Working in the arts often means hearing from your friends and colleagues wax lyrical about industry-specific challenges; wild, unconventional new methods or experiments; and everything in between.
We know that experiences are varied and there’s a wealth of untapped insight available, so we formed We Are Creative – a limited series vodcast in partnership with Create NSW, designed to combine our creative journalism fellowship and the opportunity to discuss hot-button issues.
Over the course of three insightful episodes, Richard Watts and a rotating crew of fellowship co-hosts – Daniel Stojkovski, Thomas Sargeant and Carolyn Tunion – chatted with a range of artists, producers, journalists and more to dive deep into the issues facing the sector.
From what it’s like to run a festival through to a look at culturally diverse leadership in the arts, these conversations are in-depth and insightful, and they demonstrate exactly why it’s important to prioritise targeted arts funding and support.
Check out all three episodes of We Are Creative below.
We Are Creative – quick links
Episode 1: The State of the Aussie Festival – Is this the End?
In the wake of SXSW Sydney’s final farewell, the team sat down with Alex Hayes (founder of Clear Hayes) and Alan James (co-founder of Loadin.com) for the first episode of We Are Creative, to discuss how hard the last few years have been for festivals in Australia. Is there scope and appetite for them? Is the value high enough to justify coming all the way down under?
‘One of the big challenges with anything that happens in Australia and Sydney is the tyranny of distance,’ says James. ‘It’s really expensive to bring people over – business class flights, hotel for a week.’
The cost is regarded by many as prohibitive, and without a big name to act as a drawcard, it can be difficult to make the investment worthwhile. But the question remains: are festivals being set up to win in Australia, or is the system working against them?
Episode 2: How to Run a Successful Artist Run Initiative
Artist run initiatives, or ARIs, make a huge amount of difference in the visual arts sector, but they don’t tend to get as much mainstream discussion. In this episode of We Are Creative, the team chat with Luna Wenxin Xu (founding director of Puzzle Gallery) and Tian Zhang (founding co-director of Pari) about how ARIs support emerging artists and contemporary art practices.
‘They provide a really amazing space for people, artists to experiment … to show work, and to maybe develop things or have particular conversations that they can’t have in other spaces,’ says Zhang. ‘Collectivity and collaboration is a very big part of how we operate.’
Funding was called out as the biggest challenge facing ARIs, especially given that many of them are run by volunteers who give their time on top of their regular day job. So how do you run a successful one?
Episode 3: Culturally Diverse Leadership in the Arts – Has the Balance Shifted?
In August 2019, Diversity Arts Australia published Shifting the Balance: Cultural Diversity in Leadership within Australian Arts, Screen and Creative Sectors – a study that found that culturally and linguistically diverse Australians were underrepresented across every leadership role in every cultural sector.
In this episode of We Are Creative, the team chat with Lena Nahlous (CEO of Diversity Arts Australia) and Tessa Leong (Artistic Director of Contemporary Asian Australian Performance) about the impact of that report, and what needs to be done to shift the balance in the right direction.
‘I always talk about how good intentions aren’t enough to ensure sustainability, continuity, and that targets can be really useful because they create accountability,’ says Nahlous.
For Jeong, it’s a question of everyone contributing, not just the lucky few who have seen success. ‘We can’t rely on one or two astonishing artists to bring the rest of us up,’ she says. ‘We need to all structurally change what we’re doing.’
