Young People and the Arts Australia
YPAA is the national peak body for organisations and practitioners engaging children and young people in the arts. See www.ypaa.net
Its submission emphasises that the cultural policy cannot speak of a single Australian culture, but “It is essential for this Framework to identify diverse Australian cultures and for the government to take a position of plurality”
To place Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture central to a broader Australian identity means the Framework should also expand to acknowledge the great diversity across the many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, land and language groups.
YPAA points out that the cultural policy must be accessible to all, with the goal that after this discussion “all citizens can read and understand…what the subsequent policy becomes”
ACTION: YPAA would be very keen to hold a round table with government and young people interested in the arts and culture to look into these ideas further.
It is also important for those young creative people who currently influence the arts and various Australian cultures to have input into this process. YPAA would also like to include government staff in this experience, to enable exchange and understanding with how young people see themselves culturally and their perspectives on changes they see happening in the future; their future.
YPAA recommends a greater emphasis on the specific rights and needs of children
…with ongoing issues of children spending too much time in front of screens it seems that this National Cultural Policy could be the framework to not only set an agenda for the arts and young children as a priority for this nation, but to also build a platform across government and begin engaging other Ministers and Departments in the power of arts and culture to effect social change. This could include but is not limited to the Office of Youth and Health.
Ths submission emphasises the importance of education for the arts, and of not missing out on marginalised young people including the disabled, home-schooled and remote, and “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students who for cultural and other reasons do not attend school after a certain age, [for whom] arts centres can be a place of great learning when connected up with school-based curriculum.
It is important to acknowledge in any cultural policy the notion of autonomy. Young people in particular crave autonomy at different ages depending on their life circumstances.
For many who do have access to technology, through using various aspects of the web and being the creators of user generated content is one of the ways they create and share with large audiences nationally and internationally their cultures, opinions and artistic outputs. This could be creating a song and sharing it, mashing up other people’s music, taking photos, up loading them in self-curated online photographic galleries, writing blogs, developing new web sites, networking and organising their friends and peer groups to engage in “live” activities such as music concerts and outdoor festivals, are just a few ways the internet supports young people’s cultural expression.
Mobile phones and other technologies are still predominant amongst the socially and economically mobile and financially supported young people. As these devices become more and more accessible, it will be young people who will use these technologies in new ways, which will in fact shape their development and capability.
Young people also engage in the arts in out of school activities with their friends, and with local arts and non-arts organisations, that offer a wide variety of ways for young people to share their cultural contribution to the broader community. This work needs to be supported, documented and the learnings shared across a wide variety of fields and industries. There is a range of publishable models of this work, that could be shared in regular ways such as radio with local community members, volunteer associations and networks that currently engage young people in various recreational activities. This would see the skills and knowledge across the arts and cultural sectors benefit the non-arts sector. Some of these transferable skills include facilitation techniques, new ways of learning through visual and kinaesthetic engagement and group building ideas, to name just a few.
For many young people engaging in a youth arts program it provides them with valuable opportunities to be heard, through sharing their stories, making new friends, meeting adults who support their creativity and providing employment pathways into their future. The arts provide many skills which support young people who are at a biological time in their lives forging new networks aside from their core family unit and parents look towards other trusted people for their children to be safe and supported in their expression and leisure time.
Young and Emerging Artists:
YPAA acknowledges that there have been many programs for young people entering arts careers (over the past decade), but they generally fail in two areas
1) They “assume that young and emerging artists are mainstream young people. These programs do not acknowledge that diverse young people do not follow the standard pathway expected by such programs.”
2) “Very few of the outcomes and outputs of these programs have been Documented”. We need more thorough examination of what is working or not working.
We could learn a lot about what was helpful as an intervention in a young artist’s career if we had some documented evidence. We could also learn where to spend money to get the best outcomes rather than continually finding the already well funded organisation to “engage young artists”, or programs which have not undertaken external evaluation sometimes in over 5 years. It is important to fund what works, to discover what is working through talking with young artists, networking them to talk to each other and also through formal evaluation.
ACTION: a longitudinal study of the pathways taken by diverse young artists and the impact of interventions on their careers (such as government programs, development, training etc)
ACTION: YPAA also encourages the Government to develop a start up fund, much like the initiative for internet companies, but with emerging arts companies. It could be linked to ArtsStart and be available for practitioners under 40 who have started their own companies and need some seed funding to get the business side of this dealt with, as this can be costly and requires attention.
Action: YPAA advocates that the Federal Government introduce the term “artist” in Centrelinks list of valid professions.
The submission also mentions the need of superannuation for professional artists, and recommends an action item to “Broker a superannuation fund being developed for freelance and independent artists that is mandated by arts organisations to pay a set amount into every time they contract a freelance artist.”
ACTION: Youth Arts sector needs a broker, to undertake philanthropy work for the small to medium companies, in preference to the existing range of programs which again place the pressure on an already over worked and underpaid staff in this sector.
ACTION: For the Australia Council or the Arts, or another appropriate national organisation to establish a wage and conditions report for this industry, and identify appropriate mechanism for ensuring that government grants and funding programs actually reflect the wage and working conditions of artists, in alignment with increasing market costs.
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