We’ve all been there. You’re sitting in front of a grant application or a gallery proposal, and before you’ve even described the conceptual why of your work, you’re confronted with a matrix of metrics. Are you regional? Are you First Nations? How does your project align with the Social Impact pillar of the latest National Cultural Policy?
In 2026, the Australian arts sector navigates a curious paradox. We have more formal structures for fairness than ever before, yet a quiet anxiety is rippling through our studios and boardrooms. ‘Box-ticking’ has become shorthand for a system that many feel has moved from correcting historical imbalances to creating a new kind of bureaucratic straitjacket.
But is this system genuinely limiting artistic freedom, or is it simply the uncomfortable – and necessary – friction of a culture finally growing up?
Box-ticking in the arts – quick links
The box-ticking reality
Few topics provoke more heated debate in Australian arts than box-ticking. While its intent is clear – to foster equity and correct entrenched exclusions – its day-to-day application has created a persistent tension between social policy, opportunity and artistic autonomy.
In Australia, the majority of arts funding comes through government bodies such as Creative Australia and state agencies, all required to ensure public money reflects the diversity of the population: First Nations, CALD, LGBTQIA+, gender equity and regional representation. That’s a good thing. And, these agencies have worked hard in recent years to simplify the process for applicants. Yet the structures remain, and with them, new limitations.
To secure funding, artists are increasingly required to demonstrate how their work helps the government meet broader policy goals. You are no longer pitching only an artwork or program; you are pitching a contribution to regional tourism, education outcomes, mental health or social cohesion.
In response, many artists find themselves retrofitting their practice to meet prescribed outcomes – a phenomenon often referred to as ‘grant speak’ or ‘performative diversity’. The articulation of the work, how fluently it fills the criteria, can outweigh the work itself. A painter is no longer just a painter, but a ‘facilitator of community wellbeing’ or an ‘intersectional advocate for sustainability’.
The danger here is obvious: we risk rewarding the best grant writers rather than the best artists. When strategic alignment becomes a mandatory box to tick, we risk losing the outlier, the eccentric and the artist who simply wants to explore the formal qualities of light and shadow without having to address an issue or category enroute.
Funding gatekeepers: policy versus practice
This tension intensified with the introduction of the National Cultural Policy for 2023 to 2038. Titled Revive, it transformed the Australia Council into Creative Australia. The change also brought greater regulation, clearer priorities and more targeted funding streams.
There are now dedicated pools of money accessible only to specific groups. Supporters argue this is the only way to bypass the historical ‘old boys’ club’ and ensure equitable distribution. Critics, particularly independent and mid-career artists who do not sit within priority categories, report feeling ‘aged out’ or excluded by default, regardless of artistic merit.
More complex still, some artists from diverse backgrounds describe feeling constrained by the very identities that enabled access.
The counter-argument: an overdue correction
It’s essential to acknowledge that for many, these boxes are not barriers but long-overdue open doors. For decades, Australian art defaulted to white, male and Eurocentric norms. Without formal mechanisms, advocates argue, the system would inevitably revert to privilege, networks and scale.
The diversification of funding has played a central role in bringing First Nations art to the forefront of Australia’s cultural identity, generating some of the most innovative and internationally respected work the country has produced. Crucially, many First Nations funding decisions are now made under First Nations creative control, removing the ‘white curator’ as gatekeeper – a shift widely recognised as both necessary and just.
However, this also creates a high-stakes environment where artists must continually prove cultural authenticity to their peers, introducing a different, more intimate form of box-ticking.
Conditional diversity: the Sabsabi case
In the visual arts, these dynamics are particularly visible. Major institutions are now routinely scrutinised through the lens of representation, and in many ways this has transformed Australian galleries for the better. Programming increasingly reflects the complexity of contemporary Australia.
Yet the flip side is a growing sense of pigeonholing. Artists from diverse backgrounds frequently report being valued primarily for work that speaks directly to their identity. Once you tick the ‘migrant experience’ box, the market often expects you to perform it indefinitely.
The 2024-25 controversy surrounding Lebanese-Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi and the rescinding of his Venice Biennale invitation remains a raw nerve. For many, it crystallised the system’s contradictions: diversity is welcomed, but only when it remains culturally ‘safe’. When an artist’s perspective becomes politically uncomfortable, the box can be abruptly revoked.
Read: Creative Australia back-pedals on 2026 Venice Biennale selection
The fallout suggested that much of the equity achieved to date is conditional – a curated diversity that stops short of the truly transgressive. And more recently this year, we witnessed Adelaide Writers Festival do a similar back-pedal over its programming of Randa Abdel-Fattah.
How box-ticking reshapes the arts more broadly
Beyond the bank balance of grants, box-ticking has embedded itself in how art is produced, cast, published and taught. It has shifted from an administrative hurdle to a cultural gatekeeper, influencing who appears on stage, whose stories are published and what students learn.
In theatre and screen, the question has moved from who can play a role to who is allowed to tell a story. While this has corrected long-standing practices of whitewashing, it has also created new constraints. Actors increasingly feel confined to playing versions of their own biography.
In publishing, the equivalent mechanism is the sensitivity read. Publishers, wary of backlash, often reject or heavily edit work that crosses perceived identity boundaries. At the same time, writers from diverse backgrounds report being published primarily when their work centres trauma, migration or cultural struggle, rather than genre, humour or experimentation.
Read: Sensitivity readers: why do we need them?
At governance level, boards and executive teams face pressure to appoint a small number of diverse professionals. For First Nations and other underrepresented creatives, this often results in burnout, as individuals are expected to represent entire communities while simultaneously fulfilling demanding leadership roles.
The compliance trap
By 2026, box-ticking has evolved beyond funding criteria into a moral and ethical framework shaping everyday cultural operations. The emphasis has shifted from artistic excellence toward cultural safety and authentic representation.
The most significant way this plays out is in the energy of the work. Because Australia’s arts sector is highly centralised – with a small number of funders, institutions and decision-makers – the social cost of ‘getting it wrong’ is high.
And, because everyone is acutely aware that missteps can have lasting professional consequences, the work can become predictable. Instead of art that is wild, offensive, confusing or genuinely disruptive, we often get art that is correct.
The sector is unquestionably more inclusive than it was a decade ago. But it is also more surveilled. We have traded a ‘Wild West’ of inequity for a ‘Walled Garden’ of compliance. For many, this is a welcome exchange. For others, the walls are beginning to feel restrictive.
Who is left outside?
Yes, there is a palpable feeling among many Australian artists that if you don’t ‘fit the box’, you are essentially invisible to the current funding and institutional apparatus.
This sentiment has moved from a quiet grumble in studio spaces to a central tension in the national arts debate. Often described as a ‘Compliance Culture’, it has manifest three distinct groups that often find themselves on the margins:
The default outsider
A cohort of mid-career, non-marginalised artists – often white, able-bodied or urban-based – who feel aged out or coded out of the system. While open categories still exist, success rates can be as low as 12%, making priority streams statistically more viable.
The wrong-kind-of-diverse artist
Perhaps more surprisingly, many artists within priority categories feel the boxes are too narrow. Credit for identity often appears contingent on making work about that identity, leading to pressure to perform heritage or struggle to satisfy peer assessors.
The administratively excluded
Perhaps the most significant barrier in 2026 is bureaucratic literacy. Navigating dense guidelines, KPIs and impact matrices favours artists who are also skilled administrators, or those who can afford professional support.
A messy middle, not a final destination
So, is box-ticking limiting Australian art? The answer isn’t a simple yes or no. We are in a ‘messy middle’ – using blunt bureaucratic tools to address deeply human problems of exclusion and power.
Think of box-ticking as a bridge: a necessary structure to move from systemic bias toward genuine equity. But a bridge is not a destination. The risk is becoming so focused on the mechanics of fairness that we forget why art exists at all.
True equity should not require artists to collapse themselves into pre-defined categories. Identity should be a starting point, not the sole reason someone is in the room.
Many in the sector are now calling for a post-compliance era – one with enough structural safety to allow real risk: the freedom to offend, to be obscure, to be silent or to pursue the purely aesthetic. Whether the sector is mature enough for this shift remains an open question.
The challenge for the next decade is not to stop ticking boxes, but to ensure the boxes no longer shape the work itself. Until then, we’ll keep filling out the forms.
