An artist's reflections on the World Summit

Tamara Winikoff, Executive Director of the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) reflects on her own experiences of the 5th World Summit on Arts and Culture held in Melbourne last week.

On the budget of a small arts organisation, I had to use some dexterity to insinuate myself into the ‘5th World Summit on Arts and Culture’ just held in Melbourne. At over AUD$1500 a pop for registration, it was evidently designed, as the program said, for government and (well endowed) cultural leaders from over 80 countries.

The purpose was “to explore how artists can give voice to diverse communities and concerns through collaborations with experts in health and well-being, the environment, education, business, new technologies, cultural identity and more.”

And fortuitously it coincided with the federal Arts Minister, Simon Crean’s mission to produce a national cultural policy for Australia; an intention which was clearly the envy of many of the conference delegates.

Three Ps were the themes: People, Place and Policies. Sadly I had to miss the ‘policies’ bit because of the demands from the coalface but they will probably be on the IFACCA website by the time you read this. Artists will want to check the propositions being put forward on their behalf, but the call to action resolutions at the end of the event would be hard to fault in terms of setting some worthy policy principles.

Day One: Place
In a globalised world with the melting of borders, the definition of ‘place’ has become challenging. Has ‘local’ become more important to us than ‘national’? The presentations of examples of place-specific programs and policies raised many questions to do with which communities are being included in cultural dialogue and how do places develop and express their own character.

Two standouts for me were: the New Delhi projects presented by Pooja Sood, Director of the KHOJ International Artists Association in India; and the insights of Lachlan McDonald (initially trained as a nurse prior to a remarkably varied multi-arts career), who described the need of people for the story of their known places and the example of problems of disorientation experienced by elderly people in hospital.

In comments that followed, deference was paid to the proposition by US academic, Richard Florida, that people are attracted to education and culture in cities, and businesses follow. In relation to valuing cultural rights of access to the city, questions were asked about who gets the benefit when artists and disadvantaged communities are marginalised by urban regeneration. Some very interesting schemes were described: in Baltimore where living space for artists is provided by the local government and in New York where artists are given equity in or subsidy for their work spaces, post gentrification.

Day 2: People
Two lively presentations on the role of arts in health (Dr Tim Greacen, France) and sex education (Wan Smolbag Theatre, Vanuatu) were followed by a very sobering session on art outside the comfort zone. Mike van Graan from South Africa and Lucina Jimenez from Mexico spoke of not only dealing with dangerous subject matter but more scarily discussing the work of artists working in zones of conflict and suffering the consequences of putting themselves at times in mortal danger. It certainly put things in Australia into proportion.

Though all 500+ delegates shared the presentations in the first half of each day, hard choices had to be made about which of the nine round tables to sign up for in the afternoons. With so many choices, somehow one always feels that one is missing out.

For me, most rewarding was the session I attended on the second day ‘Across the Divide’, intended to discuss the nature of the relationship between arts practitioners and policy makers. Skillfully facilitated by Anne Dunn, a lively discussion rotated around the very different policy development approaches of Tunisia and Egypt compared with Ireland and Australia. In a preoccupation with empowering the artist-in-all-citizens, the role of artists struggled to be mentioned.

Throughout the summit, the emphasis was on the instrumental role that the arts can play across all areas of human need and endeavour – in providing creative and innovative ideas and in building community cohesion and tolerance, social and economic wellbeing. There was indeed a dazzling array of examples which reaffirmed the need for recognition of the centrality of arts and culture in all things human. It was very, very affirming.

But what was missing a bit was the equal respect for artists conducting their practice for personal purposes as philosophers, researchers, change agents and meaning makers. I don’t want to be a nark but it did make me think that a few more artists’ voices would have been good to hear.