the “arts” range from “low” – film, fashion, popular music (including musicals), popular dance – through medium – visual arts, drama – to “high” – classical music, opera, ballet. A 2005 report into Australian orchestras gave the following instructive statistics for a subsection of the performing arts (Table 1):9

Main activity of organization Govt.fund.Box Office Fund-raising Other Total Total income % % (b) % (b) % %

Symphonic and choral 49.9 29.6 12.6 7.8 100 Aus$105.4M performance (a)

Popular music performance 0.5 60.4 4.5 34.5 100 Aus$110.9M

Drama production 29.3 44.9 10.0 15.8 100 Aus$91.4M

9 A New Era: Report of the Orchestras Review 2005 (Canberra: Department of Communications, IT and the Arts, 2005), p. 32, www.dcita.gov.au/orchestras. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Performing Arts 2002-3 (Catalogue No. 8697.0, Table 2.2), September 2004. 5

Dance production 33.8 38.3 13.5 14.4 100 Aus$52.0M

Musical theatre production 1.3 86.9 0.8 11.0 100 Aus$143.4M

Opera production 38.4 * 10.8 * 100 Aus$75.6M

Other 13.9 * 3.9 * 100 Aus$43.3M

Total 21.9 53.3 7.3 17.8 100 Aus$622.1M

(a) Includes philharmonic and youth orchestras, vocal ensembles and instrumental groups. (b) For the purposes of this report, box office takings is box office income and fund- raising is corporate sponsorship and private donations. * Not separately identified in the ABS publication.

Music and Theatre Production Organizations: Income Sources by Main Activity of Organisation, Australia, 2002-03

Table 1

This table demonstrates that government funding comprises half of all support for symphonic and choral performance – in fact, for professional symphony orchestras that support is around sixty per cent10 – as against around one per cent government support for popular music performances and musical theatre, both of which generate a majority of their income from box office takings (and popular music a high percentage of income also through recordings). On the other hand, in contrast to the popular music, theatre or dance, the “higher” artistic manifestations all gained between ten and fourteen per cent of total income through corporate sponsorship and private donations – a very low figure compared with North America although quite respectable in many European contexts.

Sitting in the middle, with good although not majority income from box-office takings, around thirty per cent from government funding and a developing profile of fund-raising and other income support, is the middle-brow art form of drama.

10 See A New Era, pp. 27-31. 6

One particular feature of Australian culture, disguised by the above table, is the nation’s strong state cultural base, and, with that, a strong sense of professional artistic entitlement for each of the six states of the federation (although not the two territories).

As in Canada, the demands of state identity are not just legislative, legal, executive and educational, but also strongly cultural. Although many citizens might never visit their state’s cultural icons, they hold it as axiomatic that each state will have its array of them.

This means, almost invariably, that the smaller the state the higher the level of public subsidy. Taking the six Australian state professional orchestras as an example, the level of government subsidy varied in 2002-3 from 46 per cent for the Sydney Symphony

Orchestra (in Australia’s largest state) to 81 per cent for the Tasmanian Symphony

Orchestra (in Australia’s smallest state). One anomaly is that the Queensland

Orchestra, in Australia’s third largest gained a 79 per cent government subsidy, apparently for two reasons: Queensland is Australia’s most decentralized state, with only about half of its population being located in the state capital of Brisbane, where the orchestra is located; and Brisbane has a very low subscription base to concerts – 1.3 per

1,000 people, compared with 5.8 in Sydney and Melbourne, and 9.7 per 1,000 in

Hobart.11 This low support in Brisbane seems to follow the rule, observable in several countries, that the warmer the winters the less committed a population will be to regular concert-going. So many of Brisbane’s arts supporters, in fact, retreat to the coast for the weekend, and, as they age, for the long weekend or the full week. This means that for the real cost of a Tasmanian or Queensland concert seat in 2002-3 of around Aus$300, governments were contributing around $225, compared with an average ticket price of around $32.

Behind this comparative circumstance of the states of Queensland and Tasmania lies the revelation that so much of Australia’s cultural life is not nationally or state-based,

11 See A New Era, Chapter 2, “A Sector Under Pressure”, pp. 27-37. 7 but rather, city-based.12 Being a federation of states, many cultural functions find their point of focus within the state capitals, a focus that is reinforced by the six state capitals being, in each case, the largest city in their state. This is unlike the circumstance in many other countries, such as the United States and Argentina, where state capitals are often deliberately not the state’s metropolis, and, so, leading to a greater diffusion of cultural infrastructure. Over the last century Australia has over-concentrated its cultural icons in the state capitals, with a seeming ration of one professional symphony orchestra, one major museum, one state art gallery and a state library, as well. The situation with dance and drama loosely follows this trend, although is somewhat less uniform. One consequence is that Australia only built its national museum a century after federation, and still lacks a national performing-arts centre or a national symphony orchestra, despite former Prime Minister Paul Keating’s desire in the Creative Nation blueprint of 1994 that the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, in return for increased

Australian Government support, would “tour throughout Australia, become a major cultural export and strengthen its program of international recording”.13 The Sydney

Symphony Orchestra took the extra money, but failed to tour much beyond the confines of its state of New South Wales, as it would have impinged upon the turf of the other state orchestras.

An equal consequence of the cultural concentration in the six state capital cities has been a lack of professional cultural engagement at the regional level. Large regional cities such as Newcastle, Wollongong, Cairns, Townsville and the Gold Coast struggle to provide regular access to “high, and highly government-subsidized, culture.

12 A US study of 2002 found in a survey of audiences of fifteen US orchestras that audience members were disinclined to travel more than forty kilometers to attend a concert (“How Americans relate Classical Music and their Local Orchestras”, Classical Music Consumer Segmentation Study, 2002, www.knightfdn.org). Australian orchestral audiences are probably not dissimilar. 13 Creative Nation: Commonwealth Cultural Policy, 1994, p. 27, www.nla.gov.au/creative.nation/contents.html. 8

They are often dependent upon spasmodic touring of the state icons, or, increasingly, of entrepreneurial private organizations. In this regard, the guiding political principles of

“equalization of services” and “citizen entitlement” – frequently invoked, for instance, in provision of utilities or telecommunications – does not extend to high culture. Certainly, the costs involved in maintaining professional performing arts ensembles beyond the six state capitals would be very high, yet the question is frequently asked why Canberra (the national capital) and Newcastle and the Gold Coast, with considerably larger populations than Hobart (the smallest of the state capitals), gain scant access to professional orchestral, and other arts, services despite having otherwise equally vibrant musical communities.

One surprising circumstance, given the metropolitan civic base of “high” culture in Australia, is the formula for public support for the cultural bodies located almost invariably in these state capitals. For the major Australian performing arts bodies the formula of eighty per cent funding from Federal Government sources and twenty per cent funding from state funding is curious.14 Yet, the consumption of this culture is regularly not at the national, and infrequently at the state, level, but, rather, at the city level. In Canada, for instance, orchestral funding has followed a formula of forty per cent national, forty per cent provincial and twenty per cent city, in recognition of the composition of that audience that most benefits from these orchestral performances, and also reinforces stronger touring obligations within the state.15 In the United States, where the lack of strong national and often state funding is characteristic, the civic function is heightened, but extends well beyond city government to the obligation of sponsorship by local corporations and the obligation of individual citizen donation. This

14 Note some minor level of city council funding in at least two Australian states. 15 See, for instance, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, www.edmontonsymphony.com/contents.asp. 9 principle of “citizen obligation” is the opposite of the principle of “citizen entitlement” found in higher-taxed countries.

Breaking away from this state-capital fixation, and taking advantage of new economies in transportation and telecommunications, several nationally-focused smaller professional orchestras have emerged in recent decades, with regular, sometimes grueling, national touring programs. In each case they have been driven by talented and charismatic directors: the Australian Chamber Orchestra, directed by ; the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, directed by Paul Dyer; and the Australian Art

Orchestra, directed by Paul Grabowsky. Are they the model of the future? In a 2005 paper entitled “The Orchestras We Need”, I observed that these orchestras gain only small contributions of government funding, yet support impressive audience bases. I suggested that “no longer, in the public consciousness, is the orchestra necessarily something fixed in one city, as a civic function. The counter-images of the musician as wanderer, and the orchestra as responsive, entrepreneurial, “creative class”, traveling outfit, are now also strongly before the public imagination.”16

As Sydney and Buenos Aires house the Southern Hemisphere’s leading opera houses, it is interesting to observe that the critical mass of local population needed to sustain a year-round professional opera company, even with high levels of public subsidy, appears in Australia to lie between three and four million people. That is, while almost all Australian states have local opera companies that stage short runs of at least three to five productions annually, only Sydney, the home of Opera Australia, is able to sustain a near-to-continuous cycle of productions. Melbourne, once the proud home of the State Opera,17 has for the last decade struggled to reestablish a viable

16 Malcolm Gillies, “The Orchestras We Need”, The Music Forum, vol. 12 no. 1 (2005/6), pp. 42-7 (pp. 42- 3), www.mca.org.au/index. 17 The Victoria State Opera failed financially in 1996 and was merged with the Australian Opera, to become Opera Australia. 10 successor body, although receives two short seasons annually from Opera Australia.

Access to performances of Australia’s only flagship company, Opera Australia has, then, become an entitlement only of citizens in the two largest Australian states, New South

Wales and Victoria. Opera Australia’s “education and access arm”, OzOpera, does, however periodically travel to other states and territories.18

Another tension in the nation-state-regional-metropolis cultural debate concerns the distribution of public support for different types, and different purposes, of cultural production. I take music, again, as an example. The Australian Government spends around $50 million per annum to support orchestras – mainly professional orchestras -- yet around $4 million for the small-to-medium sector of some forty mainly professional musical ensembles, and even less than that on community music activity. By small-to- medium I mean ensembles, often of chamber size, that often explore more niche-based and “cutting-edge” interests: contemporary art music, a cappella choral music, medieval performance, or youth music. By community arts I refer to activities, sometimes of less than professional standard, that often through audience participation foster a sense of citizen inclusiveness and belonging, and encourage cross-cultural dialogue.19 Although state governments, and some local governments, do contribute also to support each of these levels of cultural involvement, the lack of serious emphasis upon community engagement is noteworthy. In a parting comment as CEO of the Australia Council for the Arts last September, Ms Jennifer Bott had this to say:

. . . the reality is that most Australians connect primarily at the local level, but with

new definitions of what community means. We’re all Australians – but reality tells

us that first and foremost we’re part of that Australia we experience on a regular

basis. The [Australia] Council’s Creative Communities Strategy is built on that

18 See www.opera-australia.org.au 19 See, for instance, Australia Council, Community Partnerships Scoping Study: Creative Communities (Sydney: Australia Council for the Arts, 2006), p. 3, www.ozco.gov.au/artsresources/publications. 11

reality . . . we need to put culture not at the end of the value chain, tacked on ‘if

and when’ funds are available, but right at the start – and the heart – of

community building and engagement, where it belongs.”20

It is, also, at the community level (Bott’s “Australia that we experience on a regular basis”) – whether in the metropolis, the country town, or even a virtual web-community – that the role of cultural participation in identity-building and building of social trust comes to the fore. The Australian Social Attitudes Survey of 2003 found that cultural participation was relatively weak in Australia – only ten per cent of the four thousand people contributing to this survey were participating in “art, music and education voluntary community groups”, as against 45 per cent belonging to some kind of sporting or recreational group. More also were involved in financial cooperatives, religious groups, neighbourhood groups, unions, professional societies and special-needs groups, than with cultural or educational groups.21 What was more worrying was that that ten per cent participating in cultural groups were among the most untrusting of broader society.

I now turn to the question of important recent changes in Australian, and international, thinking about the context of the creative arts and culture. Those changes could be summarized as a nesting of the creative arts (consisting of visual and performing arts), within the cultural industries, and those cultural industries within the broader field of creative industries.22 The workers of the creative industries – artists,

20 Jennifer Bott, “The Australia Council: A CEO’s Reflections”, Pacific Edge Regional Arts Conference, Mackay, 15 September 2006, www.ozco.gov.au/news_and_hot_topics/speeches/ceo_reflections. 21 See Clive Bean, “Is there a Crisis of Trust in Australia?” in Australian Social Attitudes, ed. Shaun Wilson et al, pp. 122-38 (p. 138). 22 A useful distinction is found in Understanding Creative Industries: Cultural Statistics for Public-Policy Making (UNESCO, Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity, 2006): “cultural industries refers to industries which combine the creation, production and commercialization of creative contents which are intangible and cultural in nature. The contents are typically protected by copyright and they can take the form of a good or a service. . . . The term creative industries encompasses a broader range of activities which include the cultural industries plus all cultural or artistic production, whether live or produced as an individual unit. 12 , publishers, games and web designers, media and heritage workers – are an important core to Richard Florida’s even broader conception of the “creative class” – artists, scientists, teachers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, most professionals. 23 Florida refers to that 20 to 30 per cent of the workforce of most advanced economies whose daily job is to be creative rather than to carry out routine clerical or manual work. In Florida’s thesis, these creative-class people choose to cluster together in cities that make them feel comfortable and that feed their sense of creativity. San Francisco, Austin and

Boston are some of his leading American examples. One of his key markers for that creative ambience is live music, whether classical, jazz or rock. This new-millennium thinking about creativity has made the distinctions between “high” and “low” culture depicted by Barry Humphries’ personalities of “Dame Edna Everage” and ”Sir Les

Patterson” increasingly an anachronism of past ages. These several broader contexts for the creative arts, intimately connected with radically enhanced mobility and communications access, have also started to undermine sacred distinctions of the geography of culture, through their recognition of the increasing pan-national production and consumption of culture, particularly through the internet, and simultaneously recognizing the growing importance of “creative cities” as magnets for creative people.

While traditional creative arts, and to some degree the cultural industries, have often been seen as primarily preservational of historical, national or ethnic values, and so often antithetical to mass culture or even seeking to ameloriate it, the creative industries simply embrace that mass culture as and where it is found. The “creative class” is increasingly part of that mass culture, not opposed to it, aside from it, or above it. In fact, it directs it. John Hartley, who established the Queensland University of

Technology’s Faculty of Creative Industries, in his book Creative Industries refers to “the

The creative industries are those in which the product or service contains a substantial element of artistic or creative endeavour and include activities such as architecture and advertising.” 23 Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2002). 13 noisy revolution that is transforming the production, consumption and understanding of culture in the all-wired era”.24 Placed within this vibrant, rapidly growing context of the creative industries, Australian “high” arts, and more generally, Australian arts and culture, are finding greater kinship with the broader population, and are learning, like our universities, to be a part of that mass community rather than to seek to survive apart from it, or to deny its importance.

The different concerns of cultural and creative industries within contemporary

Australia were sharpened by two 2006 volumes in Currency Press’s series of Platform

Papers. In his volume, Does Australia Need a Cultural Policy?, David Throsby related cultural policy most intimately to national identity building, and challenged Prime Minister

Howard’s view that “as a nation we’re over all that identity stuff . . . we know who we are”.25 Throsby doubted that we do. Stuart Cunningham in What Price a Creative

Economy? countered that “a creative economy is about much more than culture and the arts”, and questions of national identity might no longer be so important.

[The category of creative industries] embraces the nation’s great writers,

filmmakers and artists, but it's equally about the interaction designers who have

contributed to the revolution in banking and finance, the technical writers who

help make our export industry strong, and the legions of amateur bloggers and

animators who are triggering the explosion of digital content. What sets creative

industries apart in the economy is the fact that “creativity” is their primary source

of value, something that is increasingly recognised as important for growth in

contemporary knowledge-based societies. It’s time to rethink the view that

creativity is a cost to the economy and pursue instead the sector’s economic

24 (Malden, MA: Blackwell: 2005). 25 See “Platform Papers: Does Australia Need a Cultural Policy?”, www.currencyhouse.org.au/pages/pp_issue_07.html 14

potential, making the creative industries the “sparkplugs” of next-generation,

post-industrial growth.26

This direction of Cunningham’s thinking is backed up by an Australian Productivity

Commission report on Public Support for Science and Innovation, issued in March 2007.

That report recognized the importance of creativity and activities of primarily social or environmental benefit to innovation and, thereby, to the well-being of the nation, a recognition that then plays into the report’s reconsideration of the meaning and ambit of innovation. This report reversed decades of thinking about innovation as a concern only of science and technology, by widening the definition of its own terms of reference between draft and final report stages.27 It commented: “The Commission shares the view . . . that research in these areas [humanities, arts, social sciences] is critical to innovation. It plays an important role in many government activities and in those instances it is routinely funded by government. It is also increasingly important in business as the service sector expands and as less technological activities play a greater role in innovation generally.”28

Given the opportunities of these nested conceptions of creative arts, cultural industries and creative industries, Cunningham commented to the press specifically about the cultural sector: “The arts and cultural sector per se is never going to be able to justify itself on its economic returns alone, but the creative economy can and should.

People within the arts would do well to think about ourselves as part of that broader

26 “Platform Papers: What Price a Creative Economy?” www.currencyhouse.org.au/pages/pp_issue_09.html 27 Productivity Commission, Public Support for Science and Innovation, Research Report (Canberra: Productivity Commission, 2007), p. 5. 28 Productivity Commission, Public Support, p. 387. 15 range of activity because we are.”29 Far from the nineteenth-century image of the “art for art’s sake”, aloof artist, appearing even disdainfully before a passive and appreciative audience, the twenty-first century creative industries agenda places the key figures of

Australian culture firmly within a do-it-yourself, web-connected world of mass engagement and “creative class” participation. They are unapologetic members of an industry adding value, albeit sometimes less tangibly, to the society that it serves.30

29 Stuart Cunningham, “Creative Economy a Viable Argument for Government Support” The Australian, 20 July 2006. 30 Writing in 2005, Cunningham commented that the value of the creative industries is hard to estimate – “the tip of a large iceberg of statistical imponderability” – but claims their contribution to the Australian economy at between Aus$19 and Aus$25 billion a year. He points out that this is the same value as one of the key barometers of the Australian economy, the residential construction industry. (“Match Seller or Sparkplug? The Human Sciences and Business”, in Business-Higher Education Round Table News, 22 (2005), pp. 8-10.)