#CreateAustraliasFuture

By: Esther Anatolitis*

This blog is published as part of the #KeepMakingArt campaign. The curated series features voices in the arts/culture, education, and social change sectors to capture the deep thinking and innovation occurring as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

In early April, two old friends and former arts leadership colleagues put their heads together to invent a campaign that could unite and ignite the passions of Australia’s arts sector. #CreateAustraliasFuture had massive impact, with well over a million people engaged. However, I wondered, what did it achieve for Australia’s creative industries at this perilous time?

Because that imperilment is worsening by the day ­– with wildfires to start the year and the COVID-19 pandemic now -  there’s no time to be lost in galvanising our resolve and focusing our advocacy. 

The coronavirus is devastating lives, communities and economies all over the world. From Australia, we look at the US with deep concern and despair, given the fundamentally irresponsible approach the president is taking. That’s hardly surprising given his incompetence, but this time that incompetence is being measured in numbers of deaths – and that’s horrifying. 

Impact of COVID-19 on Arts & Culture

Just as in the US, the cancellations of Australian festivals and events, and the closures of galleries and venues, was making front-page news all over the country well before the first wave of local COVID-19 deaths had hit the headlines. 

Our government has a Bureau of Statistics, and recently they’ve proved what we in the industry already knew: arts and recreation services are by far the worst hit industry so far. Only 47% of businesses are still trading, while most other industries see over 90% of their businesses continue to operate. 

So you’d think that Australia’s government would be scrambling to listen intently to what our experts say is needed right now – but unfortunately, not so. 

The industry has united to let government know that a billion dollars in stimulus will need to be invested in Australia’s $111.7bn creative industries, who represent 6.5% of our economy. That measures announced to date aren’t appropriate for and do not redress the needs of our sector. That unless we act fast, artists and organisations won’t survive to create Australia’s future.

And so we decided to turn that around and challenge politicians to #CreateAustraliasFuture. We wanted to see politicians take that responsibility seriously. Truly taking the time to understand the macroeconomics of Australia’s interdependent industries, as well as the impacts on all Australians of the most debilitating disruption our cultural life has ever known. 

Strategizing for Advocacy

Advocacy is a complex endeavour. I never set out expecting to change someone’s mind or unsettle someone’s politics. To me, advocacy is an ongoing conversation – a compelling one. Success is when you’ve told someone a story from your point of view that’s so persuasive that they feel compelled to tell that story again – whether they agree with you or not. The success of effective advocacy lies in distribution, human distribution, told to you from a trusted source. That story might be your personal experience as an artist, or detailing a work that affected you deeply, or reeling off some astounding statistics – but most importantly: it must be yours. You telling your story in a way that nobody else can.

Social media allows us to do that in ways that reach more people than ever before – but it does have its shortcomings. 

  • Firstly, the social media interface is a flattened one, devoid of your unique character and style. 

  • Secondly, it’s a niche of niches, speaking more and more to people we agree with. 

  • And thirdly, those dastardly algorithms tend to override the priority you place on sources that you value, as well as your attempts to keep engaged with a variety of conflicting viewpoints. 

Compounding those difficulties is the deeply concerning decline in political engagement and trust in democracy that we’re seeing all over the world. It’s far too easy for people to feel as through they’ve just engaged in political activism when all they’ve done is shared a post or clicked to retweet. In fact, our understanding and direct engagement with political processes is in retreat, and so is democracy, as the antics of your president daily attest.   

Advocacy is a slow burn – but right now we need rapid action. So what do we do? It’s a diabolical tension. Unless we invest in that slow burn, what's achieved right now will only benefit a small sector of the arts, a small element of the industry. And so we need to do both. 

Because political disengagement is not an option. It’s understandable that you’d want to be exposed to less and less of what leaders like the U.S. president has to say, because the more you hear, the less you respect and the less you trust. When we disengage, however, we give more power, not less power, to the very people we trust the least. We cannot afford to do that. There is so much at stake. 

Looking Toward the Future

#CreateAustraliasFuture brought together over 130 organisations, uniting for the first time to make the industry’s expectations clear. On all social media platforms, over a million people were engaged. Lord mayors and state ministers brought forward their own arts stimulus packages and quick-response grants for artists, as well as writing directly to the Prime Minister to compel responsible action. Advocates well beyond the arts were engaged, and significant media coverage was achieved. And we’re only just getting started. 

#DontCancelCreativity is the tag we gave for responses to the industry letter to the Prime Minister and all arts and culture politicians in Australia. The best thing that we can do right now is to create and sustain the conditions where artists can keep making art. Above all: #KeepMakingArt. 

Because art creates our future.

*Esther Anatolitis

Esther Anatolitis is Executive Director of NAVA, Deputy Chair of Contemporary Arts Precincts, and one of Australia’s leading advocates for the arts.