Risky business in challenging times
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 23: Essentially Creative
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Ryan Heath
Download the complete article PDF
Ryan Heath's biography and other articles by this writer
Two thoughts sprang to mind as I dangled from the top of New Zealand's tallest building one sunny November morning. Two hundred metres above the street in a bright orange jumpsuit, there was no escaping the notion that a wrong move might have me covering those two hundred metres faster than Usain Bolt. As I sucked in the clean air I also revelled in the knowledge that risk is what makes life worth living. By any rational measure, this risk was no greater than hundreds of others we each make daily – the safety harness would keep me safe and allow me to move on to better things. Aristotle believed courage to be the primary human quality, the base for all the others and the platform for risk.
In a world where risk-taking is now synonymous with Wall Street greed, the fact that all progress depends on risk, is one we easily forget. Where is Australia's appetite for risk in 2009? It may show up on credit card bills, but rarely in great leadership. It is rarely heralded by the unexpected success of edgy art or entertainment. Instead, a culture of fear – fear of threats and achievement – is more prominent. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in how public policy deals with arts and the creative economy – those very places that should challenge a society and that are increasingly an engine room of economic growth. It is a dangerous place to leave a nation dangling.
Others are more fortunate than the Australian artists who must pay for their every mistake or make ends meet with bland work. Some sectors are fattened by cronyism, a misplaced sense of grandeur or sometimes union muscle. Sports fans, for example, can look forward to handouts as high as $400 per ticket – the subsidy the 2007 World Swimming Championships received from the Victorian Government. For the car industry, the current price of protection is $60,000 per worker per year. Contrast that coddling with those trying to make an artistic breakthrough, like those behind the perky independent movie All My Friends are Leaving Brisbane, for example. Conceived, created and funded entirely by new generation of filmmakers this movie was made for just $42,000, yet received four stars from film critic icons ‘Margaret and David' in 2007, making it – at $10,000 a star – exceptionally efficient filmmaking, and less than one year's subsidy of a car worker.
If only it were as simple as transferring some spare change from manufacturing to filmmaking. The makers of All My Friends are Leaving Brisbane received a small amount of post-production funding from the Australian Film Commission, after it had been shot. But the real problem was getting it screened outside Brisbane. For months, efforts went nowhere. In that time, the film won awards in Denmark and Britain and became a cult audience hit you've probably never heard of because the gatekeepers said no: from the lowliest independent cinema to the bean-counting multiplexes.
What the case demonstrates is that government funding can never be an answer on its own. Australia's arts ‘scene' or ‘industries' also need to take risks. If they are not prepared to challenge the status quo – be it incumbent elites or conventional wisdom – or even give a chance to a newcomer, then they are not worth having. The story of All My Friends are Leaving Brisbane is repeated across the arts. It is echoed in the stories of new authors backed by publishers but ignored by the marketing department. It is a familiar theme for artists who use new media or cross official category boundaries, falling foul of the funding bodies for daring to colour outside the lines. And the lesson of All My Friends are Leaving Brisbane rings in the ears of every creative who goes bust because of a short-term cash flow problem that good policy-making could help avoid. The fate of these efforts should lead us to ask ‘what are the ideal conditions for creative innovation?', and to do more to create these conditions. Beyond the obvious need for good educational institutions, the possibility of exchanging ideas and feeding off the creativity of those in close proximity is essential for a creative culture. In a creative culture, art is not just about individual brilliance and passion, or a government grant, but about the feeling of possibility that comes from mobilising a critical mass of ideas and people.
BERLIN IS ONE SUCH CREATIVE MAGNET CREATING ITS WAY out of economic depression. With unemployment long stuck near 20 per cent, collapsed manufacturing, terrible weather and without cross-continental air connections, Berlin has few choices but to let the creative people who need it use the cheap property left over from the Cold War era. Berlin demonstrates what is possible when space – literal and political – is given to creative people and industries. Berlin's government and its people have taken a bet on creativity plugging the gap in the economy as the city is rebuilt, and it is paying off. In addition to the seven hundred galleries, museums and theatres in Berlin, there is an integrated alternative creative scene that includes more than twenty thousand micro and small creative businesses fertilised by 150,000 students and a constant stream of new arrivals – a third of the city's population has arrived since 2000, most of them speak English as well as German.
The young and art are in the ascendancy in Berlin. This is where writers flock to get by on two hundred dollars a week, where artists can have a home and studio, where start-up music studios experiment, and where creative connections are made. Berlin is not just a chance to live amidst history it is a haven for starving artists, but the artists don't starve. Berlin brings artists together. And they thrive.
It is Berlin I think of when looking at the death spiral facing innovative Australian organisations like the youth network Vibewire. Encumbered by expensive property markets and the tyranny of distance, Australia is not going to produce a Berlin – but it can foster and preserve online creative forums and communities – the sort of virtual creative space Vibewire has been good at grooming.
Vibewire is a river of creativity created by young people for young people. With impressive breadth, it grew from the idea of Tom Dawkins, a University of New South Wales student, in 2000 into a creative hub for a generation of young artists. Vibewire delivers everything from short film festivals and writing anthologies to festivals of e-ideas and an online community that produces some of the richest data available on young Australians. It has been the New South Wales Microbusiness of the Year, and won awards from the United Nations. Yet its directors came within days of winding it up in late 2008 when faced with the departure of its founder and a single missed grant application in close succession.
I can't help thinking that Vibewire wouldn't be struggling to pay the rent in Berlin or missing small donors or business skills in the United States. And I wonder why we have arts bodies if not to see and protect a bigger picture like the self-esteem, role modelling and nascent voices Vibewire delivers to wide audiences. Where was the advice and emergency loan for Vibewire to help it through its rough patch? Why was it not a priority to help it grow from one business stage to the next? Vibewire is tackling its own demons for now. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that it is too inconvenient for Australia's arts funding monoculture. It covers too many arts and is authentic competition for initiatives like the Australia Council's ‘Noise' website. It even runs competitions to find more creative voices, the sort of competitions that the Australia Council refuses to fund. Vibewire doesn't aim to please others, only its audience. For all these reasons, Vibewire is more than ‘another needy arts organisation'. It is a symptom of an arts sector that is slowly sinking under its own weight.