NAVA hosted five 1-hour Zoom workshops to amplify the voices of the visual arts, craft and design sector to the Australian Government’s National Cultural Policy consultation, 2 - 4 August 2022. Each workshop was focussed on one of the five pillars of the government’s consultation framework.
First Nations: recognising and respecting the crucial place of these stories at the centre of our arts and culture.
Tuesday 2 August 2022
This session was facilitated by Clothilde Bullen, Wardandi (Nyoongar) and Badimaya (Yamatji), Chair of the NAVA Board and Head of Indigenous Programs/Curator at The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA). Clothilde facilitated as a guest on Wadjuk country, and pays respects to her ancestors and those in Boorloo WA, and all of the ancestral people from the countries on which all attendees joined.
National Cultural Policy is being developed this year. A short period of consultation is currently open until 22 August, and it is critical to amplify First Nations voices. Working with strategy and policy is fundamental to enacting structural change.
NAVA strongly encourages everyone in the visual arts, craft and design sector to draw on the recommendations below as a starting point for your own submission. We need to come out in numbers to ensure our ideas and recommendations for arts policy are loud and clear.
First Nations Employment
A lack of Aboriginal arts workers in these spaces means we don’t have control over our own spaces, destinies and economies.
There is an urgent need for middle tier development in arts centres. We need to strengthen employment opportunities and develop consistent training in order to built the capability of people filling these roles. Access to networking, peer-to-peer learning, as well as the development of curatorial thinking, is critical.
While there is an increase in First Nations people in leadership roles and young people upskilling through leadership courses, there is a whole missing tier of qualified First Nations people in the middle. Many small-to-medium visual arts organisations do not employ Aboriginal people and don’t have RAPs (Reconciliation Action Plans) or Aboriginal advisory boards. Of the organisations that have allocated funds for First Nations staff, there isn’t enough people ready to fill these roles. Without First Nations people represented in these spaces and in mid-career roles, First Nations people are misrepresented and have no agency. The middle tier in the small-to-medium arts sector is a fertile ground for development and First Nations practitioners are missing out.
The agency of the Aboriginal arts sector requires strong investment in First Nations mid-career and leadership roles. Investing in First Nations-led institutions, industry centres, and spaces, which provide training and development, will support First Nations people in these roles. Support must also extend to skills training for artists and arts workers to represent First Nations communities on boards and Aboriginal advisory groups.
Many small-to-medium visual arts organisations don’t have a single Aboriginal worker or Aboriginal advisory group. I'd like to see a guiding cultural policy implemented in each state and territory including requirements for cultural competency training to support the employment of Aboriginal people.
Workplaces need to consider and offer more flexible ways of working, including working remotely or offline some of the time. This could help community mob be able to remain on home country wherever that is.
I could sense there's a fear from the gallery's point of view they're going to do something wrong or be offensive and we are not sure what we need to put forward to help guide that as well as the artists.
That was one of the things that that small to medium organisations were asking for, they haven't employed Aboriginal people because they're pretty much terrified of making a mistake and doing the wrong thing, and there are no guidelines to support that, given it's 2022 it's pretty extraordinary that people can't go as a human being I'm going to speak to you about what your needs are when you come in to an organisation, it's a good point and there needs to be some state based guidelines for each one
Policy and protocols, there often isn't enough funding for advisory groups, it's a glaring omission, work done not funded correctly that feeds in to we had a longer discussion about retention strategies in the middle tier and the fact that staff are isolated as the only Indigenous person on staff, longer term strategic around and beyond individual roles so that people in those roles aren't isolated and a single person is making feeling unsafe culturally making decisions for many many people beyond what the scope or burden of that individual role should be so just about the lack of training which many of the other groups have brought up, protocols and policy and wanting to develop the skills in the sector long term by investing in not just the role, but also the infrastructure around the role. Recognising there's no one fit that allowance needs to be made for different unique needs and ways for Aboriginal owned and structured groups to find each other and support each other as well as brother and sister institutional links to other places around the world, it happens now but it's potentially not in such an organised manner and it may be more efficient than starting from scratch each time.
We have so few First Nations people working on council, to try and get that training is important to make a safe place.
Indigenous arts organisations
There is simply a need for an increase in funding. It is well overdue. Art centres are a proven model for success and have demonstrated that they provide numerous benefits to communities in areas of health, wellbeing, income, jobs, training, skills development, age care, youth programs, intergenerational knowledge exchange, access to country, access to technology and essential services - and the list goes on.
Many artists in remote and regional areas operate in different landscapes and contexts to those living in the suburbs and cities. In many areas including urban spaces, there is no central place where Aboriginal people can come together to learn, develop their practice, and showcase their work.
There are no arts centres in New South Wales. We have cultural centres, knowledge centres, language centres, museums, Aboriginal museums, galleries and Keeping Places. Most of them also work with artists, even if they're a museum. Awareness and education on the definition of an art centre is needed, in order for IVAIS funding to reach these organisations. There is a diversity of experience and in the way we are set up across different areas and people need to be mindful of that language.
We need funding for urban artists and the organisations to support them. We need funding to attract, train, pay and retain arts workers. Some organisations, funding bodies and institutions snap up good First Nations workers because they can afford higher wages.
New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT do not get the same deal as Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland.
The First Nations arts scene in Tasmania needs to get the ground support to be able to participate on a national scene.
A lot of First Nations organisations are competing for resources and use of state run spaces. Targeted investment is needed to provide First Nations-led spaces such as arts and cultural centres with facilities and spaces.
Market opportunities within Australia and abroad
New market opportunities for First Nations artists and art centres are more prevalent now than ever before. Channels for online sales have opened opportunities to reach new markets within Australia and abroad. There has been a substantial increase in the amount of First Nations artists work appearing on products. Almost every state and territory has plans to build a First Nations gallery or cultural centre.
However this places significant pressure on organisations that have not seen an increase in core funding to meet the growing demand. Additional funding is required to adequately resource art centres to access and take advantage of these opportunities.
Culturally safe workplaces and spaces
Arts organisations, especially publicly funded institutions, need to have RAPs. Cultural competency training is essential to creating safe space. We need suitable training in workplaces around engaging and listening to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices through truth telling.
We have so few First Nations people working on council, to try and get that training is important to make a safe place.
Cultural competency training is essential to creating safe space, otherwise there is reluctance, especially if working alone.
Education and training
We need training, peer learning and networking to prepare First Nations artists and practitioners when working in the industry. For many people English is a third or fourth language. For some people, they don’t have the writing skills.
Organisations are asking First Nations artists to quote the exact amount of money for an artwork in advance, which is difficult when the process of making an artwork is so free-flowing. It is difficult to price a work before it has been made. There needs to be some form of guideline for bigger businesses and organisations to be able to fall on when it comes to approaching us as artists.
There needs to be more skills training programs to help First Nations people become educators. This will have a big impact in terms of creating culturally safe training and pathways for First Nations practitioners. It will also support cultural competency for non-First Nations entering the industry.
There are few First Nations arts writers, and First Nations art is mostly written about by people without lived or shared experience. Arts writing within the First Nations community should be supported to foster deeper critical engagement with First Nations narratives and storytelling – the gamut of cultural output.
Artist and arts worker training and mentorship pathways. We need training and mentoring pathways from Aboriginal workers.
We have a number of Indigenous artworkers, and we receive funding from IVAIS for training, but difficulty in finding suitable training program that matches with the upskilling needs of the Indigenous staff and arts workers. Principle of training is good, its the delivery of it is where it goes astray. We need an artist/arts worker development program that meets the needs of the arts worker.
Recognising artists as workers
We need to recognise artists as workers. Those in remote communities who are required to participate in the community development program, the CDP, are currently struggling to have their work recognised as artists under the requirements system.
Local Council engagement
Strengthen relationships between local council art departments and First Nations artists. This requires consulting, valuing, engaging and providing opportunities for local First Nations people and art all year round and not to set specific times of the year such as NAIDOC week.
Working with councils, and understanding where the galleries are, where they can put their art. Developing artists in a way because First Nations people are artists that's a part of our culture but they don't sit in the arts space so translating that across for them and developing their art in a way that they don't know what they can or cannot do what's available.
There is a lack of understanding what it is to involve the Indigenous voice.
RAPs
Governments and institutions that are publicly funded need to have RAP plans.
Inconsistent consultation. On projects where there is consultation, there is no guidelines for how much, timelines, consultation rates. Some RAPs are charging huge sums, others less, this will lead to arguments between language groups and commissioning agents and potentially result in legal battles.
Targeted support for engaging vulnerable First Nations people
We have a lot of people in gaols that do beautiful art and some of our places like Bathurst has a gallery at the gaol. When they come out they don't have anywhere to go, there’s no structure or support so they end up back in gaol.
Support for engaging with vulnerable people within the sector for example people in and coming out of incarceration. We need dedicated, specific funding that isn’t taken away, is sequestered just for visual arts.
The torch down in Melbourne is a really good model. They work with people coming out of incarceration and it's amazing https://thetorch.org.au/
Consulting and collaborating with First Nations practitioners
Good consultation processes need appropriate lead time. Whether that's embedding that in our cultural extras with institutions, how we do that for a long lead because that is then going to inform proper truth telling for artists, maintaining the integrity for the artist and story so, strong on the idea that the policy must address the issues of time that we don't necessarily have to capture directly from the artists or the community. There is another way that we can capture consultation processes that hasn't been put in to these pillars - there are other ways that we can embed that and guide those, not just the ones that we do at the moment, there may be other ways so video, capturing for example or oral capturing and things like that.
Arts practice advocating for and pushing money into artists, being able to develop their way that's appropriate for them. Offering opportunities for collaboration between other artists not just Aboriginal, artists who are not Aboriginal in these spaces to develop practice.
Making sure that this process if it is a national process or cultural policy then it's about us then it needs to be about us and so it needs to provide us with the maximum amount of opportunity to participate in the process fully, and also the submissions with regard to those different ways of putting in submissions, such as video, audio, not just relying on the written word.
A good example is that TAFE offer Aboriginal community consult and so they would go out and find out what training they need, go and develop it and then they'd deliver. If we could have something in the arts, a basic initial beginning so you can articulate what it is specifically the information you require. Have that articulated and target that. And then we can take it to the next level. And that begins that tier and you have that people employed in those areas make sure they're professional, make sure they're skilled, and don't put them in places where they're vulnerable.
Youth arts
Youth doesn't have any support in the arts. They have rap songs but they need to have other stuff as well. They have to have cultural learning and behaviour that they need within the arts.
Then there's the wellbeing where grief and loss is a big thing in our community with suicide, we have had terrible losses lately and there's no real look at the ways to do that in an arts sense, that's appropriate to what's happening. We need a plan in place on how we are going to do this. One of the things is having leaders, having that middle tier of First Nations arts workers. We need that army. We need good foot soldiers.
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