Universities Australia has reported at least 17,300 jobs were lost and there are more to come [1]. In creative arts fields, QUT has seen a restructure and the closure of its Dance performance program [2], Griffith University and ANU have experienced program and staffing cuts, UNSW, along with other tertiary arts providers have seen mergers into multi-disciplinary mega faculties[3] and in late 2020 changes were presaged in Monash, Newcastle and La Trobe Universities[4][5].
Although the Government’s student fee restructure aimed at shifting student enrolments away from the humanities and arts seems not to have gained the traction it had hoped[6], we are still to feel the effect of restrictions to arts performances and exhibitions in the next ERA round.
While there have undoubtedly been major challenges, does the media “all doom and gloom” coverage reflect life at the grassroots, in our schools and faculties?
For this edition of NiTRO, we invited heads of creative arts schools and faculties to provide short pieces on how 2020 has affected them. While everyone’s experience is individual, certain shared themes emerge from the, surprisingly positive, benefits of having to rapidly focus on digital and blended learning to the sadness of losing valued colleagues through voluntary and non-voluntary redundancies and casual staffing cuts.
As a sector, one thing we do have in common is how time-poor everyone is, so we are sincerely grateful to those who took time out of their frantically busy days to share their stories:
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Stephen Alderton (National Art School)
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Joanne Cys, Veronika Kelly, Susan Luckman and Craig Batty (University of South Australia)
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Damian Candusso (Queensland University of Technology)
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Clive Barstow (Edith Cowan University)
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Grayson Cooke (Southern Cross University)
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Kim Cunio (Australian National University)
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Denise Ferris (Australian National University)
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Rebecca Scollen (University of Southern Queensland)
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David Shirley (Edith Cowan University)
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Liam Viney (University of Queensland)
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Kit Wise (RMIT University)
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Margaret Barrett and Stacy Holman Jones (Monash University)