Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Science (CHASS)
Following Australia’s successful investment in building its arts institutions, training and research organisations and providing opportunities for cultural engagement, the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences sees two urgent tasks for the Australian Government so that we make a creative imaginative Australia for the 21st century.
Firstly, the Government should be using its resources to enable innovation in the arts and rapid development of Australian artists and art makers, given the technological change and new communications networks which have created a range of new ways for Australians to participate in and contribute to the arts.
Secondly, the Government must support and encourage connections between the arts and broader areas of civic culture, industry and social policy. It should connect arts-based innovation and experience to audiences, investors and education institutions and through them to broader areas of community and industry. Therefore the Council agrees with the Minister’s suggestion that there should be a new focus on innovation and investment in individual artists and creative teams, after a major period focussed on sustainability in the major non-profit companies and public institutions. A National Cultural Policy should include programs, like ArtStart, that encourage and commission new works from emerging artists, and support art-making as a profession. But there is much more to be done.
The Government has a role in facilitating the connections between the layers of culture, and between practitioners and audiences, between traditional art forms and new technologies. For this reason, the Council believes one of the main priorities of the National Cultural Policy should be education, particularly in the arts.
It is through education that the young Australians can be empowered to develop the capacities to fully engage in the new technologies that allow us all to express our creativity and be participants in cultural development.
The building of a creative polity begins with schools and the Council reiterates its introductory statement that national curriculum is at the core of cultural policy. Active support for resources to support development and implementation must be maintained. But cultural and creative education does not stop at high school graduation.
Students in human society and culture combined with students in the creative arts form a large percentage of Australia’s higher education enrolments – more than a quarter of undergraduate and post graduate totals. In the Creative Arts alone, there are more than 64,000 undergraduates, around the same number as studying engineering. While not all of these creative arts students will enter a career in the arts and related industries, their capacity to contribute to Australian cultural life must be realised.
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