“We live in a society, not an economy” - The redoubtable Eva Cox, on Insight, SBS, 2007. "économie et culture, même combat" - "economy and culture: same fight" - Jack Lang, great French Minister for Culture, 1980s (see ‘grands travaux’ – big city initiatives).

The new Labor government¹ is seeking to reframe cultural policy in Australia, after nine years of not just neglect, but outright antagonism (think George Brandis hoarding the awarding of Australia Council grants to himself)². Labor wants a new start for the arts with a new National Cultural policy.

The two previous federal Labor governments each proposed cultural policies: Creative Nation in October 1994 (Paul Keating PM), and Creative Australia in 2013 (Julia Gillard PM).

The current government is reviving the latter as the starting point. Developed by a reference group led by Julianne Schultz AM, under Simon Crean, Minister for the Arts, Creative Australia called for action under three key themes: Theme One: Modernise funding and support; Theme Two: Creative expression and the role of the artist; Theme Three: Connect to national life for a social and economic dividend.

Brief submissions were called. This is the background to mine, (available on this website soon).

A cultural policy for our cities to improve our cities’ culture

Most submissions argued for government support for artists. A striking one by Helen Garner, now doing the rounds on socials, tells how a grant was instrumental in raising the quality of her writing at the start of her brilliant career. Given the poverty of artists’ incomes, and current support, this line of argument could be expected, responding as it does to Theme One.

My submission took a different path, addressing Themes Two and Three together, in an opposite way. I wanted to suggest a ‘role for the artist’ in the ‘national life for a social and economic dividend’. Instead of asking the government to support artists, I am suggesting that artists could support the government.

I am positing that artists should be engaged, and paid, to enrich the cultural work in government, not as a substitute to grants, but in addition to. Crucially, I framed this possibility around improving the design of our cities. Why cities? - three reasons.

Firstly, it counters the all-too-common idea of ‘our national character’ being mostly derived from the bush or country, whilst our cities, in a highly urbanised nation, often get short shrift. Secondly, it is a key area where artists’ vision would be most beneficial, and thirdly, the federal government needs to be more actively engaged in our cities.

I started with observations about how urbanised we are, and how driven by economics our cities are.

“Australia is the most urbanised country in the world. Over 40 percent of the population live in just two extended cities, 70 percent in just ten. Each year, constructing the infrastructure, urban areas, buildings, and landscape is over 10 percent of the GDP (more than mining). Eight of the twenty richest people in Australia derived their wealth from property development. Following their lead, housing is seen as property investment by the world’s most highly leveraged ‘home’ owners.

No wonder our cities are seen through the prism of economic wealth, not a wealth of culture. Government regulation (mostly State and Local Council) aims to prevent worst practice, rather than create a brilliant place to live and work. It is about quantity, not quality. We need a cultural policy for our cities to improve our cities’ culture.”

I then pointed out that the federal government can have a role to play (to encourage re-engagement):

“The federal government has occasionally addressed this lacuna. Tom Uren with DURD (Dept of Urban and Regional Development) and Brian Howe (community housing programs) are sadly rare examples. Despite their status as deputy prime ministers, their impacts were run over by the ever-powerful locomotive that is city development."

I then suggested that artists, with their way of seeing the world through different eyes, could help us improve the cultural quality of our cities. Their view, often nurtured at underfunded art schools, could provide a different interpretation, proving useful in reframing and developing our cities.

“Sustainable design in the built environment may be said to be based on country, climate, and culture. Interweaving these threads could lead to entirely different Australian cities of the future.

Architects and planners mundanely refer to country as 'site analysis’, but it can be so much more. It is important to understand how Australian cities adapt to their particular locus: topology, topography, landform, landscape, water. The design responses in our early cities drove clear differences, rather than similarities, before being overrun by modernist uniformity. Artists can divine a way back.

Climate will play a huge role in determining the sustainability of our cities and buildings in the future. Returning shade to buildings and streets; orientation towards winter sun and cooling summer breezes; localised power generation on well-oriented roofs, the flow of the water cycle. Again, artists can hold a special illuminatory role on ‘back to the future’.

But it is culture that offers the most promise for improving the quality of our cities. We need an approach that puts the artist's creative mind into the design mix for our cities and buildings, a cultural approach to the built environment from the start of the design process, rather than as an appliqué afterwards.

Artists can help shape the visual, sonic, and haptic senses of the spaces inside, instead of adding post-hoc murals or sculpture outside or in the foyers. Artists can help determine the flow of the freeways rather than adding patterns and designs to the sound walls. Artists can assist in restoring the waters of our drains turned back into streams and rivers. Artists can imagine a response to climate not wholly dependent on the scientific. What if our buildings, urban squares, and landscapes were derived from the artist's mind, rather than the engineer’s?”

I ventured two proposals. The first was to have ‘artists in cities’, like ‘artists in residence’, within every government department concerned with cities, to bring an artistic understanding of the city’s planning issues to every key government decision.

Proposal 1

“The federal government should undertake to have 'artists in ~~residence~~ cities' across all portfolios that invest in the city: housing, infrastructure, energy and so on. This will draw on the diversity of art creativity, at the beginning of projects, so artists are involved in the design of the city from the beginning of a project, rather than being invited to apply an artwork at the end.

We need a greater diversity of professionals involved in the design of cities in a collaborative way, rather than a tokenistic ‘community consultation’. The federal government should develop consultancies for artists for their vision of the city of the future - paid support for artists to contribute their visualisation skills, materiality and understanding of humanity to the development of the culture of the city.”

Artists in every key department need not cut across proposals for a single ‘Ministry of Culture’, as recently championed by Julianne Schulz, amongst many. Wanting a single home for ‘The Arts’ is entirely understandable given its recent life as a ‘tack-on’, such as the current arrangement where Labor has stuck ‘Arts’ on the end of the alphabet soup that is DITRDCA (Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts). Likewise, it’s an ‘also-ran’ for Tony Burke, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Leader of the House (even if he is passionate and knowledgeable on the arts).

Proposal 2

My second proposal is more contentious, and only partially formed at this stage. I have been riffing for some time on how the ‘indigenous mind’ sees the world differently to the ‘western mind’³, evident in the gift they give to Australia currently through painting and sculpture. But what if the ideas that lie behind their art (an understanding of country, the mapping, the narratives, the storytelling, the songlines) could somehow be adapted to deal with the three-dimensional quality of our cities. We don't know if this is possible because the current number of indigenous architects is so few. In any event, we need many more trained indigenous artists / architects who could bring different ideas to our cities?⁴

Indigenous involvement in the design of our cities has been negligible and tokenistic at best. Now there is a possibility to create a key place for the indigenous artist (and architect); combining country, climate, and culture, as they have for thousands of years, but reinterpreting them for the 21st century. It could create an entirely different culture to our cities.

The government should encourage indigenous artists and architects to study cities and urban design so that they may contribute to the culture of the cities. It is a tragedy of lost possibilities that less than 0.5% of architecture students have an indigenous background, when 3.3% of the population.

Given the indigenous understanding of culture, history, songlines, mapping country, spatial and graphic ideas it would be to our advantage to draw on that knowledge for our cities. What we need is a policy to lift the participation of indigenous artists, architects, and planners to 5 or 10% of all working professionals. Then we might have a culture of ‘Australian’ cities’.

Tone Wheeler is an architect / the views expressed are his / contact at toneontuesday@gmail.com.

¹It’s not the ‘Albanese government’ but a ‘Labor government’ – with so many talented ministers it should be considered a team, not a personality, in contradistinction to the cult of single-handed Morrison.

²“The pattern of the past 30 years in arts and culture is for Labor to initiate and the Coalition to dismantle.” Gideon Haigh, ‘New arts policy is welcome, but tough questions remain’, The Australian, 6 August 2022

³‘Design: Building on Country’, A First Knowledges Book, Alison Page and Paul Memmott, Thames and Hudson, 2021.

⁴To say that the indigenous mind has a particular way of seeing country and the world, and it remains untapped in our architectural and planning of cities, is a nascent, not to say naïve, idea that will be further considered in a forthcoming Tone on Tuesday.

Tone Wheeler

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