NiTRO + Creative Matters

Perspectives on creative arts in higher education

Politics

By PJ Collins — It’s an interesting, if somewhat dismal, exercise to look at our perspective on future cultural/arts policy and then make educated guesses and observations on what Australians are actually going to get in the foreseeable future. Let’s start with the exciting one.

The contemporary world faces an array of inter-connected daunting challenges - geopolitical, enviro-climatic, economic-developmental. While science and technology address many of them, their agenda is only half the story.

A contingent part of the creative economy, tertiary creative arts education has a responsibility to its community of students, alumni and partners, to the broader arts sector and the political landscape that surrounds it. We are therefore subject not just to the politics of cultural policy pertaining to the arts,

The gradual shift from social democracy to neoliberalism in the west since the 1980s has significantly affected the apparatus of higher education. University and college heads have shifted their priorities from developing knowledge through education and research for social benefit, to increasing the wealth of the institution (and their own

Although the federal election is still some way off, a new ‘Labor for the Arts’ group has been formed to shape future Labor arts policy and position the ALP as “the leading party for the arts in Australia”. The group was officially launched by Shadow Arts Minister Tony Burke in Sydney

As the world’s media fascinates with the daily twists and turns of the Trump administration in national security, trade relations and social cohesion, creative artists in the US have been expressing concerns about future funding for the arts.  According to a range of US news sources, the new President’s views