Tone Deaf in a Popularity Contest
SMH, News Review, 25-26 Sep
On reading Marcus Westbury’s article Tone Deaf in a popularity contest, I find it hard to swallow all his claims. While I agree whole heartedly that on the whole arts funding in
In the opening paragraphs, Westbury draws attention to the $18.3 million grant Opera Australia received from the Australia Council and the fact that OA is “receiving more than the total split among 781 separate projects”, and writes with disgust at the amount of money given to OA, the state orchestras and other providers of traditional western cultural art forms. This bias which focuses on the monetary value of particular grants ignores the fact that on the Approved Grants list on the Australia Council website for 2010 to date, Opera Australia has received just two of the eight hundred and ninety approved grants, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra has received none.
Westbury also ignores the fact that Cultural institutions such as OA and the SSO do not rely solely on government support. The majority of OA’s income is from ticket sales, which “account for 55% of the company’s income and to ensure its survival, they have to grow by 5% annually”[i] .In fact in 2009, government grants only accounted for 35% of the company’s income. I’m not denying that OA received a large amount of government funding, but the funding they receive should not be viewed out of context. In 2009 the SSO received approximately 40% of its income from Australia Council and Arts NSW grants, the remainder of their income being comprised of ticket sales, sponsorship and donations. It should also be remembered that funding for OA and SSO goes not only to mainstage performances but also to regional and schools tours – tours that generate little immediate income, but widen accessibility, and are of great public and social worth.
I also object to Westbury’ implication that the work of OA and the funding they receive places living artists in second place to dead ones. In Westbury’s defence he acknowledges that supporting OA is worthwhile as the company “employs many talented people … and its practitioners are highly skilled and deserved to be paid”, yet that OA would be put to shame by activities that he and other “unpaid artists put together every day”. Westbury seems to suggest that because he and other artists go unpaid, big companies are being supported while “living artists” aren’t. Westbury seems to forget that the production of opera is more than the recital of a dead composer’s creation. Opera is a hybrid genre which is not merely a showcase of vocal expertise. Any full scale opera production relies on the hard work of many creative individuals with an entire spectrum of skills, not just singers. It is true that the composers and librettists, who give us the written text, may be dead, but it is simply insulting to suggest that financial support for Opera does not value living artists.
Having worked backstage for OA for seven years, I freely admit my own prejudices for the company and the art form. I read Westbury’s article while at work, it was pinned to a notice board in a dressing room. On stage, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro was being sung to a full and responsive audience. Ok Westbury, lets think about this. Mozart is dead. DaPonte is dead. But what about the director, the conductor, the principal artists, the chorus, the orchestra, the designer, the make-up artists, dressers, prop staff, stage managers, set builders, and costume makers who make this production possible. Are we not living artists? And what about Bliss, the new Australian opera by Brett Dean and Amanda Holden, based on the novel by Peter Carey which premiered this year and recently toured to
The lack of arts funding is of course what is really at the heart of Westbury’s article. The fact that he chooses to bemoan the sad state of cultural policy and funding in
[i] Berman, A (2006) The Company We Keep: An Intimate Celebration of Opera
[ii] Keele, K, interviewed by Klaus Krischok, accessed 12th may at http://www.goethe.de/ins/au/lp/ges/pok/en5825007.htm
Hi Rosie,
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to respond and letting me know. I apologise if i come across as "bitter" and writing with "disgust" - it's not my intention or my attitude. I'm just passionate about a lot of artists, projects, and artforms that don't get much of a look in under the current system.
To the substance of your argument...
I disagree that the number of grants is somehow more important than the amount of money. Yes, in the last financial year OA got a much lower number of grants than 800 other companies and projects but its got more money than all those projects combined. Would you swap it? Would you prefer that OA had to apply for every lot of $5 or $10,000 as many other Australian artists and companies do?
You said I ignored the fact that OA does not rely solely on government support but I have explicitly addressed that. I've argued that while OA does generate significant additional revenue, sponsorship and government support that i believe it is proportionately less than many projects that leverage a lot more with a lot less. We would probably need more information to really measure that but i certainly haven't ignored that point.
Your complaint I’m not giving full credit to OA's many living artists is partially true and i will cop that one. I deliberately chose the term to highlight the gap between the many artists creating unfunded original works across all genres and the relative resources that go into the major companies. It's a clumsy comparison but the inescapable fact though is that artists making new and original works in Australia are very heavily disadvantaged by the current system.
Where I really feel the need to stand up for myself is in response to the suggestion that i've crossed the line in arguing the case. I am not slighting the work of Opera companies, the talent of those involved or their dedication but I am only arguing for a different set of priorities.
For comparison I would strongly encourage you to read the recent essay by Richard Mills that was commissioned and published by the Australia Council (see: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/opera/let-us-defend-our-heritage-arts-20100726-10sji.html). In it Mills describes media artists as purveyors of ”meretricious, self-serving claptrap” and suggests that while opera is the domain of the extraordinary that other artfroms “can be done by any reasonably intelligent person with a modicum of application and training.” He gloats about having lobbied the Australia Council for the abolition of its New Media arts board - a decision that put many Australian artists out of a very meagre living and sent many Australian artists into exile overseas.
The problem is not simply that Opera and the major companies get a disproportionate share of the funding but also that their budgets have grown relative to virtually all other Australian artists. Their needs have been looked at in isolation while as Mills points out have been actively lobbying for (and successful in) removal of funding from other. You are right to point out that part of the problem is level of arts funding as a whole but where the pie has been increased in recent years it has largely gone to the top while the bottom has got less and less.
I understand that you have a passionate commitment to the artists that you work with. But many other artists are shut out. We need to bring the pool for many tens of thousands of other artists in Australia to something like parity with what we spend on the Major Performing Arts companies. Surely that's a reasonable argument? I'd be more than happy to discuss with you how that might be achieved in a way that doesn't throw the baby out with bathwater. If you don't think that's reasonable i'd be genuinely interested to hear why the current priorities are right and not simply why we shouldn't talk about it?
Thanks for engaging in the discussion. Perhaps i'll see you at my talk at the FODI at the Opera House next week?
marcus.
The Australia Council is under a lot of pressure to find efficiency gains, ie. cuts to its management costs in relation to its productivity. The Aus Co does not manage the Australian Opera; what the Aus Co is attempting to do is to divert public attention away from the excessive management costs of the programs that it manages to the programs to which it is simply a funding conduit, such as the opera.
ReplyDeleteOf the Aus Co's total budget of approx. $170m, about $70m is effectively managed in-house by the Aus Co itself. For decades there have been serious questions raised about the Aus Co's management of in-house programs and in particular about the Aus Co's propensity for creating devolved phantom sub-organisations to run arts programs, which has had the effect of doubling and tripling the actual management costs of running this system To talk about arts policy objectives, or who or what should not get funding (and that is really what it is always about), without having any idea of what is really going on is utter blind folly, which pretty much sums it up.
The Aus Co has done a very good job of managing the funded arts sector to death. The thought of them getting control over funding for entities like orchestras and operas send a chill up my spine. The main activity of the Aus Co is to impose extra layers of management and redundant regulation costs upon things which already have managements.