Notes from NAVA Workshop for National Cultural Policy: Reaching the audience

• Extend Visions of Australia, the regional exhibition touring program to include an international touring program for reaching a global audience
• Invest in new funding to support the professional presentation of Australian artists, artworks and exhibitions in the digital space, ensuring artists’ copyright is protected and are paid ongoing publishing fees for their content
• Boost funding to the Community Heritage Grants (CHG) program to properly digitise collections and license images of artwork for sharing on Trove
• Address NBN blackspots
• Re-establish the National Arts and Culture Accord to facilitate cooperation between three levels of government
• Commercial lease subsidies, tax incentives for landlords and planning reform to support pop-up spaces and small galleries for artists to show work and reach new audiences
• Ensuring accessible spaces, culturally safe spaces
• Diversity of workforce 

• Support development, delivery and promotion of arts trails to attract local visitors and tourists
• Arts literacy built in from education.
• Investment in the breadth of practice.

What this particular area asks us is who are the right audiences. I think that is interesting language that they've used. What are the needs of this particular audience. Are our audiences changing and if not what do we need to do to remain relevant in growing audiences for visual art. How are we measuring the impact of our work, both individually and collectively. Are we delivering intrinsic value? Social value in terms of well-being and social connection? Economic benefit in terms of creative economies as well as cultural tourism?  

What are some of the things that we also might want to consider too, is there a lack of infrastructure making arts inaccessible in some municipalities? Lack of public transport as well. Is there gaps in the capabilities in relation to communicating with our audiences in various different languages, are there other access barriers that are in play that we need to break down. 

Equity is central to what we're working towards. It requires an array of transformation of how we program and who we're programming for. Is it that some of the current funding models perhaps also don't support our aspirations in this place. 

Touring is something that was incredibly central to our thinking and it is such a vital part of sharing incredible work across the country and does play a really important role in terms of expanding audiences. We know that the freight costs have created enormous barriers that we will need to be considering. 

What programs could boost visitation, particularly evenings or those sorts of things. Of course, we're mindful that in order to support artists and the practice we're playing a role in engaging new...that definitely helps the liveability for artists in terms of their professional careers. 

We need to make sure that we're all very visible in this process, in terms of advocacy. On my other hat that I wear with the public galleries association. We're certainly in the advocacy space making sure that the impact of the work that we all do together is understood by politicians and the general public nationally. 

Digital

I think we talked mainly about internet access, mentoring and internships, helping people with documentation, ongoing costs of digital services and networking and the roles that government can play across all of those spaces to ensure that these are not just isolated, so that we've got a bit more of an overview. 

The ability to get good internet at a reasonable price in rural and regional Australia is appalling. It's appalling. It's a huge barrier to everybody across all areas of their lives at the moment.

There was an artist I was speaking to recently who was saying he doesn't have commercial representation. He has been having a range of different international opportunities simply through his Instagram account and publishing work through that and curators contacting him directly via those channels which is fascinating to kind of think that there's - and brilliant that there's market opportunities that just can come through that digital experience. 

During the lockdown, I joined the Board of an ARI in 2020 and we had transferred to be completely digital. Everything was online but what they didn't do was they didn't transfer their exhibitions online or many of them. We made a completely different publication that hosted art videos and writing but we kind of just waited until we opened up to have exhibitions. We tried to be as intentional as possible. The funding stream has to accommodate for the cost of digital. Developers are super expensive. We're upskilling artists and curators to make those changes themselves. That will probably be needed at some point. That's what we ran into.

I was in a curatorial digital residency over the lockdowns. One of the issues we had was how do we do our lockdowns because we can't travel anymore. Something we thought of was what if this is permanent, how can we do this. One thing we thought of was is it possible to start setting up proxy systems. If you have a curatorial team that maybe the production area and happening and one where the country is happening. That relationship needs to be fostered. You are essentially working with two curatorial teams when you're trying to execute this and how can we do it with the artist. We were thinking of that as a way of working that might have to be adopted because you can't put every single artwork on the digital sphere. Like you said, tactile artworks, cultural artworks. Maybe doing more development programs like that was something we were thinking of.  

Especially for artists living in regional areas and also artists like myself where I can't access any support in terms of Centrelink. As a sole trader as well. There's a lack of opportunities, in terms of digital. Although I'm confident of using a digital space there's costs involved in trying to connect. Especially if you're trying to design your own things as an artist to sell your work online. There's a cost involved as well. At the moment my website costs me $300 a year to maintain it.

There's been years of funding - tiny amounts of funding for the cultural heritage grants scheme to digitise collections. Many of those collections have just gone from slide projectors to a hard drive. Never Troved. A lot of material goes to the tip in the end because you've got your 60-year-old volunteer finally packs it in. We need to use what we've got and we need to do it better. The parliamentary inquiry into the collection of institutions said they're not collaborating. We need leadership. We need research and we need teamwork. We need it in place. In regional areas. In cities. We need to start plugging into one another more effectively.

We also need the national library model to back off from the increased charges that they have instituted more recently in terms of putting things up on trove and in terms of their cataloguing because that makes it prohibitive for small institutions as it makes it prohibitive for libraries. We're currently going through a negotiation with them for their cataloguing service for public libraries across regional NSW because the change in their costing just reduces the availability of the service to regional places.

It's also impossible or very pricey. It locks out artists, independent virtual artist run initiatives from using that content. We're essentially locking up ourselves and tripping over ourselves.

We were advancing the digital realm, so quite specific in that digital space. 

We talked about internet access and NBN experience and how that needs to be at the forefront of everyone's mind because it's just not equitable across Australia. 

So we really need to be making sure that that is an equity issue that people take notice of because - especially given COVID we've moved so much to the digital realm. We really need to be making sure that people have access to good digital internet servers basically. That's a really big one obviously for the digital. 

So immunocompromised people who need to have curatorial access to digital processes. It's that idea that perhaps we need to find ways that people can exhibit in person but also online or just online in a way that is accessible and equitable and matches people's digital skills as well. There also needs to be some consideration of costs in that sphere. So the ongoing costs of running a website, the skills that you need to run a website and the costs involved in producing professional photography and engaging people to help with that, like programming costs are enormous. Like to get a programmer to help you with your website, that's a really big cost. That needs to be considered. 

The big challenge for us and it's something that I'd love NAVA to help with is once you're publishing work into the digital domain that the artists, the structures need to change because it's not - we were looking at originally workshop equivalent commissioning things where we'd be asking an artist to develop some sort of activity, perhaps to be published. But yet it lives on. It's a publishing - it's a whole - it's not just a three-hour durational experience that happens. It's the artist's intellectual property that gets published. The organisation gets benefitted. The artists need to be remunerated in that regard. 

The third one we talked about was networking. We talked about how residencies might be developed. They could also be digital residencies. How groups can be established so people again can have access to talk to like-minded people. Build confidence. Again there's a COVID isolation element there where people maybe can't still - there needs to be a recognition COVID is not over for everyone and we still need to be working on the digital networking processes so people feel supported. Equity in the digital sphere. Including artists being paid for their work in a digital capacity including ongoing publishing fees for their content. That needs to be recognised and it's not a one-off project. It's an ongoing project especially when people are putting that out into the internet. The organisation is benefitting from it but the artist isn't getting remunerated. That's a really important factor in the digital space as well. 

 

Mentorships

From a mentoring space, again, mentoring people out of - from uni or their studies and mentoring through life is so important in all sorts of areas including the digital space. You might be skilled but then you get left behind so quickly because you have to be upskilling all the time.

Mentorship programs need to be longer. Changing the way we look at that too. They need to be paid. Mentoring is so important when artists are working alone and forming.

 

Documentation

Even skills around really good documentation and work that is really quite complex to be presenting. It's half the time about the quality of production that you're able to achieve and - yeah. That's expensive and not always easy to access.

You need a professional photographer to photograph your own work if you don't know how to use the tools. You need someone to do it for you

Three tiers of government

The national accord from 2013. That was from the last cultural policy. They talked about an accord between state, local and federal government. That being part of people's submission is important as well. There was agreement across the governments so that there can be a better network. So the national accord from 2013.

It used to be the cultural minister's council that would come together and it's gone.

We need a national accord or whatever so there is that consultation across the three layers of government. Specifically we have state-based organisation. We have big organisations, national organisations but - we have lots of state organisations and lots of those regional spaces that are run by local councils. It's quite a bureaucratic model really. It's really interesting to think about how they don't work together and how possibly they should.

We talked about an across government accord in the 2013 policy documents. That was agreement across federal, state and local government areas. So that there is a recognition that all three areas of those governmental processes can create barriers and so we need to make sure that those barriers are removed as much as we can and rather than working in silos. I think that's especially for some of the other stuff we've talked about. That is about big organisations, regional organisations, regional organisations are really funded by local councils and local government. We need to make sure local governments have that broad understanding of how state and federal funding works and perhaps that's about putting arts officers across - like in the country or RADO, the regional development model, expanding that. 

The national accord, I think, it's interesting that there was lots of conversations where we were talking about the local government context. 

Arts infrastructure require those sorts of things that perhaps don't sit neatly within a national policy but national policy if there is really good advocacy and a great collaboration between tiers of government allows for much better on the ground impact for those sorts of grass roots initiatives as well so thank you. 

Local

Local government has a role to play in terms of arts networks within each region and facilitating that kind of thing and from a national level I think that there needs to be better connection with all tiers of government to be able to support these sorts of national initiatives. You should be supported to be able to make those networks with artists in the community.

Support for artists and arts on a local level. Small galleries, artist run initiatives and pop ups and also as an idea using empty shops maybe for short-term artist spaces. Peppercorn rents and I made the comment that had worked very successfully for a long time in Newcastle and also in inner Sydney and other places. 

Small art fairs for emerging artists where they can show case their work to help them develop a career. 

Community development and councils can be focusing on enabling these sorts of initiatives in their local areas. Promoting artists in local areas. 

There was a suggestion which I think was really good of having arts trails which would be promoted internationally so that visitors and tourists as well as visitors from around Australia and locals in the area, most important, can walk on the art trails, discover their local artists and get a sense of community pride really and ownership of the works of the artists in their communities they can talk about with others and which can become well-known. That can just happen all over the place in any areas really. In urban, regional and in the country. That was a very good idea. 

Also supports for migrants and groups of people from refugee backgrounds, individuals and families that councils could be specifically reaching out and providing opportunities for those groups to ensure that they are able to participate in this kind of local arts practice as well. I would say very important to be doing that specifically and also to ensure that that's not just sort of - that that's part of the wider art culture in Australia. There should be higher standards for how that's done within a council setting. Higher standards expected. And also suggested engaging specifically with young people, especially from - or especially important in relation to migrant groups, refugee groups, maybe a family, refugee family, where it tends to be the younger people who communicate more with the wider culture rather than the older ones. So it's very important to have the engagement with young people in that particular demographic, if you like, but also in general to really focus a lot more on young people and involve them in all these ways of participating in the art world and developing their own practice. 

Markets

As an emerging artist hasn't always felt comfortable with the concept of exhibiting galleries but there's an opportunity in markets which could also be focused on a bit more to make that more known about and to maybe have more markets so that young people - people of all ages can use markets as a way of reaching audiences.

Life long learning and supporting people that are a little bit out of the sphere of the arts world because I'm a bit of a bridge to that world and I'm helping and doing marketing and market stuff, I wouldn't say it's a pop up market, but like a little market in a hall. Sometimes people don't feel safe being advertised and marketed as living with disability and that's why we tend to do it ourselves because we don't want to put ourselves in danger because to be honest some people, especially in the digital world, tend to come and, like, maybe a bit of trouble when it comes to us. We definitely need to find the niche market for specifically people that want to create art in the digital sphere but also in the physical sphere and the art realm in galleries and everything. 

So we were focusing a little bit on developing markets and the...geographic divide. There were lots. I found it a little bit hard to summarise. I might get my group to jump in if they feel I have missed anything. One of the biggest things that came through I thought was this, a sense of digital... and capability gaps between organisations as far as transforming and pivoting to digital platforms and having access to those digital platforms but also being able to be accessible to audiences and there's a real need for practical training and resourcing for organisations to be equitable in that sense. 

Promotion

Educating the public about where to access art, particularly by emerging artists. It seems the focus is obviously on emerging artists and young artists coming up who at the moment aren't really getting very many opportunities at all to have their work seen. It's not really been promoted. On a local level of small artists, regional and in urban areas there isn't very much support at all. So that's what was coming up over and over about promoting local galleries, very, very small scale and also small scale artist publications, initiatives and work. 

Artists start their own publications and have ways they can be supported because they're very important. They do reach an international audience as well. I also published international artists alongside Australian. So that's something which one person can do but at the moment not really known about or supported. 

 

Funding

Another thing is that our current funding models aren't structured effectively, particularly when we look at regional funding and how it's divided by state and that acts as a barrier for connection essentially and emphasises geographic divide and also organisations which support touring models and residencies which enable deeper community engagement and connection and place-based creation aren't funded very well. 

Transparency around that funding as well.

You can see on the arts website who has been funded like the... it's all international. Nothing going from Australia out. So I think those old funding models need to be relooked at. I think we need to be careful about asking for more money in this context. I think what we need to focus on is doing what we do better in a more coordinated and connected way. 

Building audiences is all about creating connections and community. It's telling stories. So making sure that organisations are funded for documenting and sharing the process, as well as the outcomes. Building audience is creating communities and we do that by sharing stories and building new connections. I would just emphasise a need to fund and resource the process and not just - for artists and writers, as well as for audience.

Collections

The need to free up art collections so that they can actually be accessed and used, rather than style load. 

 

Efficiency dividends

When the federal and state governments start to demand dividends which basically are cuts in costs and asks these institutions that are really holding the public memory to make it a more exigent fee for service that's stopping that access. It's dire for somebody in a city but it's even more dire for somebody regionally where - the town I work is in 100 kilometres from another major town

Visions of Australia

Extending Visions, the regional exhibition touring program to become Global Visions so that there is more opportunities for the small to medium sector to get exhibitions out into the international realm so that digital artists - a diverse range of digital artists are being acknowledged and seen by international audiences.

We need fund to both bring artists in and take artists and curators out to global audiences. The pandemic increased isolation - Australia is so separate from rest of the world and the international stage is an important one.