In a new article on ArtsHub today, Lab Adelaide’s Julian Meyrick and Tully Barnett, together with UniSA’s Justin O’Connor, make the case for a new language of public value that puts arts and culture at the heart of a healthy, diverse and inclusive democracy. The authors applaud the arts sector reforms proposed in a new report from the Australia Institute, Creativity in Crisis, but argue that nothing less than a systematic overhaul of Australian ‘policy imagination’ is required to make these changes possible. Therefore, they call on the arts sector to ditch outdated ‘market first’ economic arguments, and instead reframe art and culture as a public good at the centre of a sustainable new world.
‘The sector must re-learn the language of the public good, and speak of citizens not taxpayers, publics not price-points.’
The article can be accessed online here: https://www.artshub.com.au/2021/08/12/a-new-policy-imaginary-for-australian-art-and-culture/