Creative Intersections in cultural policy

Alison Tickell, founder of Julie's Bicycle UK gave the final keynote address at the 5th World Summit on Arts & Culture  

At the finale the IFACCA 5th World Summit on Arts & Culture, Alan Davey, IFACCA Chair and Chief Executive of Arts Council England remarked that his head was spinning. He wasn’t the only one. Though it seemed from all the anecdotal comments and feedback to have been a highly successful summit there was indeed a great deal to take away and consider.

Where day one had been focussed on the importance of ‘Place’ in the consideration of culture and day two on 'People' in terms of how culture and the arts intersects with communities and other areas of social policy from education to health and poverty reduction; on day three the Summit turned to what had been learned, shared and what the implications for policy might be.

It fell to Professor Brad Haseman from the Queensland University of Technology to compile the reports and summaries from the 18 round table discussions, the plenaries and the keynotes speeches and attempt to show what policy outcomes might be drawn from the discussions.

The theme of the Summit was cultural intersections he noted. ‘If we’re going to work across domains, across sectors, what are the skills of intersecting?’ The ones that shone through strongly in the discussion he said were the notion of ‘cultural rapprochement ‘meaning exchanges are marked by equity, mutual respect and just remuneration’; that powerful work can be done at both the micro and macro levels; to ‘sit still and listen’; and the importance of ‘the invitation’.

He also identified what he referred to as eight policy pressure points, or areas of change and shift, that require new policy and new thinking. Amongst them were things such as how trans-disciplinary networks and digital innovations are creating new arts and cultural practices; new consumption behaviours affected by global connectivity and e-citizenry; and new business models that recognise value-chain analysis and investment forms such as crowd-sourcing.

The aim of the Policy day was to outline key ideas for arts policy initiatives, which can support artists to intersect with broad social issues. To do this a number of calls to action from the floor of the World Summit were drafted by Professor Brad Haseman from the rapporteur reports. The Plenary broke into small groups to discuss and re-draft each of the motions as was fitting. The final results are to be made available via the IFACCA website.

The draft calls to action included calls for:
- IFACCA members and their governments to activate the UNESCO convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expression 2005 and deliver on its goals by making it central to national, state and local cultural policies;

- governments and funding bodies to commit to ongoing and open processes of self examination and critical reflection to ensure that sustainable infrastructure for arts and culture are developed and maintained;

- the protection of the rights of all citizen to engage as producers of cultural forms, and for the affirmation and support of active participation in arts cultural citizenship by all members of the society;

- the public declaration of governments and IFACCA members of their support for fellow artists and cultural workers who endure hostile circumstances and threat while exercising their right to cultural expression and social activism;

- people to be at the core of arts and culture policies - not audiences - and for the affirmation and support of active participation in arts cultural citizenship by all members of the society;

- governments and arts organisations worldwide to be conscientious of those things which ensure a civil society and do their utmost to secure nurture and maintain them;

- the autonomy and the authority of indigenous cultural practices to remain sovereign to the purposes determined by indigenous individuals and communities;

- governments to implement cross portfolio and whole of government strategies to embed arts and cultural activities across all sectors of government through joint funding and shared responsibility.

- the development and support of schemes to lead growth in the creative economy;

- the establishment and funding of industry and community focussed educational programs to prepare arts and cultural workers to lead their sector in the 21st Century and beyond;

- long term strategic educational partnerships that place the child at the centre of learning;

- further research to identify serviceable methods for gathering evidence of economic and cultural value that can inform decision making by government, companies, agencies, artists and communities.

- the support of artists and programs which recognise the impact arts and culture have on identifying, on identity formation and story telling for a community;

- governments to recognise that culture will play its most potent role in effecting social change when it operates at the heart rather than at the borders of society, that it is the fourth pillar;

- governments to no longer ignore culture but to recognise its central role in improving economic, social and the environmental quality of life of all citizens.

In officially opening the Summit on Monday night the Hon Simon Crean, Minister for Regional Australia Regional Development and Local Government and Minister for the Arts said, ‘The Summit's theme is creative intersections. I call it joining the dots. Think about partnerships, collaborations. Think about ways to work across issues and international borders to involve even more people in the arts.’ It certainly seems as if the Summit did all of that and more.

In the closing remarks for the World Summit, CEO of the Australia Council for the Arts, Kathy Keele noted that when Australia bid for the World Summit two years ago they had no idea that a new National Cultural Policy would be being discussed, nor that its theme of Creative Intersections would so closely mirror much of what the new policy seems to be trying to incorporate.

Increasingly we’re aware of the value of arts outside of the gallery and outside of the theatre and within our hospitals and within our communities and within our health centres and our classrooms, she said. There were many examples that illustrated the expanding role of the arts and of artists in society; projects that expose more people to the arts, that offer artists employment opportunities and that leverage more investment into the arts.

‘However, I do have one word of caution,’ she said. ‘and that is to ensure that we never lose sight of the value of art for its own sake. Once we start to understand and quantify the value of the arts, we can open ourselves up to the temptation that art is only valuable when we can say what it does, what it teaches and what it fixes. But we do need to remember that sometimes the only thing the arts do is delight us, inspire us and entertain us, none of which should be measured. My message is simple it should not be either / or. It should neither be about using the arts as a tool for social involvement or having the arts as a pure expression of human thought and emotion - we should all be insisting on both.’

5th World Summit on Arts & Culture
Melbourne, Australia
3-6 October, 2011
www.artsummit.org

A slideshow of images is available at ABC Arts online

To truly be inspired watch this animation from Dirt! The Movie, in which Wangari Maathai tells a tale of doing the best you can under seemingly interminable odds.