Once a professional token youth - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 13: The Next Big Thing
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Marcus Westbury
SINCE THEN, I HAVE become much wiser about the ways of the cultural world. A decade of sitting on funding committees, chasing scant money and directing cultural events does that to you. While youth is an excellent way to get your foot in the door, the reality is that it is not easy for young people to open a new cultural space. The legacy of decades of institution-building means that most cultural space is effectively quarantined from new movements, initiatives or activities. Across Australia, the vast majority of resources go to major institutions – mainly to service infrastructure and overheads.
The New South Wales Ministry for the Arts, we soon learnt, sees itself as an organisation servicing its client institutions and not an administrator of competitive funding programs. Its key role is to continue to fund what it has always funded. Arts Victoria has spent the last decade digesting the costs of the massive, architecturally stunning but risk-averse institutions that are its flagships. Within all of these institutions, conservative cultures, corporate hierarchies and long queues mean that it is almost impossible for young people to make a cultural impact while they are young.
Unless they happen to be the son of a media baron, prodigiously talented or obscenely lucky, young people will rarely be handed an opportunity to take over any aspect of the status quo. When you are young, there are always those with greater expertise than you, but by the time you reach the front of the queue you realise that what awaits wasn't what you were queuing for.
The spaces of cultural influence that younger people are permitted to occupy are limited, as are the resources that are available to them – but this is more than compensated for by the latitude that is available within those spaces when compared with the room to move in major institutions. Cultural resonance and relevance can only come from young people who want to make an impact, and not merely wait for their seat at the table. The key challenge is to grab the opportunities and avoid the bureaucratic curses that dog success. This afflicts projects aimed at young people particularly severely. It is easy, when youth agendas are circulating, to create an event that lives up to someone's predefined idea of what young people should be doing. The challenge is to tick the bureaucratic boxes and carve out an authentic cultural space that is owned by and meets the expectations of young people. In my opinion, it is not the role of these events to anoint talent to enter pre-existing and predetermined structures. The role of youth is not to fill those structures, but to challenge them and force them to defend their legitimacy – not necessarily by confrontation, but through the exploration and advocacy of other ways of doing things.
STRANGELY, IF YOU ARE young, successful and confident, chances are that you can get away with it. Youth gives latitude that is rarely apparent at the time. Within reason, it is expected that mistakes, followed by a little contrition, will equal redemption. In the creative and media space, youth does not reward conservatism – informed risk-taking, challenging of the status quo is the expectation – and, given that almost every major arts organisation in the country is struggling to attract young people, those managing the funds will not argue with a winning formula if it meets an unfulfilled agenda.
Successful young people are great fodder for the media. In my case, achievements, hype, personal narratives (including the untimely deaths of my parents) and the need to service a quota of next big things has propelled me. There is an unspoken need to refill the constantly leaking pool of "tomorrow's superstars".
As a result, I have accumulated a Young Australian of the Year Award nomination, a major community service award, participation in the Australia-Japan Foundation's Emerging Leaders delegation, a place in The Age/Sydney Morning Herald's "30 Rising Stars under 30" and – my personal favourite – a nomination as one of Vogue's "Eight Stars of the New Millennium". I have given dozens of speeches and made scores of media appearances when a youth perspective was required. At the age of thirty-two, I have featured in the Sunday Herald Sun/Sunday Telegraph Magazine's "On the Verge" feature, marking my ninth successive year of being young, hip and on the verge of something big.
The danger is that you start to believe that success is linear, or even exponential – that the windy path of opportunity and achievement leads to a freeway to the top. It takes a healthy amount of self-questioning to realise that those paths often tend to narrow out, disappear and turn back. A handful of years after being desperately incapable of finding a job, to Vogue pronouncing me as a name for the next thousand years could be a recipe for an out-of-control ego or a life of failed expectations, depression, alcoholism and bitterness. Fortunately, no one I know in Newcastle reads Vogue.
Hype is the enemy of credibility. All too often, young people are hyped too much and too early. It is not a recipe for sustained achievement to start your career with unrealistic expectations set for you. Young people are rarely in control of the hype generated around their work. Agents, record companies, marketing people, managers, presenting organisations – all of these have more control over a young person's credibility than they do themselves. They also tend to have a much shorter term interest.
Popstars, Big Brother, Australian Idol and their derivates have created an industry that invests young people with massive short-term fame that will rarely be equalled by long-term possibilities. It is not surprising that life for many former child stars is a litany of suicide, crime, rehab, depression and scandal – not least because falling short of your own expectations is one of the most emotionally confronting experiences.
But being hyped does push doors ajar. Oscar-winner Adam Elliot explained, as far as the real big things are concerned, his achievement is just enough to get him in the door before being shown to it from the inside. Part of the survival package is to realise that doors are only slightly ajar and need to be prised – or sweet-talked – open.
The trick is it to put it into context. Rarely does hype deliver its potential. The "professional token youth" rarely represents young people anywhere in a way that matters. But young people need to be prepared to put up their hands and speak for youth, rather than let others do it for them. So before I cross the threshold of managing a youth event in which I am not eligible to participate, I am moving on. ♦