The issues
The arts have a long tradition of shaping our society and have an important part to play in our future. They help define and negotiate who we are, what we believe in, what we value and what we aspire to.
In the 2024 Federal budget for the arts – Revive – was $949.5m over 4 years. However, this fund does not fully address the immediate challenges for the arts industry, particularly skills and training, business recovery, rebuilding financial reserves, or practical actions to support safe workplaces.
Our plan
- Better fund small and medium-sized festivals to cover rising costs or perhaps government-underwritten insurance
- Restore funding for Arts training colleges
- Resume funding for Craft Australia
- Set music quotas of say 25% for Australian content on commercial radio and streaming platforms such as Spotify, and Apple Music
- Remove the 1% cap on what recording artists can receive from radio for their sound recording
- Value and promote Australia’s unique Indigenous arts culture, voice and stories
- Establish an industry award under the Fair Work Commission for minimum pay rates for the arts and cultural sector
- A basic income support scheme of ~$600/week for up to 5,000 individual artists, writers, dancers, theatre-makers and filmmakers
- A program for employing artists in residence in schools, art centres, libraries, etc.
- Tax deductions for philanthropic support for individual artists
The evidence
Since Covid, fewer Australians are engaging with live arts events, just over half of music festivals made a profit in 2023-24 and several major festivals had to be canceled due to increased costs and a general lack of confidence.
An ABC survey found 55 percent of musicians thought about leaving the music industry and now, the vast majority of musicians work outside the industry.
Funding for Arts8, a collective of creative arts training colleges including the Australian Ballet School, the Australian National Academy of Music, the Australian Film Television and Radio School, and the Australian Youth Orchestra, has gone backwards, falling below the level it was at 10 years ago.
Artists as workers
Artists and arts workers are underpaid and undervalued. 61% of visual artists make less than $10,000 per year from their creative work and their incomes are declining.
A survey by Creative Australia of 600 professional artists in 2021-22 showed their average income for creative work was a mere $23,200/year. This makes it difficult for artists to earn a living or to have success in making art and developing ideas and imagination.
It is worth noting that 74% of artists hold a university degree compared to 36% in the general workforce.
Our income support scheme would require artists to fulfill two of three criteria:
- have earned an income from the arts for at least two years, have an existing body of creative work and be a member of a recognised art body. For this investment, the annual cost would be ~$1.6m
An ongoing program for employing artists in residence in schools, art centres, libraries, universities, hospitals, councils and government departments would have significant benefits.
Live music
Minister Burke promised quotas for Australian music on commercial radio and streaming services but has not so far delivered.
“Every year there are fewer and fewer songs being added to the great Australian songbook,” John Watson, Australian Artist Manager. “We’ve lost a lot of the infrastructure like smaller labels, smaller curation – like community radio, music magazines, even venues – and now algorithmic curation is driving music discovery more than those human, communal projects,” James Clark – Digital Rights Watch.
“We need to see a bigger investment in public sector content, in the ABC, funding for community media, and ensuring there are vibrant public spaces out there. These [digital platforms] capture audiences and then they capture creatives – we do need to look at how to break down their power.”
Authors
The average annual income for authors is ~$18k and, while there are numerous grants for writers, just 20-35% are successful for those that apply. On Artificial Intelligence, ASA says “The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”
Craft
We claim Australia is still a nation that can make things, however, the important role of craft was absorbed into the visual arts following the defunding of Craft Australia in 2011. The focus on craft has since withered and with it the many skills required in working with materials like clay, glass, wood, metal and fabric. Craft is also not currently considered a profession or a trade.
Teaching art
Where once there were full 4-year degree courses in teaching art and craft for secondary school, the qualification is now just a subject in a broader teaching degree, meaning fewer opportunities for developing the many skills art and craft has to offer and less depth in fine arts.
Artists living wage
If we truly seek, as the existing National Cultural Policy would have us do, to ensure that “artists and arts workers have career structures that are long-term and sustainable, supported by vocational pathways” and that “creative talent is nurtured through fair remuneration, industry standards and safe and inclusive work cultures”, then we need to pay people to be artists.
Ireland has for some years had policies such as income tax exemptions for artists. In addition to this, it recently began a basic income pilot paying €325 a week (~$AU530) to 2,000 eligible artists and arts workers for a period of 3 years (https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemployment and redundancy/employment support schemes/basic income arts.html).
The digital arts
As a matter of urgency, the Government should make a significant investment in a specific Digital Arts Fund, either under the auspices of Screen Australia or the Creative Australia, to facilitate;
• the development and distribution of Australian arts in the digital industry;
• promote new revenue streams for live-performance artists;
• stimulate employment growth in the creative arts industry; and
• enable the best of Australian artistic achievement to be accessed globally.
References