The latest edition of Platform Papers features Shooting Through: Australian Film and the Brain Drain, an article by Keith Gallasch.
Are most artists bottom feeders, scavenging the leftovers of the major organisations, the arts omnivores? Most live at the bottom end of the ‘small-to-medium sector’ of the arts hierarchy, yet they produce the most innovative and relevant work. So writes Keith Gallasch, in this study of the Australia Council’s declined interest in the new. Ten years ago the Council was active in support of emerging forms. This year, in a leap back to the future, it dismantled the New Media and Community Development boards, catering to its most vital sectors.
It’s time to rethink the Australia Council, he says, to make it less a grant-processing machine and more a spur to creative innovation and relevance. ‘After thirty years of development surely the arts are sufficiently mature to embrace this?’