The problem & the opportunity…
Australia's arts and cultural sector is not in decline. It is in transition. The organisations, artforms, practices and communities that have built our cultural life over the past fifty years are not disappearing, they are changing form, under pressure and largely without support.
The question is not whether this transition will happen. It is already happening, everywhere, every day- in the boards meeting to discuss impossible choices, in the leaders managing anxiety while presenting confidence, in the communities quietly losing the cultural organisations that have served them for decades, and in the new forms of cultural life struggling to emerge in the constrained spaces those losses create.
The question is whether this transition will happen well or badly. Whether the knowledge embedded in our institutions will be preserved or lost. Whether the community relationships will be honoured or severed. Whether the workers and artists will be supported or abandoned. Whether new forms of cultural life will be able to emerge, or whether the resources, relationships and trust that could support their emergence will dissipate before they can be organised.
None of those questions can be answered by a paper. They are answered - slowly, imperfectly, through accumulated effort - by people in the sector who decide to take them seriously. This paper is offered in the hope of contributing something useful to that effort.