Stories tell culture, connecting identity with place : Australian cultural policy and collective creativity

Abstract

The convergence of art and culture within Australian cultural policy disguises conflicting and preferred meanings ascribed to key terms such as 'Culture' and 'Community'. Arguments for funding the arts tend to support programs that express a universalising script of a commonly shared Australian national identity. This study has recorded and analysed interviews with six arts/cultural policy managers and eleven creative practitioners to assess the impact of Australian cultural policy. The study concludes that Australian cultural policy discourse is prone to ambiguous and preferred meanings that legitimate public funding for art and cultural programs. The thesis argues that current cultural policy aims to grow the economy with a creative industries strategy while the community cultural development model is designed to build social capital. The two approaches are not always consistent in their aims and outcomes. The Australia Council's community arts programs are founded on cultural democratic ideals, advocating ordinary people's right to engage in creative expressions of Australian identity. A founding principle for funding the community arts is intended to promote cultural pluralism. However this approach has contributed to the prevailing view that the sector privileges the cultural fringes at the expense of the wider Australian community. The thesis tracks how funding for the community arts has devolved to local government to voluntarily plan and manage community cultural development even as state and federal governments continue to assert influence in local and regional arts and cultural programming. There is also the expectation that local government must demonstrate expanded understanding of culture as an integration of social ideals and economic objectives. The research method deployed by the thesis encourages participants to tell their stories. Consequently, storytelling emerges as a critical creative method and practice that can disrupt and renew idealised images of Australian cultural identity. The thesis concludes that there is a general consensus based on the interview data that culture does not need to be mandated by government. As local government continues to rely on key individuals to identify and realise local arts and cultural aspirations, these tend to support idealised expressions of a shared cultural heritage. The consequences are a general resistance to difference in art and cultural practices.

Date of Award	2009
Original language	English