The VCA’s sense of renewal

Sitting across Southbank Boulevard from the NGV the VCA is an odd assortment of buildings sliding down to Sturt Street. Even the lovely Elizabeth Murdoch Building facing St Kilda Road seems disconnected and alone. The campus is particularly quiet at this time of year as the 1,000 or so students disperse for the summer but there’s little on the outside to hint at how much goes on within; the creative energies, the recent organizational turbulence or even, which door visitors should go through.

In 2012 however, this outward wrapping will start to change as the Elizabeth Murdoch Building’s refurbishment is completed. It will house new sophisticated computer labs, a postgraduate lounge, top floor studios and facilities for lighting design and music composition. It’s reversing the onus, says Director of the Victorian College of the Arts, Professor Su Baker, bringing the students up the front, physically, psychologically and philosophically.

It’s no one’s fault but the campus has grown incremental over the past 39 years, to unintentionally create a strange hierarchy of administration at the front to student and teaching facilities at the back, in various states of repair. The investment in new facilities is changing that.

But there are other changes, too. 2011 has seen the undergraduate programs redesigned and along with the physical changes there’s a hope that students will be less siloed, finding more connections those in other disciplines. There will be $3m in new creative scholarships particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, a national graduate opera program, and a national music theatre and cabaret program. 2012 will also see the introduction of screenwriting and animation at the undergraduate level.

There’s a very good spirit at VCA now, says Prof Baker. ‘There’s nothing like a sense of renewal to energise people… And, I suppose the threat of things being lost concentrates the mind.’

A new mandate
After years of financial uncertainty things, at least for now, look good. In October 2010, the Federal government commented to recurrent funding matched by Melbourne University which returned the VCA to its 2005 funding levels (before the 30% cut by the then Federal Coalition government). Then in this year’s budget the Baillieu State Government announced a $24m funding boost over the next four years which is proving the new scholarships and projects as well as regional training, which will see the VCA having the chance to work with Regional Arts Victoria.

‘The funding represents confidence in the institution…a sort of renewed mandate if you like,’ says Prof. Baker. It has given the VCA confidence to look forward, to consider what they want to be in 20 years time. The VCA is in a privileged position, she says and has to look to ways of honouring that privilege.

The past few years have also seen significant staff changes, retirements, and people taking on leadership roles in different ways. That too makes for a different atmosphere, says Prof Baker. Hopefully, she says, the institution is more forward looking now. The VCA is more mindful of succession planning too, and putting thought into setting things up ready for a new generation.

New look degrees
The VCA three-year Bachelor of Arts now offers more interaction between disciplines and electives in the wider university. These electives are not mandated, says Prof Baker, the course doesn’t prevent students from concentrating on what they want to do. Neither did the previous thinking, in fact, she says.

She doesn’t make much of the distinction between practical and academic though there can be differences in the modes of deliver. The arts are highly intellectual, she says. ‘You need to know the art, the background and the context, and you know how to do it.’

‘It means that we can create the courses the way we think they should be taught and give students the option to pick up on interests they have outside of it.’ It will also feed better into the two-year post graduate Masters programs, in a way akin to the European model of five year degrees. As undergraduate degrees have become more common, students are looking to the masters programs as a way to differentiate themselves, says Prof Baker.

‘The troubles’
The merger of the VCA with the University of Melbourne in 2007 that was triggered by the Federal Government’s funding policy changes was initially quite unproblematic, says Prof Baker. It was the ‘shotgun wedding’ of the VCA’s and the University’s music programs that really saw the clash of cultures emerge. From the university’s perspective they had two Bachelor of Music programs, however the VCA program had been created to be, by definition, very different. It was a chapter that wasn’t managed as well as it could have been, admits Prof. Baker.

The VCA also found in joining the University that they had joined a big organization with overheads that was also changing its accounting system at the same time. It’s a time Prof Baker calls ‘the troubles’ with much of the problem coming from communication issues. But the VCA is now in a position to better negotiate costs so they are reasonable and the services and investments the University will offer in return. ‘It’s an education both ways actually, but I think if we keep true to what we know works… we can find ways round.’

‘There were things we needed to do in the VCA no doubt about that,’ says Prof Baker, ‘and this was like a catharsis that had to happen.’ But people now see a real chance to make big changes and to build things that have not been possible before.

Confidence in the future
In 2012, the VCA will celebrate its 40th birthday with the catch-cry, ‘Life begins…’ and will have the chance to take stock of all that it and its students have achieved as well as where it is heading in the future.

‘We’re on a good course,’ reiterates Prof Baker. ‘There’s always precariousness, there’s always risks…but I think we’ve still got, philosophically, a good approach.’

The VCA hopes to instill in its graduating students confidence, internal drive, resilience to survive the slings and arrows, she says. Qualities it seems the VCA hopes very much to emulate itself. As alumna Jennifer Higgie, now co-editor and staff writer of frieze said, giving the graduating address to the Masters of Fine Arts and Contemporary Arts students on Monday night: ‘John Cage once said, “I can’t understand why people are afraid of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” That’s the kind of thinking an art school encourages, that the unknown is exciting and full of potential and that the future is very much a glass half full kind of place.’