BY ANDREW MESSENGER
Andrew Cory sits alone in a small room at the end of the hall. It is crammed with half-a-dozen cubicle-style desks, one of which houses the entire peak body for all Youth Arts organisations in Queensland. He apologises for the mess, telling me that the occupants of the rest of the room have yet to move in. A lot of the established arrangements in Queensland arts have been changing lately.
Andrew is now the Acting Creative Director and sole employee of the more than 20-year old organisation Youth Arts Queensland. They’ve recently been moved out of their old office, though they still have a place in the massive, gorgeous Judith Wright Centre. YAQ is actually lucky to still have premises at all: their old, larger office is too expensive nowadays. There have been job cuts, too. Working just four days a week, Andrew provides advice for the entire artistic community of a state the size of Western Europe. It is a metaphor for all of Queensland Arts: the bottom of the political pile – the lowest priority, an ideological enemy of the government.
“We were almost entirely funded by Arts Queensland – the (State) government – so the cuts for us were fairly catastrophic,” Andrew tells us.
“The effect on the sector as a whole is quite significant. Organisations like Backbone Youth Arts, Contact Inc., and Vulcana Arts Link are severely stressed.”
Youth Arts Queensland is suffering no less than any of them. YAQ lost around $108,000 of State Government funding – that’s 100 per cent of it.
“One of the realities we’re looking at is amalgamating with another organisations, just to keep the kind of core aims and services we do alive.”
In October last year, Arts Queensland – the State Government organisation dedicated to funding Queensland’s arts sector – announced its triennial funding for the years 2014-2017. Fifteen Queensland arts organisations lost all or almost all of their state government funding, which for many is the only income they regularly receive. The news came by phone just six weeks before the new funding regime was set to begin. While the government insists that neither youth arts nor small and medium arts organisations were targeted, almost all of the $12.4 million funding cuts came out of their tiny budgets while many of the larger organisations actually increased levels of funding.
How do you survive as a youth arts organisation when you lose 100 per cent of your government funding? For Vulcana Womens’ Circus, the answer was private donation. In the six or so weeks between the announcement of their defunding and the start of this year, the organisation managed to raise their target of $50,000 they say they need in order to pay rent. Another organisation that has seen success with private donation is the Queensland Literary Award, which has kept itself alive since its high-profile defunding two years ago.
The Queensland Youth Orchestra has never had trouble raising private donation either. QYO administrator Geoff Rossbrook says their organisation has been barely affected at all, despite a 100 per cent cut.
“We’ve had to cancel at least one of our proposed regional tours, but the rest of our program remains the same.”
This is exactly the opposite of what was supposed to happen. Arts Minister Ian Walker sent out a press release to announce the new round of funding. He implied that these defunded organisations were inefficient, saying:
“The organisations which received funding had strong commercial business models and will use government investment to leverage other funding and grow their business.”
Obviously, the ones that didn’t receive funding didn’t have those things.
The government also argues that, during a period of austerity, it must cut back all spending in order to remain solvent. Many other areas of government have also seen major cuts, including nurses, public servants, and Arts Queensland itself.
Not all organisations have been the beneficiaries of generosity like Vulcana Womens’ Circus and QYO. Some have found themselves bound into a vicious cycle: they don’t have the resources to run a public funding campaign in order to get more resources. Instead of forcing bloated arts organisations to innovate or to broaden their source of revenue, the State Government has destroyed their ability to do so.
Andrew Cory says that private charity is overwhelmed.
“There were two private foundations that we wanted to apply to, when we found about the cuts. We submitted one, and we’re still waiting to hear if it’s come through and that’s just basically to help fund a metropolitan young artists mentoring initiative.”
“The second application went to a private foundation – a fairly well known one. They pretty much said to us straight out – there’s no point in you applying. Not in any kind of mean sense, but in the sense that they were overwhelmed with people looking for support. You can imagine if all but one youth arts company were defunded in Brisbane, all those people were looking for support as well.”
The loss of State Government funding has also worked against them in another way. Without any source of long-term established core revenue, they are perceived as a risky investment. With their long-term viability very much in question, no charity wants to be left propping them up without additional support from other sources. YAQ finds itself in this unenviable position.
Topology – “Australia’s most surprising music organisation” according to its website – is another organisation that has lost all its funding. It is a Queensland-based, highly eclectic small ensemble that regularly premieres modern compositions both on tour and in sold-out concerts in Brisbane. It also works closely with schools to educate a new generation of classical musicians. Their violinist Christa Powell says:
“It would have been really good if we had more than eight weeks’ notice to lose our funding. That’s really the bottom line of how cruel it actually was.”
“To have six months’ notice, 12 months’ notice, would have been helpful.”
“When Australia Council cut people off their books, basically they give them 12 months’ notice and you then have time to find sponsors, fund a donor, find other ways of getting core operational funding.”
The real cost for Topology has been an inability to offer certainty to their staff. Unlike private and federal money, which often pay for specific concert series or a tour lasting a few weeks, State Government triennial funding pays for core staff for a three year period. Without it, they’ve found it very difficult to offer certainty to their back-of-house administrative staff. Without them, of course, they couldn’t exist.
Nonetheless, Christa says they have been able to keep going, thanks in part to Federal Government assistance.
“We have had a little assistance with the transitional stage. We’re lucky in that we have Australia Council core funding – some other organisations don’t.”
She is also worried about the message this sends to the general community.
“(The government’s decision) is sending a message out there about the value of arts in our society. I feel insulted when 80 million dollars can be given to the racing industry and 12 million dollars is cut from small organisations.”
Christa reckons this this is more than just a funding problem. To her, the government’s attitude is the fundamental problem.
“I don’t think it’s just to do with the arts funding cuts, I think it’s to do with the general climate of the way people view the arts and the importance of the arts. The other important thing is who they’ve cut.”
Money was probably always going to be cut from arts funding. If all organisations lost money in equal proportion, that would have been harmful enough. But to specifically remove funding from the groups most vital to the long-term growth of the sector and responsible for skill development and education, was a huge blow. Bigger organisations like Opera Queensland and the Queensland Ballet that have kept or increased their levels of funding may, at times, spend some resources providing cheap educational concerts for schools; but it is not their primary role – and nor should it be.
If some or many of these youth arts organisations close down, there isn’t an alternative ready to provide the same services. The specialised, one-on-one assistance provided to developing artists by YAQ is irreplaceable. Artistic skill development isn’t an area that is easily privately monetized through fees, either: the stereotype of poor artistic students unable to pay the rent is not so very far from fact. Without government funding the simple fact is that many of these resources are going to degrade, leaving Queensland arts poorer in the long run.
So what does this mean for the future? Andrew Cory is worried for Queensland’s reputation.
“Queensland was the leading state in this country for youth arts, especially since 2000. Queensland was leading the nation in terms of youth arts policy,” he says.
“A bad outcome would be that people just leave. People go to a city or a place where, as artists, they are respected and their contribution is engaged with, as opposed to not listened to.”
Brain drain is a real threat, at least according to the Queensland artistic community. Both the artistic community and ALP members of parliament like Jackie Trad warned about it last year. A mass flight from Queensland has happened before: in the 1970s and 1980s, young Queensland artists were essentially forced to leave by the lack of resources. While some forms of Queensland arts actually flourished – a number of punk bands like the Saints and the Go Betweens, for instance – they did so without any local assistance of any kind. The Saints published their first CD in London. Other young artists simply left. Are we facing that same scenario again?
“There is an atmosphere of fear among arts companies in Queensland that are funded,” Andrew says.
“No-one is willing to be vocal, because this threat of defunding – real or otherwise – hangs over our heads. That’s a shame.”
There is one bright side, though. Since the early 1990s the government has had a certain degree of control over the arts sector, through their funding of it. Andrew Cory thinks arts funding cuts might actually radicalise the industry.
“There’s a lot more militancy as artists (without being tied to government funding). What you might see is what we had in the last time we had such a government/arts sector divide – in the ‘80s, the emergence of a different kind of underground which has a sharper political voice, a nothing-to-lose voice. That’s always going to be interesting for any community because that’s a provocative voice.”
Who knows where any arts organisation will be in a year’s time? Long-established giants have been brought low. Even organisations that got funding have been put on notice that their funding is going to gradually decline over the next three years, when this decision will be up for review. Nobody has any idea which organisations will still survive to reapply for the next round of funding in three years’ time.
Until then, Youth Arts Queensland is going to limp on desperately trying to maintain needed services, without resources, without adequate staffing and without the respect they deserve.
Image: Wikimedia Commons.
