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News | SCOPE for artists
| Art Start Opportunities | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Career fertiliser for budding artists Making the move from studying in the arts to building a professional career in the arts industry can be a challenge. That’s why the ArtStart program, managed by the Australian Council for the Arts, has been created to give financial assistance of up to $10,000 to graduates, helping them make the challenging transition. Visit www.artstartgrant.com.au and see if an ArtStart grant could be for you. The fourth round of ArtStart funding opens in January 2011. Grants are available for artists in the visual arts, hybrid and media arts, performing arts, music, literature or in community arts and cultural development. Artstart can fund a career or small business development strategy that might include: * creating a portfolio of work * marketing yourself * setting up studio space * paying for business advice * disability or cultural awareness training * tools of trade * mentorship * and much more There’s no age limit for applicants to ArtStart; you just need to have completed (or be about to complete) eligible arts training at Certificate IV level or above in the three years prior to the ArtStart application closing date. Find out more on the Art Start website - www.artstartgrant.com.au | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Towards a National Cultural Policy Submission | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SCOPE for Artists: Supporting productivity, employment and creativity – and leveraging creative capital Towards a national cultural policy Australia exists as one of the most diverse and culturally rich societies in the world. As home to the oldest living Indigenous culture, and a settler society made up of people from around two hundred different countries, it is extraordinary that to date there has not been a national policy to articulate the cultural fabric, reflection and vision of the nation. Acknowledging that culture is at the heart of a nation and that the arts are at the heart of that culture, the Australian arts professions (writers, performers, visual art makers, poets, new media designers, film makers, as so on) have proven exceptionally good at expressing the myriad ways in which we connect to the world, change within the world, and envision our future. Our artists are essentially the collective of individuals who examine the cultural dimensions of our nation, in all its intricacies and possibilities. In centuries and millennia to come, as today becomes history, it will be the art of the nation that will best tell our stories and provide future generations with the valued information about the journey of the Australian nation and its people. Arts as part of a broader cultural policy framework The role of government in framing a national cultural policy that speaks to the world as well as its own citizens is critical to the task of galvanising a sense of global participation, cultural connectedness and social cohesion. The natural extension of this is the role of government in supporting the creative life of the nation. Whilst the culture of a nation is an immensely broad concept, taking in the full range of values, traditions and lifestyles, the arts have an equally immense range of creative layers and broad application. The development of a national cultural policy that encompasses the arts should therefore be framed in a manner that allows it to seamlessly find presence and purpose in other key policy areas such as innovation and productivity, health, education and employment, and international trade and public diplomacy. An arts framework that flows from a national cultural policy should likewise have relevance across the public policy field. The Role of Artists The arts’ greatest resource is the people who create the art. Support for the arts and support for artists are one and the same, and the pivotal role of artists must be at the centre of any model – or suite of models – that supports a nation’s artistic life. Artists make a significant contribution to the Australian quality of living, the economy and the legacy of our society over time. They contribute to urban renewal, liveable cities, entertainment, social well-being, training, curriculum development, learning outcomes, enhancing new products and services, graphic design, events, and historical record. Most importantly they provide the platform for the nation to express itself and its perspective on the world. It is not only critical to support the individuals within the arts sector, who, through their commitment and significant personal investment provide us with a continuous stream of vibrant and productive art works, but there is a strong argument to strategically support them to develop their capacity to plan and manage their careers as artists. This focuses us on two of the most challenging and key objectives of the arts sector itself – sustainability and growth. In recent decades, the case for building, maintaining and growing a sustainable arts sector has been well argued. Grants programs, revised funding models, Federal/State partnerships, strategic initiatives to build strength in management, innovative design in development and marketing, skills building, and the access and mobilisation of networks within and between artistic, social and business structures have been most successful in contributing to the rich vibrancy and diversity of the arts in Australia today. Yet the capacity for the arts to really achieve sustainability to a level where the whole sector can be confident of its future remains a major challenge. The skills of those who enrich the capacity and productivity of the arts industry most – the professional artists who create the art – must be fully optimised by programs that maximise the sustainability aspects of their careers. Sustaining a productive artistic career A ‘living, breathing’ sustainable career in the arts is one that: • activates practical and focussed investment of time, ideas, and resources • is instilled with, and demonstrates a culture of sound planning and foreseeable outcomes • self-directs and contributes to the development and vibrancy of the nations arts profile • is rewarded and recognised for its value in the nation’s cultural heart Regardless of whether the artist is working in a large, medium, or small company, or completely independently (the position that most artists are in at any given time) it is the individual who has made the commitment to develop and maintain their practice, and provide the highest quality art possible – art that we both celebrate and are inspired by. Essentially artists run micro-businesses. They need to gather the resources (financial and structural) to enable them to train, experiment, and create great art. Supporting artists to be able to plan well, envision their professional pathways and achieve their goals is an important and sensible strategy that provides short and long term assurances to the artist. Yes, artists need money – but not just money: they need the skills to operate in a constantly changing environment and take the risks necessary to define, and re-define their art form boundaries. Sustainability is the key most critical aspect of being an artist. Growth of artistic outcomes within and beyond the sector The growth and production of artists’ careers is synonymous with the growth and production of artistic endeavour, thus keeping our cultures strong and open to change. Artistic product that reflects, engages and inspires our communities is the result of the artist’s capacity to relate to a world that is not static and not predictable, and where meaning is completely open to an individual’s own values and sense of identity. However, the growth of an artist’s practice and productivity will be determined by his/her ability to increase opportunities, build skills and increase their profiles, and this is relevant from their emergence as young artists and throughout their entire careers. Young artists are constantly seeing the world in news ways, and with new technical platforms of communication becoming ubiquitous, young artists are, and will continue to be, the key drivers of new forms. With initiatives like ARTSTART and the national arts mentoring scheme coming online, there will be an added and significant boost to the art produced by young people. But artists do not simply begin careers – they are continually evolving and there is need for building a lifelong capacity to plan and manage an artistic career. Without a strategic approach to the career management of artists we are likely to discourage young people looking at the arts as long term careers, and in so doing, lose artistic/creative memory, and lose out on valuable mentoring and development opportunities. SCOPE for Artists SCOPE for Artists is one organisation that is focussed on the professional development and career management of artists. Launched in 2006 as a strategic initiative of the Australia Council in partnership with the Australian Sports Commission and Ausdance National, SCOPE became an organisation in 2009 and has provided career management services for 99 artists to date. The program has received just over $1m of Australia Council funding over the past 4 years which has supported the administration of the program, a team of career counsellors, and a professional development fund. The success of the program has become evident from both the significant positive results and the growing demand from more artists to become a part of SCOPE for Artists. Already, the benefits gained from these artists’ relatively short participation in SCOPE’s tailor-made career management program are evident. The program addresses both short and long-term capacity, to not only grow and sustain an artistic career, but to capture, transfer and adapt the creative capital of the individual artist to other areas of work and productivity. SCOPE for Artists is without peer internationally. It is unique in the world and is the first (and only) career management program that addresses the indicators of artistic sustainability from the ground up – from the artists as individuals to economically viable producers of artistic product, valued the world over. As the initial investment has delivered on its objectives, and continues to enable benefits for the artists who have participated in the program in its first years, it is becoming very clear that the investment has the capacity to achieve considerable economies of scale and reach many more practising artists across all art forms. SCOPE for Artists and the 2010 Intergenerational Report The Australian Government’s 2010 Intergenerational Report identifies increased productivity as the key response and solution to the projected negative effects of Australia’s ageing population. The report notes the need for productivity to grow at a rate of 2% GDP per person per annum over the next 40 years, in order to sustain a healthy population and the capacity for government to fund services. This target is above today’s percentage rate and will demand innovative (possibly unorthodox) policy instruments to provide new foundations for a changing demographic. SCOPE for Artists contributes directly and positively to the per person ratio of GDP by increasing artists' productivity, creating viable career options and sustainability and maximising returns on investment in their training. The 2010 Intergenerational Report also identifies the need to examine the stock of resources that builds a nation’s society and supports the well-being of that society into the future. The artist plays a major role in renewal and sustainability of these resources. Artistic endeavour, appreciation and engagement have been shown to have significant benefits to communities, including those of disadvantage in terms of social inclusion, economic development and cultural freedom. SCOPE for Artists brings the arts and its practitioners into this futures planning by identifying existing skills, experience and networks, building on artists' transferable skills, addressing issues of unemployment and under-employment and increasing artists’ earning capacity. The program clearly demonstrates the value and capacity of artists’ professional profiles, which is in fact far broader than is presently acknowledged by decision-makers – and occasonally even by artists themselves. Capturing and capitalising on creative capital It should be noted that as part of the government’s Education Revolution, the arts have been located as one of the seven key learning areas in the National Curriculum, an important acknowledgement that the creative capital of the arts is a key driver in the nation’s future, worthy of investment and essential to long-term planning. However, creative capital is an area that has to date been somewhat neglected by public research and other public policy agendas. In contrast, this critical resource is something that has indeed been recognised, prioritised and capitalised by private industry which strongly promotes the necessity for high levels of creativity as being of paramount importance to the success of a business. The recently commissioned report, ‘Powering Ideas: An innovation agenda for the 21st century’, (Australian Government 2009) identifies the need to instigate and implement a stronger innovation system that complements and supplements key areas of public policy, in order to improve coordination, collaboration, skills and research capacity. The capacity for the arts to apply its creative capital, to collaborate and to contribute within a national innovation system, is an exciting and frontier shifting proposal that should be given serious consideration. In this respect, individual artists have a potentially key role in the nation’s aims of innovation and productivity, and given the skills, access and developed capacity, artists will contribute to these agendas in a way that has not been developed to date. The benefits stand to be considerable. Summary SCOPE for Artists believes that supporting and strategically investing in the individual artist will serve to build a stronger, healthier arts sector and in turn a stronger, healthier and more productive society, rich in cultural content and expressive vitality. The framing and contextualising of a national cultural policy that places artistic endeavour at its core should embrace the value and potential of the individual artist as one of the central tenets of a national cultural policy. – Shane Carroll on behalf of the Board of SCOPE for Artists Additional documents: More, E., Carroll. S. and Foss, K., (2009) ‘Knowledge Management and the performing arts industry: the case of Australia’s SCOPE initiative’, Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration, Vol.1, No.1, Emerald Group Publishing Ltd, UK. http://www.apo.org.au/research/case-study-career-development-dance-industry-australias-scope-initiative Throsby, D., (2005) ‘Dance in Australia – a profile’, and Throsby, D. and Hollister, V., (2005) ‘Career transition of professional dancers in Australia’, Australian Dance Council – Ausdance Inc. http://www.ausdance.org.au/resources/publications.html Mills, D. and Brown, P., (2004), .Art and Wellbeing, Australia Council for the Arts. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Securing Career Opportunities and Professional Employment (SCOPE) program success. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SCOPE supports, dancers, physical theatre and circus professionals in their career development through the provision of services in counselling, mentoring and professional development, to enhance life-long employment outcomes within the arts sector. SCOPE is funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and the dedication and commitment of industry professionals with a tenacious belief in, and recognition of, the issues surrounding the career development of artists in Australia. Subject to future funding, SCOPE career development services will be extended in: • 2012 to musicians (orchestral/symphony/instrumentalist), performance writers (theatre, film and television) and directors (film and television). • 2013 to vocalists (classical and contemporary), actors (theatre, film and television) and directors (theatre). • 2014 to non-performance artists working in technical arts, visual arts and literature. To read about the experiences of SCOPE participants, click on the links below. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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