Donald You mention employment in higher education as a way of supporting 'some' artists but what you do not mention is that education is the source of the problem. .
Subsidizing an economically un-viable artist, by paying him/her to produce/educate additional hundreds of economically un-viable 'artists', is insane. Yet this is exactly what was implemented in the 70s and 80s and it has continued to this day.

Donald Richardson wrote 20 October 2011:

>... is the government looking for a culture policy or an arts policy? ...

The Government is looking for an arts policy which fosters economic activity. I got that impression listening to the Arts Minister's speech and talking to him over coffee at Senator Lundy's Digital Culture Public Sphere a few weeks ago: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/10/revitalizing-regional-australia-with.html

> ... arts market ... commercial galleries, box offices, literary and theatre agents, movie producers, and publishers ...

Yes. Artists should receive basic training in how the market works, so they can derive an income from it, or at least not be exploited by it.

>... true artists operate more like priests and philosophers than business people ...

Priests are paid for spiritual services. Philosophers sell books and teach courses. In his talk on the Paris avant-garde movements last week, Professor McKenzie Wark, pointed out that they were funded by art sales: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/10/revolution-in-over-developed-world.html

>... And the policy should consider allowing artists to participate in a work-for-the-dole type scheme. ...

Yes, but artist's training should give them the skills needed to earn an income, ideally in the arts industry.

As an example, the Australian National Unviersity and the Canberra Institute of Technology have joined to prove training in both the industry and artistic sides of music: http://studyat.anu.edu.au/programs/2150XADMUS;overview.html

Arts will be important in the merged digital economy. As an example of this I bumped into a documentary maker in the the foyer of the National Library of Australia last week. They were lamenting the fact that the Apple iTunes store limited video formats. So I suggested they produce an enhanced e-Book. This allows more flexibility in the formats allowed. It might also allow their work to be seen in a different light.

For those wondering, an "enhanced" e-Book is one which has audio, or video, or some other format in it, apart from text and still images. This is not that hard to do as an "e-book" is essentially just a canned web site, as was discussed at the NLA a few weeks ago: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/09/australias-first-enhanced-ebook.html

tomw
MR Crean is one in a long line of ministers trying to change arts policy into something is in a economic sense, sane.
However the bedrock the system was built upon, 1972-75, was explicit in its anti-market and anti-commercial intentions :

"Until recently the attitude to the encouragement of artists has been that the market itself has operated as the most satisfactory supporter of the artist of ability, and that while it continued to function adequately in this way it was undesirable to interfere with the mechanism by introducing other forms of assistance for artists.
However, it now appears that while this may be true with regard to painters it may not have the same validity when applied to certain other branches of the visual arts such as sculpture, and possibly to the truly ‘avant-garde’ artists of any generation whose work rarely has much initial appeal except perhaps for a limited public."

good luck Mr Cream, good luck.

tomw makes some good points. It’s one thing for government to support arts and culture. Meddling with the ‘market’ is an altogether different proposition. One could almost assert that, if there’s actually a ‘market’, it’s popular culture, not ‘art’.

Commercial galleries aren’t there for people with $50 to spend on brightening up their living room; you go to the local Asian Import Warehouse for that. It’s high-end ‘culture’ for the rich. Until the ‘market’ evolves to the point where COPIES of art can be reproduced under licence, painting & sculpture will remain beyond the reach of all but doctors, lawyers, CEO’s and arts administrators.

There’s a market for theatre: it’s called TV, or The Movies. Live performance works for rock stars; the rest of us can only afford to watch Branagh’s Shakespeare on DVD. Australia simply isn’t a cost-competitive place to produce anything ‘popular’. Actors know to move to Hollywood, Thespians to London; they don’t need Canberra to pay their tickets.

Publishing is different, especially given the advent of e-books. For the next year or three, major publishing houses can still afford to build and sustain a few ‘big names’. There’s a major shift, though, towards smaller, more nimble publishers specialising in genre. They’re the ones in touch with who’s hot and who’s not ... and the fans (aka readers). They don’t pay 40% to distributors, and most use mail order to avoid the 40% discount for retailers. They don’t pulp 30% of each print run. They pay authors 2 to 10 times what the big players offer for royalties, but not as an advance to be earned out. Government has nil interest in ‘em -- they support ‘literary’ projects and ‘literary’ prizes, for which the market is essentially nil anyhow.

Government wants ‘art’ in a museum, not in the hands of the hoi polloi. They support what they think we ought to admire, not what we want. Donald mentioned Bauhaus -- a great model, but in Australia it stopped with dot painting in the NT. Probably a mercy: just imagine KRudd/Gillard’s ‘Building the Arts Revolution’!

Donkeygod

Agree, except for one wee point: it is not what the government wants , remember the 'arts' is a 'hands off' statutory authority .

Pedestrian - certainly education is one of the key issues ('education' at all levels, including popular culture, and not just at the tertiary level). But an understanding of a clearly-expressed theory of both the arts and education has to underpin teaching at all levels. I wrote my submission and my book What Art Is - And Isn't - as attempts to generate intelligent discussion of the theory (NOT 'Theory', which contributed nothing to the discussion!).
Please note that I recommend artists being employed in tertiary education as only one possibility of employment and the proviso I place on it (with which I am sure you agree).