Cirrus@Austlit

'In this paper Alison Croggon, one of Australia’s most insightful cultural critics, looks back from the days when the daily broadsheet newspapers were unrivalled in authority, to the collapse of the print media and opening of a free market for digital public opinion. The dramatic downsizing of the Fairfax empire’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age hit arts journalism badly and coincided with the rise of arts-oriented websites across Australia. Croggon sees the demise of the old criticism as a loss of power and received wisdom but also an opportunity to engage artists, critics and audiences in conversations of global collaboration and reference. With this breakdown of institutional criticism, which, she says, had latterly focussed on art as a commodity, came the opportunity rethink our assumptions about what critical responses to art might be. It has offered a chance to open the door to new ways of thinking, a way of enriching both the communities around art and the process of making art itself.' (Publication summary)

"How to define the jobbing actor? Not the handful who find fame and fortune and power. The ones that audiences pay to see […] the vast majority of actors, the ones that struggle to stay employed. The ones for whom acting is, variously, a hobby, a job, a career, a vocation. It calls to you and you’re compelled to follow."

In this, another of Platform Papers’ The Professionals, actor Lex Marinos shares the excitement of his initiation into the arts boom of the 1970s, the extraordinary demands his work has made on his body, mind and family; and his reflections on a life well lived. Marinos is a graduate of the University of NSW and from 1972 was one of the actors that established Sydney’s New Wave. He quickly became a regular in TV comedy on ABC and SBS, As an Australian-born Greek he played undefined ‘ethnic’ stereotypes until in 1980 he was cast as Bruno, an Italian-Australian, in the TV comedy Kingswood Country (1980-84) and won the fight to use his Australian accent. He was director of the multicultural festival Carnivale 1996- 99; and executive producer of the Yeperenye Festival in Alice Springs for the Centenary of Federation. Between 2006–14 he worked as an actor with Big hArt touring regional festivals.

Marinos kept the jobs going in comedy, as a sports commentator, TV and festival director, ethnic affairs and community advisor, and host of multicultural celebrations. A lasting record of his talent is his acclaimed role as Manolis in the ABC TV series The Slap (2011). In 1994 he received the OAM for services to the performing arts.' (Publication Summary)

'Kim Dalton, OAM, is a long-respected broadcast and public policy professional, who as CEO of the Australian Film Commission from 1999 overhauled its development programs and led the policy debate around Australian content on television. As Director of ABCTV (2006–13), he moved the corporation into the digital era, and now looks critically at the present state of the ABC and broadcasting. Over the last sixty years, he writes, Australia had developed an effective public policy framework that strategically connected Australian broadcasters, screen content and an independent creative and production sector to produce it. 

'Yet today the ABC operates outside this framework. Using its status as a statutory authority to eschew transparency, accountability and engagement with public policy objectives, the ABC now pursues an internal agenda and its own priorities. Governance is lacking; new measures are needed to return the ABC to its chartered place as a contributor to Australia’s screen culture.' (Publication summary)

'Looking back at the conclusions of Lyndon Terracini’s Platform Paper in 2007, A Regional State of Mind, Lindy Hume finds a restless giant. Through towns and communities she traces the rise of a more assertive, even radical ambition. a rebellious counter-urban movement ready to make a profound impact on the national culture.

'As an artist living in regional Australia, she finds it an ideal place to develop new performance work, and argues that more flow and greater integration between the regional and metropolitan arts ecosystems could, over time, reshape Australia’s cultural identity.' (Publication summary)

'The stage designer’s role is both within and without a performance company, a unique observer of the work in creation and a welcome problem solver, multi-tasker, the possessor of the ‘design solution’ when things don’t go as planned, writes Stephen Curtis. The designer’s collaborative role could be a model to others.

'He chooses three stage productions to give a picture of his work methods including the much acclaimed The Secret River (play by Andrew Bovell based on the novel by Kate Grenville), and concludes that today’s designers are redefining their role and reshaping their careers through specialisation and focus on form over content as a way of exploring and understanding the work they interpret.' (Publication summary)

'In the 1990s, the ‘creative industries’ was a new concept aimed at mobilising the energies of culture in support of a new kind of economy: entrepreneurial, multicultural, youthful and digitally savvy ‘Culture’ moved to the top table of policy-making, and a revolution in Higher Education was proclaimed, with ‘creativity’ a central resource. Yet, only twenty years later the Australian Government has launched an innovation program in which culture and the cultural industries are nowhere to be seen.

'This Platform Paper charts the rise and fall of the concept in Australia, and argues that while undoubtedly a victim of its own hubristic rhetoric, its rapid disappearance leaves a hole in policy-making that those in the cultural sector ignore at their peril. Justin O’Connor outlines what a new agenda for the cultural economy might look like, ‘after’ the Creative Industries.' (Publication summary)

'What is art? What is culture? And what value do we place upon it today? Katharine Brisbane looks back on our changing culture and the way public subsidy since 1968 has built massive opportunities for our artists, performers and those who have built an industry around them. She also traces the divisions that have grown between the community and the arts sector, and the moral divide between art and commerce. She concludes that the promised pursuit of excellence has been fulfilled and exhausted; and proposes a way to salvage its achievements by throwing open our major institutions to public investment and private enterprise, releasing creativity into new directions and reconsidering how we might together build an inclusive cultural environment.' (Publication summary)

'Australian audiences have an unquenchable thirst to musical theatre. It is big show business. But as another revival of Les Mis or Wicked flows back to the originators and investors abroad, the local, indigenous musical is virtually extinct. Here we have no shortage of start-ups, and composers and performers of world calibre; but rarely are they given the opportunity to develop a large-scale work. What we need is a proactive, sustainable national funding and development program that will support that talent right through to a commercial market readiness . With that backing, writes John Senczuk, we could conquer the world.' (Publication summary)

'As the National Curriculum gears up to offer fresh opportunities to teachers and students, our arts institutions are considering what a national arts curriculum will mean for them. Arts and education strategists Naomi Edwards and Meg Upton have been studying the new landscape and urge a radical rethink of arts companiesa education programs and their purpose. At present they are largely aimed at performing required works and increasing audiences. The opportunity is there to reposition their company at the centre of innovation and social value by placing the participation of young people at the core of their business.' (Publication summary)

'Lauren Carroll Harris' treatise on the state of distribution in Australia for locally produced feature films is a timely and provocative analysis of the existing structures and a powerful argument for adjustment and change in this post digital world.

'Her reflections on a distribution led industry potentially replacing a production development led industry need to be seriously debated given our recent change of government and new management and key personnel at Screen Australia.' (Anthony I. Ginnane, Producer)

'Mainstream theatre in Australia is very white. Too white. Why are we falling behind the rest of the theatrical world in seeing complex diverse casts onstage in our major theatre companies? When you ask this question of theatre practitioners, an awful discourse of blame begins: agents blame casting directors, drama schools blame 'the industry', everyone blames artistic directors. Talking about racism in Australia is difficult in the climate of indignant denial. Our vocabulary and strategies for discussing it publicly have become inadequate. ' (Publisher's blurb)