Page 930 - Week 03 - Thursday, 10 March 2016
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Again there is a lot of guff. If you are actually interested in being the “cool little capital” and if you are actually interested in being an innovative capital, at the heart of it is arts and arts policy. The new policy is as bland as the old policy. Very little was delivered out of the old policy. I suspect very little will be delivered out of the new policy, and that is a shame.
I will read this again because they obviously have not got it quite yet: “Art is good for the individual, art is good for the community, art is good for the economy.” Alain de Botton, the English philosopher, says:
Like other tools, art has the power to extend our capacities beyond those that nature has … endowed us with. Art compensates us for certain inborn weaknesses, in this case of the mind rather than the body …
He says that if it is used as therapy, it can actually be used to make people well, resilient and strong. David Throsby, the economist with the most credibility in this field, says:
… a logical sequence can be established, beginning with art and proceeding through artistic creativity, creativity in general, innovation, technological progress, competitive advantage, and leading in due course to growth in incomes, exports, employment and other indicators of economic success …
So if you want a creative capital, which is happening, I think, largely despite the government, even though they have now found it—and I give the minister his due; he has now found it, unlike his forebears—you have to start with the fundamental driver, and that is art.
Sasha Grishin, in chapter 45 of his Australian art: a history, says, “There is no art capital in Australia.” So there is an opportunity, minister. He does acknowledge that there was rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne, but Grishin now says that Canberra has emerged, with the construction of the significant national institutions. Perhaps it is something that we should build on.
It is not a character that you would normally expect somebody from the Liberal Party to quote from, but Bertolt Brecht, that well-known bastion of socialism and anti-Nazism, said:
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
You can say the same for this city: art is not just a mirror to be held up to reality but a hammer to shape this city. The question is whether we will implement it wisely, use it properly and get the benefit that the whole community should get, which is improved wellbeing for the individual, improved wellbeing for the community and an improved sense of wellbeing in our economy.
I look forward to further updates. It is great to have a debate on the arts in the ACT Assembly. Remember that when the capital was founded, Prime Minister Fisher said that Canberra would be a city of governance, education and the arts. I think we all
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