Policy, the arts and participation: An Australian perspective

The Australia Council for the Arts released in June 2017 Connecting Australians: Results of the National Arts Participation Survey. This built on comparable surveys conducted in 2009 and 2013 and brings together a vast amount of data on arts participation and involvement across arts forms, and artistic and cultural contexts. It includes data on across fields such as exhibitions, festivals, live music participation, listening to music, and presents information on values and attitudes to the Arts across the demographics of Australian society. In November 2017 David Throsby and Katya Petetskaya released Making Art Work: An Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia. This was the sixth report commissioned by the Australia Council over a period of thirty years. The series captures data on the composition of the artist population, education and training, career progression, income and expenditure, patterns of working time, and professional practice issues – in effect it is articulating the face of professional Australian artists across the disciplines and sectors. Upon the release of the report the Australia Council followed this with a summary and its response to its funded report. In Connecting Australian and Making Art Work along with the preceding reports that we see the directions of policy and in particular the implementation of cultural and education policy changes over the years at both the national and regional levels of government. It is evident the lifelong place that the Arts hold in Australian society often in spite of the policy directions and support by government. The paper will explore some of the disjunctures between the data, the stated objectives of governments, and the effects of the implementation of changes in policy.