AMPAG in the Media

No national vision yet but $64m for arts, museums

Thu, 10 May 2012 01:44:00 GMT

The arts sector has welcomed new initiatives worth $64.1 million in the federal budget while it waits for the National Cultural Policy to materialise.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/no-national-vision-yet-but-64m-for-arts-museums/story-e6frg6nf-1226351407286

Big ideas at heart of future of performing arts

Thu, 10 May 2012 01:51:00 GMT

From screen to stage, Bethwyn Serow's love of the arts began at an early age.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/big-ideas-at-heart-of-future-of-performing-arts-20120430-1xv0b.html

ABC's Artscape discusses the National Cultural Policy

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 01:09:00 GMT

The ABC program, Artscape, discusses the proposed National Cultural Policy with a panel of experts:
Professor David Throsby, cultural economist

Clare Bowditch, ARIA award winning musician and board member of Music Victoria
Marcus Westbury, festival director and writer
Wesley Enoch, award winning playwright and Artistic Director of Queensland Theatre Company
Sue Cato, media consultant and member of several arts boards.

In the audience were the Minister for the Arts, the Hon. Simon Crean, as well as artists, musicians, broadcasters, philanthropists, arts administrators, including Sue Donnelly, Executive Director of AMPAG. She discussed the contribution of the private sector to the performing arts sector, and explained what the private sector is looking for in a National Cultural Policy. She can be viewed at 37:25 - http://www.abc.net.au/arts/video/tv_program/ARTSCAPE.htm#videoTop

Cast culture: Promises are made to be kept, says Crean

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 02:13:00 GMT

Times are tough, but the government is mindful that a national cultural policy is a commitment it is yet to honour, Arts Minister Simon Crean tells Brook Turner. After all, it’s ‘part of the Labor narrative’.

Despite tough budget conditions, Arts Minister Simon Crean has reaffirmed his determination to deliver on the government’s long-promised national cultural policy.

The Gillard government regards the policy as a 2007 election commitment on which it has not delivered, Mr Crean told The Australian Financial Review recently.

That is why the PM asked him to take arts in addition to the critical regional portfolio after the 2010 election, he said. And why Julia Gillard remained mindful of the policy even in the midst of a tough expenditure review committee process, revealed this week to include the first mini-budget in two decades.

The Prime Minister had not taken “much convincing” of the cultural policy’s importance, Mr Crean said.

“She knew this was an election commitment that we hadn’t delivered on and we needed to. I said I’d more than happily do it but we’ve had to be serious about the proper development of the policy … the government has never said ‘well, we just said we’d have a cultural policy and didn’t mean it’. If we say it, we intend to do it.”

The discussion paper released in August received 450 formal submissions and more than 2000 individual online submissions. The policy will now go to a reference group “to help us distil it, so that I’ve got a point of reference that’s outside the department and outside the specifics of simply trying to interpret each submission”, he said.

“We have to develop the policy framework, we have to consider what the options are that are worth pursuing, we’ve got to get a narrative around it, and we’ve got to go into the budget process, which won’t start until next year.”

That discussion paper highlighted economic and social dividends delivered by the arts in terms of other government imperatives in education, employment, regional development and innovation. That emphasis was widely seen as suggesting that any package would be funded in whole or part by tapping other portfolios and initiatives, including the national broadband network.

Or, in the case of the Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and the Arts himself, other parts of a portfolio that also includes the $1 billon regional developments fund promised to the independents for their support.

While the budgetary environment had made it harder to argue the case for extra funds, for Mr Crean “the more you keep saying there are ways to do this by joining the dots, the more you can look at ways in which other bits, other programs can be linked . . . you have to build a constituency that advocates for it.”
That constituency included his predecessor as arts minister, School Education Minister Peter Garrett, and Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, he said.
“Stephen Conroy gets it in terms of [the national broadband network] and Kim Carr in terms of capability building and design for industry . . . they understand the significance of it.”

How much then might the policy end up looking like an education, training and technology policy? “I think that’s got to be an important part of it, but it’s not the sum of it,” Mr Crean said.

He also cited approvingly both Opera Australia’s move to tap new audiences through its Opera on Sydney Harbour initiative and Renew Australia founder Marcus Westbury’s work in revitalising Newcastle – a concept that subsequently spread from Adelaide to Parramatta and Geelong – by moving artists and cultural projects into vacant buildings.

As for why a major cultural policy is necessary: “It’s Labor reclaiming the brand. We are the party for the regions . . . and Labor has the heritage in terms of the arts . . . it’s part of the Labor narrative that we’ve . . . let slip,” Mr Crean said, referring to the establishment of the Australia Council for the Arts under Gough Whitlam’s government, in which Mr Crean’s father served in cabinet, as he himself had when Paul Keating released his 1994 Creative Nation statement, the last national cultural policy.

“But I learnt this [as trade minister]: a brand will only work if it reminds you of a truth,” Mr Crean said. “This is a truth that we can remind people of, but only if we put substance to it.”

And despite the tough fiscal regime, those who have contributed to the process are sanguine, not least because the policy is the only pool of potential additional government funds at a time of state government parsimony, they say.

“Simon Crean is a senior minister, he has the respect of cabinet, he took on the portfolio at the behest of the Prime Minister and he had an inter-governmental working party working on the policy, which kind of explains why it reads as if it’s been written by a committee,” said Susan Donnelly, executive director of the Australian Major Performing Arts Group, the peak body for the country’s 28 opera, theatre and dance companies.

“On the basis of all that, even if hard times – and Australia really isn’t in as much trouble as other countries – he would expect to have the backing of cabinet,” she said. “What is interesting is that it has been quite a unifying process already. I have been having lots of conversations with people that you wouldn’t normally have conversations with.”

As for the government’s arts funding agency, the Australia Council and the Australia Business Arts Foundation, the latter was also part of the Harold Mitchell review into arts philanthropy, while some of the submissions received had been critical of the AC, he said.

“I don’t have any firm views, bud I do believe we have to have the institutions and the bodies that are not just supportive of but creative in driving where we want to go.”

Brook Turner
Australian Financial Review
Thursday 17 November 2011

An important preamble

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 23:27:00 GMT

Recently, the Office for the Arts launched a discussion paper for the development of a new National Cultural Policy:

Consultation began on a National Cultural Policy in 2009, and has involved the arts and culture sector, creative industries, the public at large and government. This has informed the development of this discussion paper, which outlines goals and strategies for the new National Cultural Policy.

What do you think about the goals and strategies in the discussion paper?

This is the preamble I wrote to the Australian Theatre Forum Open Space National Cultural Policy Group submission.

It’s often said that language – the urge to communicate – is the defining aspect of our humanity. The evolution of language in our species around a million years ago paved the way for the complex societies and cultures in which we now live. As deep as the desire to communicate is the urge to make, which can be seen in every culture and in every child. Human beings are, by definition, communicators and makers. It is an inalienable right of our biological heritage, and the basis of every culture on earth.

The arts are a lynchpin of our culture, but they are not the whole of it: they are one aspect of the continually changing and endlessly diverse network of ideas, actions and values which make up our personal and national identities and our culture. Culture is not only a defining aspect of our humanity: it is the lifeblood of any notion of citizenship. As countless thinkers have noted, access to culture is the basis of any healthy democracy.

Art is the specialised act of making, developed over thousands of years in every culture on earth. The arts reflect our innate inventiveness, our imagination. They express the conflicts and harmonies, the dreams and desires and fears, of our social and individual lives. The arts belong to everyone: the ability to respond, to be moved, to be empowered, to be excited, to speak and to make is not the privilege of the few, but the birthright of the many.

Theatre, as a collective activity which incorporates individual visions, can be seen as a microcosm of culture. Every act of theatre is in some sense utopian: a group of people come together to imagine a different reality, and work together to communicate that reality to others. Others come to witness this act of making: not to be passive consumers, but to participate in an experience. The experience ripples out through the responses of the audience and, through them, into the wider culture. Sometimes it literally changes lives.

Most Australians understand theatre through main stage and commercial productions, but contemporary Australian theatre, especially among the independent companies that constitute its best practice, reaches much more deeply into the community and has developed an enviable international reputation. Contemporary Australian theatre intersects actively with local and global culture at all levels of society, adapting international influences to fit regional experiences, finding new ways to galvanise collective imagination. The theatre community has skills and visions that can be applied far beyond its present reach, and represents the best impulses of Australian innovation in thought, practice and technology.

A National Cultural Policy must recognise the complexity, depth and diversity of Australian culture. It must emphasise the right of every Australian to have access to his or her culture, to exercise his or her birthright to make and to speak. It must identify the barriers of class, education, race, place or economic status that impede the exercise of these rights, and seek to dismantle them. It must understand that culture is a living thing, dynamic and continually changing, and seek to be inclusive of all the languages, values and experiences that together constitute Australian culture.

Most of all, a National Cultural Policy must recognise that nurturing our culture is fundamental to nurturing our citizenship, not only of Australia, but of the wider world in which we live. In the 21st century, we are not only citizens of this country, but of the globe. The policy must cultivate practical methods of enriching our collective national imagination, so that each of us will become individually more empowered, more educated and more questioning members of a vital democracy. It must aim to encourage all Australians, individually and as a nation, to attain their true potential: as human beings, as cultural participants, and as citizens of a diverse, dynamic and challenging world.

Alison Croggon

This preamble prefaces the ATFOS submission to the Australian Government’s National Cultural Policy discussion paper.

Commissioned and endorsed by:

Jude Anderson, Artistic Director, Punctum

Stephen Armstrong, Chair of the Theatre Board, Australia Council

Alison Croggon, independent arts journalist

Susan Donnelly, Executive Director, Australian Major Performing Arts Group

Brenna Hobson, General Manager, Belvoir

Chris Kohn, Artistic Director, Arena Theatre Company

Alice Nash, Executive Producer, Back to Back Theatre

Alison Richards, Independent theatre artist and academic

Sonya Suares, General Manager, Red Stitch Actors Theatre

Overland
28 October 2011

Arts eyeing film and TV

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 23:47:00 GMT

Arts companies' digital production plans are both commercial and altruistic.

Local subsidised arts companies led by Opera Australia are on track to try to replicate the successes seen at London's National Theatre and New York's Metropolitan Opera, which have found new income and audiences by recording stage productions for cinema release.

Sue Donnelly, the executive director of the Australian Major Performing Arts Group, which represents all 28 of the major subsidised companies, says it's inevitable these companies will move beyond live presentations and produce works for screen distribution and downloads.

Opera Australia has a commitment to record five of its productions a year for DVD release and in July launched its arrangement with Greater Union cinemas to screen its operas beginning with Rigoletto and The Mikado.

"We want to record our works for altruistic and commercial reasons," says OA chief executive Adrian Collette, arguing that its purpose is to cover - or surpass - costs of a recording (which can be up to $250,000 a shoot) and reach new audiences outside Sydney and Melbourne where it performs.

The prospect of the National Broadband Network (NBN) has also hastened the way arts companies are looking at digital technology - and what better way to use it than to show the works that taxpayers subsidise?

"I would like to see as much produced for screen as on stage in 20 years," says Collette of his company's output. "I would like to think of Opera Australia as a production house making opera to be delivered on many platforms." In addition to its DVD releases and cinema contract, the OA is talking to SBS's pay-per-view arts channel, Stvdio, to produce opera on purpose-built sets for a television audience.

SBS's head of subscription channels, Sandra Bender, says she has $1 million a year to spend on local production and is discussing premiering Opera Australia productions on television that may or may not be produced on stage later.

"Many people don't know how to make great art content for TV. Just recording a live show isn't worth it 80 per cent of the time," says Bender, who is excited by the prospect of producing arts content in partnership with the OA and its artistic director Lyndon Terracini. "The guy's a genius," says Bender. "He thinks outside the box. If he can get a show up that can be shot on set, then it will be a whole other experience than recording a piece on stage."

Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company have also been pursuing the recording of shows for DVD and digital delivery, but have been frustrated by the recording costs, which must come out of existing budgets.

"If you have a super year at the box office then you could manage the costs to film a show which are between $150,000 and $250,000," says MTC general manager Anne Tonks. She agrees that it's a tragedy that last year's hit Richard III starring Ewen Leslie was not filmed and will never be seen again.

But the biggest impediment to filming live shows, as experienced by STC, MTC and Chunky Move, has been securing an agreement with each performer to use their image on screen. While digital delivery of stage shows is in its infancy, no one knows how much money can be made, if any, and how to pay performers.

Simon Whipp, federal secretary of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, argues that each performer has the right to give or withhold consent to having his or her performance recorded, but agrees that there is growing awareness of the importance of digital recording in the live industry. He says an agreement struck with STC this year to record its production of The White Guard for a pilot cinema release in New South Wales last month could act as a framework for dealing with all AMPAG companies.

Raymond Gill

WA Today

September 5, 2011

Convergence Review: regulate today, shape society tomorrow

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:30:00 GMT

We live in an era that favours deregulation, partly as recognition of the rights, authority, and dignity of the individual, and partly as a response to society’s unwillingness to fund regulatory bureaucracy through taxes, writes Dr Vincent O’Donnell, of RMIT university and media policy editor for Screen Hub.

The Convergence Review panel has been on tour and passed through Melbourne on August 9. It’s largely a listening tour and to the panel’s credit, they are doing a lot of listening, though the appeal of the 10th reiteration of commonly recognised and agreed problems seems now to be fading.
Based on reports of the panel’s hearing in other cities, the Melbourne meeting added little.

However, chair of the panel, Glen Boreham, did remark on the number of lawyers in the room. Perhaps Sydneysider Boreham mistook the de rigueur black of Melbourne winter fashion for legal weeds.

The meeting was attended by just over 40 and notable among the organisations angling for a seat at the table, was Free TV Australia and the Eddy-everywhere of media lobbying, Julie Flynn.

An unexpected contribution came from Susan Donnelly, the executive director of the Australian Major Performing Arts Group. For those not up on Australia Council politics, AMPAG was set up by Australia’s 28 largest performing arts companies to ensure their slice of the national arts-funding cake remained very large, though they prefer the terms viable and innovative.

AMPAG’s sector is enjoying increased exposure with live or delayed telecasts of theatre, opera and ballet, to electronic cinemas, and has much to gain with access to remote audiences online or by narrowcast, as do remote audiences themselves.

The group supports the continuance of the Australian content quota, but is keen that user-generated content should be excluded from the quota quantum. “Professional standards” must apply, according to AMPAG, to Australian content counted in the quantum. Glen Boreham acknowledged a conflict for himself between the pro-Australian content stance of Screen Australia that he chairs, and the neutral stance he should maintain for now as chair of the review panel. But then, he counseled, “be careful of dismissing user-generated content”.

Brigit Fair, for the Seven Network, drew the panel’s attention to what she saw as the unequal treatment of television news and current affairs programming when compared with drama. She stopped short of calling for a separate news quota, but said there was little incentive for television management to pursue excellence in the news field under present arrangements.

Her comments won support from Annabel Herd, of Network Ten, both ignoring the ancient cornerstone of television programming that “the news leads the night”.

On the other hand, they may have inadvertently revealed the true explanation for A Current Affair and Today Tonight.

The panel signalled that the information needs of communities, especially local news, was an issue for the panel.

The contributors present at sessions in Sydney and Melbourne give the firm impression that this review's about screen convergence, but that’s not true. The panel’s terms of reference address the convergence of technologies and practices across all electronic media and blurring across the print media’s online boundary and their use of video clips.

However, there seems to have been little input, for example, from radio. And yet, given the concern evident in the issues paper for localism, radio, and in particular community radio, has had little to say. To be fair, Adrian Basso, the manager of 3PBS-FM and president of the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, attended the Melbourne meeting and indicated the CBAA was making a submission. But there’s still time for individual stations and the commercial radio networks to have more of a say.

Throughout the hearing the panel hedged their comments with cautions that nothing they said should be taken to indicate outcomes. They did indicate, however, that the old distinction of broadcasting, telecommunications, and radio communication were unlikely to be useful for future regulation. Instead, a layered hierarchy seems a useful approach, with infrastructure at the bottom, overlaid by networks; then content and application; and finally devices. Presumably, users, who were not mentioned, form the top-most layer, the beneficiaries of regulation of the sub-layers.

The central role of the media in the information economy of a functioning democracy is familiar to most of us, but we should also consider the way media also shapes our expectation of cultural citizenship and its duties and responsibilities. In this too, news and current affairs has a disproportionate role and Herd’s and Fair’s call for better treatment of television news is interesting, but perhaps not in the way they intended.

A company’s board is bound by law to manage the company in the interests of its shareholders. Television and radio broadcasters, internet service providers, cinema distributors and exhibitors are no less bound by that obligation simply because they provide experiences to the public that shapes opinions, dramatises ideas and set agendas.

To an extent, commercial broadcasters have a public service function, such as the ABC and SBS. Should that function be formally recognised and commercial news and current affairs made more accountable for bias and accuracy?

On another front, Arts Minister Simon Crean released a discussion paper for the National Cultural Policy last week. It is the first attempt to define the government’s approach to the arts and cultural sector since Paul Keating’s Creative Nation policy in 1994.

Like the classification of program content that’s being left with Professor Terry Frew and the Australian Law Reform Commission, cultural policy is woven through media policy as the media is so culturally pervasive.

The Convergence Review must grapple with the cultural consequence of regulation, because the kind of community, society and form of government we will have in the 21st century will be shaped by media regulation today.

What seems apparent is the Convergence Review is aware of the key role it must play but is scratching for answers, with little more than six months to find some.

In wrapping up the meeting, Glen Boreham made two things clear. First, the panel had been well served by submissions that identified the issues. Second, future submissions that dealt with solutions would be most welcome.

Meanwhile, separate teams had been formed to address the large heads of investigation, and discussion papers would be published in each field.

Boreham himself would handle Australian content; Malcolm Long would handle layering, licensing and regulation, and spectrum allocation and regulation; while Louise McElvogue would handle market structure and media diversity, and community standards.

With tight deadlines and a complex problem, the worry is that the panel will focus in on industry issues alone. If it does, the larger issues of the way media regulation shapes Australia of the 21 century, will be left to the efflux of the marketplace whose hidden hand has been known to pleasure itself rather than serve the nation.

by Dr Vincent O'Donnell, of RMIT university and media policy editor for Screen Hub

Crikey

24 August 2011

Policy gives arts a leg-up

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 02:16:00 GMT

Federal Arts Minister Simon Crean has unveiled a policy framework that underscores the economic and social impact of the cultural sector, aimed at lifting the federal government’s $740 million annual arts spending as part of the next budget round.

A government-private sector fund-matching scheme, and the integration of the arts and their funding across other portfolios, are also under consideration following the release of the national cultural policy discussion paper yesterday.

Billed as the first since Labor’s 1994 Creative Nation statement, the cultural policy was a 2010 election promise by then arts minister Peter Garrett. It covers all federally funded arts companies, film bodies, galleries and other cultural institutions.

Subsidiary reviews ranging from Harold Mitchell’s philanthropy review to the classification, curriculum and major performing arts company reviews come under its umbrella.

While it was too early to put a dollar figure on any package that might result, Mr Crean said he was “looking for a national cultural policy that has to have substance behind it”.

“Obviously this has to be considered in the budget cycle and we are facing tough fiscal conditions,” he said yesterday.

“I want a groundswell of understanding that this is an important opportunity for the nation because in terms of competing budgetary pressures, it’s the good initiatives with [economic and social] spin-offs down the track that will stand in their own right. Simply to say we want more money for the arts isn’t going to cut it.”

An inter-departmental committee (including the education, community services and industry and innovation departments) is understood to have worked on the policy, potentially easing its path.

Asked if increased funds might come from those portfolios, Mr Crean said: “This is about joining the dots better to understand the connectivity, let’s be creative about how the creative industries and other portfolios can be connected.”

As for the sort of government-private sector funds-matching scheme introduced in the United Kingdom, Mr Crean said he would wait of the Mitchell review. “What I am interested in is what mechanisms can help us lift funding for the arts,” he said.

Australian Major Performing Arts Group head Sue Donnelly welcomed the paper. “It means there’s not the policy vacuum as to where arts and culture sit in the government agenda that there has been in the past,” she said.

“It also points out that we are living in a prosperous society with a gross domestic product of just over $1 trillion, of which 0.074 per cent is spent on the arts federally.

“Given that it underlines the importance of creative industries to society and the economy, you’d hope it might increase to 0.01 per cent*.”

Mr Crean said: “What we have to demonstrate is why it’s important to find new ways … of resourcing our creative industries because they do return a dividend for the nation. They produce more empowered individuals, a better citizenry and underpin values that are about expression, tolerance, understanding. And a creative society is a more productive one.”

*Sue actually suggested 0.1 per cent of GDP

Brook Turner
12 August 2011
Australian Financial Review

Philanthropy provides sweet charity for the arts

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 23:10:00 GMT

PRIVATE giving, rather than corporate sponsorship or government funding, is providing an increasing share of arts companies' financial base.

The changing sources of arts funding are contained in a report released last week by the Australia Business Arts Foundation. It revealed that over the past decade, income from sponsorships had increased 52 per cent (up $33.5 million) and income from donations 161 per cent (up $76 million).

Yet the global financial crisis meant that in 2009-10, sponsorship declined 2.7 per cent to $98 million while private giving increased 10.6 per cent to $123.1 million.

Australian Ballet executive director Valerie Wilder says this broadly reflects corporate social responsibility spending trends "changing priority from arts to youth or healthcare".

In Victoria, corporate support dropped 20 per cent, while donations increased 18 per cent, according to the ABaF survey of about 300 arts and cultural organisations.

These national shifts in funding priorities are occurring against a backdrop of uncertainty over the future of other historic revenue streams for arts companies: government funding and ancillary earnings. A federal government inquiry on tax concessions for the not-for-profit sector could put the kibosh on tax-free income earned from things such as bar takings or venue hire.

Executive director of the Australian Major Performing Arts Group Susan Donnelly says what's changed is how arts groups go about their fund-raising business. These days, fund-raisers are more likely to turn the begging bowl into an opportunity for the donor to get involved and "engaged". The Sydney Theatre Company has had great success wooing the wealthy through private events, a program enhanced with Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton at the helm. An event last October, where 260 people mingled with Blanchett, Upton and STC actors, raised $554,296 from a combination of the $550-a-head ticket price and an auction.

But it's not all champagne and glitterati. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra saw donations from the Schapper family increase twentyfold through their support of a program aimed at needy kids in Melbourne's northern suburbs. The MSO has increased the scale of their education programs in recent years, partly from a commitment to ensuring children from many backgrounds get the chance to hear and participate in orchestral musical events, but also with a weather eye to changing donor interests.

At the Meadows Primary School in Broadmeadows, grade 2 and 3 students are provided with a violin, viola or cello, and attend classes taught by members of the MSO. The kids, parents and teachers are also provided with MSO concert tickets. The program (known as the "Pizzicato Effect") was established in 2009. Its retention rate is about 90 per cent. According to the MSO, teachers report benefits across classes and the curriculum and the scheme has inspired a similar one at a Shepparton primary school.

The family foundation's continuing support, with that of two other donors, is crucial, with costs at $900 per child running at $142,000 this year. The program receives no government funding.

By GINA McCOLL and WENDY FREW

The Age

6 July 2011

Costs outperform higher earnings in the arts

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 01:10:00 GMT

New figures show 2010 was a good year for major performing arts companies, but costs and inflation are outrunning earnings gains, one reason a confidential government proposal that would mean static funding for at least six years is generating anxiety behind the scenes.

Analysis by the Australian Major Performing Arts Group (AMPAG) shows the total income of the 28 national and state opera, theatre and dance companies and orchestras rose $7.8 million to $400 million in 2010.

That confirms the generally positive individual results reported recently for last calendar year, including a $1.17 million contribution to reserves for the Australian Chamber Orchestra and a $920,000 operating profit for the Sydney Theatre Company.

Earned income was up $3.6 million or 1.5 per cent to $252.4 million, but the earnings increase was outstripped by an overall expenditure rise for the companies of $9.6 million or 2.5 per cent to $387 million, and inflation of 4.5 per cent, according to analysis.

“The point is that costs are still going up significantly more than income, which indicates that there’s a ceiling on ticket prices and what companies can earn at the box office,” AMPAG executive director Sue Donnelly said yesterday.

“At the same time, thresholds on sponsorship have been reached, certainly in Sydney and Melbourne. It makes it hard to plan and move forward if funding remains static.”

The latter refers to a confidential draft national framework for the companies agreed by state and federal governments and circulated in April. The discussion paper notes the funding structure resulting from the 1999 Nugent inquiry had resulted in improved finances, reserves and audience numbers, but that it was “time to update the framework”.

It provides for the maintenance of base funding at historic levels, plus partial indexation, but “no increase to any MPA company above this”.

It also mandates “a clear and measurable performance framework” aligned with governmental priorities of increasing regional access, audience numbers, the “nurturing of young talent” and “securing revenue from a range of sources”.

“It’s great that they have secured multi-year, state-and-federal funding,” Ms Donnelly said. “But it’s very clearly stated that there’s to be less reliance on government funding.

“This isn’t about government withdrawing; there’s just a question of the extent of that support.

“The concern is the government expectation that companies will continue to grow and improve and maybe do other things like more regional access programs, on static funding. They will have to find other revenue to do so, and many of these companies are really well-oiled machines by now, they’ve maximised their income from sources ranging from box office to sponsorship.”

The framework is part of a matrix of federal reviews, including the recently established philanthropy review chaired by Harold Mitchell and a broader cultural policy review, the discussion paper on which is due by the end of the year, Labor’s first broad foray into the area since the 1994 Creative Nation Statement.

Brook Turner
Australian Financil Review
29/6/2011

Performing arts struggle to bridge funding gap

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 01:34:00 GMT

Generous donations to Australia's visual arts sector from the likes of businessmen John Kaldor and Simon Mordant have been big news recently. But for performing arts companies, it has been a different story.

Corporate sponsorship and private donations are not growing fast enough to close the gap left by the government's failure to increase its funding, according to a new survey.

The Australian Major Performing Arts Group's latest survey found that total revenue raised by Australia's 28 major performing arts groups from corporate sponsorship, private giving and fundraising events was $54.6 million, an increase of $5.8 million, or 11.9 per cent, on the previous year. Corporate sponsorship rose only 0.8 per cent, compared with a 27.2 per cent rise in private funding, thanks to large donations to the Australian Ballet and Sydney Theatre Company.

The federal government had hoped corporate sponsorship and private donations would fill the gap left by its failure to increase its own funding, the group's executive director, Sue Donnelly, said.

"But this is clearly not translating for most of the companies," she said.

"A closer examination of the data reveals five of the 10 NSW companies reported earning $3.9 million more in 2010 compared to 2001, while five companies report earning $3.2 million less.

"This pattern is reflected across the country, indicating a ceiling in earnings from corporate sponsorship may have been reached," Donnelly said.

Ten years ago, money from the big end of town made up the bulk of funds that supplemented ticket sales and government grants. But private donors have since emerged as a key source of income.

Many performing arts groups have worked hard to court wealthy patrons. Bangarra Dance Theatre has employed a philanthropy manager, and the Sydney Theatre Company has used the connections of its co-artistic director, Cate Blanchett, and increased the number of staff soliciting donations to reduce its reliance on ticket sales.

In 2001, private giving made up just 25 per cent of total sponsorship and donation revenue. By last year, this had increased to 46 per cent, driving the overall reported increase in earnings for the sector.

"In time, it may well outstrip the proportion of corporate sponsorship, especially if the [Harold] Mitchell review of private sector investment for the arts comes up with new and interesting tax recommendations," Donnelly said.

Wendy Frew
21 June 2011
The Sydney Morning Herald

Corporate funding leaving companies poorer

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 01:36:00 GMT

A survey of major arts companies has found that sponsorship from business is not filling the growing gap caused by the federal government's policy of keeping arts funding static.

The survey, by the Australian Major Performing Arts Group, found corporate sponsorship grew by only $200,000 nationally last year to $26.8 million, well below the rate of inflation.

The group's executive director, Sue Donnelly, warned that the findings indicated a ceiling might have been reached in earnings from corporate sponsorship.

"There's an expectation from the federal government that increased sponsorship from the corporate sector, coupled with private donations, will fill the gap while public funding remains static," she says. "But this is clearly not translating for most of the companies as they seek new partnerships with the private sector."

The big increase reported in the survey was in private support, with the Australian Ballet and Sydney Theatre Company reporting that philanthropic support grew by more than $2 million each. This accounts for almost 90 per cent of the growth in philanthropy and private giving.

Sixteen of the 28 companies surveyed reported an increase in earnings from the corporate sector last year, with the remainder reporting a decline. Queensland companies were the only group to universally report increases in earnings from corporate sponsorship.

In Victoria, long-term analysis shows that only two of the state's six companies are earning more from corporate sponsorship in 2010 compared with 2001, when the survey began.

"Victorian companies are, on average, generating close to half the level of corporate sponsorship income compared to their New South Wales and Western Australian counterparts," the survey says.

The six companies — the Australian Ballet, Circus Oz, Melbourne Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra Victoria — reported lower-than-expected income from corporate sponsorship. But they are earning $6.6 million more from philanthropy compared with 2001, which reflects the situation nationally.

Ms Donnelly says: "This growth in philanthropy reverses figures in 2001, when corporate sponsorship made up 72 per cent of total sponsorship and donation revenue nationwide. In [the] 2010 survey, this share has fallen to 49 per cent." The findings come as a government review of private-sector support for the arts is under way.

Chaired by media business identity and long-time philanthropist Harold Mitchell, the review board called earlier this month for public submissions on impediments to sponsorship and philanthropy. The closing date for submissions is July 8, with the review expected to be completed in October.

"In time, [philanthropy] may well outstrip the proportion of corporate sponsorship, especially if the Mitchell review of private-sector investment for the arts comes up with some new and interesting tax recommendations", Ms Donnelly says.

By ROBIN USHER
21 June 2011
The Age

More private wealth holding up the arts

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 05:30:00 GMT

Individuals and foundations are poised to overtake companies as the biggest supporters of major arts companes after a decade in which sponsorship and philanthropic income grew more than 80 per cent.

Last year, 28 arts companies – including the flagship state orchestras, theatre and dance companies, the Australian Ballet and Opera Australia – reported total sponsorship, donations and fundraising of $54.6 million, according to a survey out this week.

That's $24.3 million more than a decade ago, when the Australian Major Performing Arts Group first started tracking trends in the area, and almost 12 per cent up on 2009.

Private giving in 2010 was up 27.2 per cent on the year before, due almost entirely to two $2 million-plus gifts to the Sydney Theatre Company and Australian Ballet.

But over the decade benefits were widely distributed. Private giving more than trebled from $7.7 million in 2001, when it accounted for just a quarter of total sponsorship and donation dollars, to $25.2 milllion in 2010, when it represented 46 per cent, driving the overall increase. Sponsorship increased in 2010 for the third year to $26.8 million (up from $21.7 million in 2001) but that increase trailed private giving and failed to keep up with inflation, suggesting corporate arts support may be peaking.

“Over the 10 years the proportion of sponsorship to philanthropy has changed radically,” AMPAG executive director Sue Donnelly said. “While sponsorship still represtents more money, it seems likely philanthropy will overtake corporate sponsorship over coming years.”

Ms Donnelly said the increase in private giving reflected not only one of the great periods of wealth creation in this country coupled with a greater philanthropic awareness among Australians – trusts and private foundations were not separated out in the survey but represented an “increasing stream” of philanthropic dollars, she said – but also arts companies' increasing focus on philanthropy.

“Australia has lagged behind the US in terms of philanthropy and the arts sector has lagged the education and medical fields,” she said. “But we're now catching up; it's a relationship business and those relationships are now long-term.”

The $8 million Ian Potter Foundation gift last February to the Melbourne-based Australian Ballet - $4 million over five years for education and the upgrading and renaming of the company's Melbourne headquarters as the Primrose Potter Australian Ballet Centre, plus up to $4 million matching other grants and donations – is one example.

Photovoltaic scientist Zhengrong Shi's $2 milion donation in 2010 to help fund the Sydney Theatre Company's solar panels is another.

Beyond them, however, larger state-based trends were discernible. Corporate sponsorship had stabilised in NSW in recent years, but “the data indicates that a ceiling in earnings from this souce may have been reached”, Ms Donnelly said.

The four Queensland companies were the only ones to all report sponsorship gains in 2010 contributing $557,000 of Queensland's total $624,000 increase on 2009, their best year yet. That reflected the companies' increasing efforts after years in which the state had lagged.

West Australian companies had capitalised on the mining boom to report sponsorship increases in recent years, but private giving remained surprisingly weak, while Victorian companies had increased private giving, led by the Ballet, with sponsorship lagging significantly.

Between art forms, theatre companies generated “markedly less corporate sponsorship”, opera companies reported the least change in numbers of corporate sponsors and donors, “suggesting a more mature market”, and only three of 10 music companies reported sustained growth.

Brook Turner

Australian Financial Review

20 June 2011

Efficiency dividend hurting organisations

Tue, 10 May 2011 23:36:00 GMT

Arts organisations seeking exemption from the federal government's efficiency dividend have increased their lobbying in the run-up to today's budget.

The Australia Council for the Arts has argued since before last year's budget that the funds it distributes to arts bodies should not be subject to the 1.25 per cent cutback now due to be increased to 1.5 per cent.

The Community and Public Sector Union says 10 per cent of jobs were pared at the National Gallery of Australia and the number of exhibitions reduced from 12 to five this year. The National Museum of Australia has seen a 5.4 per cent cut in jobs and the National Library has endured a 3.4 per cent cutback.

Tamara Winikoff, executive director of the National Association for the Visual Arts, which has had part of its federal funding reduced, says: "It comes to a point where there are no more efficiencies to be found."

The Australia Council recently abandoned its attempt to absorb funding cuts through administrative savings to maintain full funding to artists.

Winikoff says in the previous funding round, grants for the first time were not increased in line with the consumer price index.

Australia Council chief executive Kathy Keele confirms that the efficiency dividend continues to be applied to the funding body's grants and programs, not only to its administration costs. She says that despite savings having been made, she can "foresee that [it] will affect programs and grants to artists and arts organisations".

In Canberra the need for the bigger agencies to find savings has caused concern. "It seems more dramatic for the large institutions, but it's just as dramatic, in fact more so, for small to medium ones because there's less room to move," Winikoff says.

NAVA has asked that the new four-year cycle of funding to the visual arts and crafts sector be fully indexed. Winikoff points out that if the four-year cycle is not renewed the visual arts infrastructure will crumble.

The leading performing arts companies are quarantined from the efficiency dividend, but lobbyist Sue Donnelly says any weakening of the small to medium sector also weakens the majors in the long term.

"Arts companies are already stretched," says Donnelly, executive director of the Australian Major Performing Arts Group.

AMPAG has lobbied this year for increased funding of $5 million a year to develop new Australian works of scale, increased touring support and for a $1m research and development fund to help institutions explore the possibilities for exploiting their content via the National Broadband Network. The leading collecting institutions are also pushing for additional funding to digitise their collections.

"The whole emphasis has been about the hardware," Donnelly says. "Our concern is there's no content there."

Michaela Boland
The Australian
May 10, 2011

Extracting the digital

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 23:39:00 GMT

The times are changing for Australia's live performance companies as they grapple with how to retain and cultivate new audiences in the era of digital entertainment.

Black Swan State Theatre Company will be the first Australian theatre company to join the international trend towards cinematic simulcasts of live stage performances, albeit on a relatively small scale, when it transmits A Midsummer Night's Dream to screens in six regional WA venues next month.

WA Opera has led the way in WA with simulcasts of its past two Opera in the Park productions of The Mikado and Die Fledermaus to regional venues, while the WA Symphony Orchestra has been webcasting select concerts since 2009 with growing success.

The threats and opportunities of e-theatre have prompted a call to arms by the Australian Major Performing Arts Group, which says many local companies are struggling to keep up with the massive leap in expertise and costs required to compete in the multi-platform digital arena. Given the 50 per cent annual growth in internet traffic in Australia, companies ignored these developments at their peril, a recent AMPAG report said.

Black Swan's pilot project follows the success of high-definition screenings of performances by London's National Theatre, the Royal Opera and Ballet, La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. For the past five years, the Met has been the trailblazer with its Live in HD cinecasts around the world, including the Luna in Leederville and Fremantle, grossing $48 million last year. Half went back to the Met to cover costs and disbursements, and $8 million was profit.

Online, the Melbourne Theatre Company is looking to make a performance available through the Digital Theatre website, which offers high-definition paid downloads from such "content providers" as the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court Theatre.

The AMPAG report says technology allows stage companies to reach new audiences remotely and lay the bait for an increase in attendances at performances in the flesh. However, they are chasing the tails of their overseas counterparts in the local marketplace which is not big enough on its own to sustain regular high-quality video productions without enormous funding subsidies or finding new consumers abroad.

"We do not want to be in a situation in which Australian cinemas and (online services) are replete with overseas performing arts products and little Australian content," it says.

Other issues to be confronted include the various technical hurdles, finding a model to generate revenue and to pay royalties to performers and creative rights holders, piracy fears and artists' concerns that filmed performances could skew casting choices towards younger, more photogenic performers.

Inspired by last year's simulcast of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra's Perth concert to regional WA last November, Black Swan is using six cameras installed in the Heath Ledger Theatre to film A Midsummer Night's Dream for transmission into six regional theatres, the Armadale Town Hall, the Northbridge Piazza and through the Westlink network.

Black Swan general manager Shane Colquhoun says the venture, free to audiences and funded by Lotterywest, is an opportunity for thousands of people in the bush to share a statewide "live" experience within their own community.

"It would be lovely to think we could do a live broadcast of at least one of our main-stage productions each year to regional communities," Colquhoun says.

The Dream, with a cast of 17, is prohibitively expensive to tour, says Black Swan artistic director Kate Cherry, who likens the simulcast to hanging out a digital shingle to attract new audiences to the theatre, as the Met experienced.

Australian arts companies need to be funded properly to reflect their position in the global economy, Cherry says. "Every major arts organisation is thinking of itself in terms of its State, its nation and its place in the international theatre community. We need to continue to tell our own stories in our own accents."

The internet's power to take the arts to the masses was illustrated last month when 33 million people took a stream of the YouTube Orchestra's grand finale concert at the Sydney Opera House.

Companies have been quick to jump on social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to maximise their marketing but the WA Ballet is allowing its Facebook friends to help create a new short work for its Neon Lights season in July. Online supporters will vote on the direction of the choreography, music, design and even which of three choreographers to create the work.

The WASO is one of just two Australian orchestras (along with Sydney Symphony) to adopt live streaming of its concerts online. This weekend, it will take another step by streaming its performance of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana from the Perth Concert Hall to mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads for the first time.

WASO artistic planning manager Marshall McGuire says the approach is not so different to the regular broadcasts of orchestral, ballet and opera performances seen on TV in the 1960s and 70s before funding cuts at the ABC. "What we have done is replace the portal of TV with the portal of the internet and the app," he says. "We feel it is important given our location in the world. It is very important to get to as many Western Australians as possible and as many people in the world as possible."

McGuire sees the internet access and foreign cinema screenings as complementary rather than a direct challenge to local companies.

"They are proximate, they are the same but different. I love going to see the Met at the Luna simply because I don't have the option of seeing it live and the same potential is here for our regional audiences because we can't get the whole orchestra to Karratha, for example.

"I don't see it as a threat to the live experience. I hope it will be a pathway for them to come via the online experience to the live experience."

Carmina Burana is at the Perth Concert Hall on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The Saturday concert will be streamed through iinet from 7.30pm. A Midsummer Night's Dream runs at the Heath Ledger Theatre from May 6-22. The simulcast occurs on May 21 at 7pm.

Stephen Bevis
The West Australian
April 27, 2011