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Article Excerpt
Rapid and continual change has an inevitable impact upon artists and arts organisations. Achieving a sustainable career most often requires artists to pursue a diversity of roles within and outside of their discipline, and it is within the broad context of the cultural industries that the majority of potential roles can be found. Thus, the cultural industries constitute the environment within which artists conduct much of their practice. The Cultural Practice Framework introduced in this paper illustrates the diverse range of roles undertaken by artists not only as a means to make ends meet, but to build intrinsically satisfying artistic careers. This text does not seek to provide an economic analysis. Rather, it outlines factors which impact upon cultural practice, and suggests that artists investigate the potential application of their skills, strengths and interests to the wider cultural realm.
Performing artists are the least likely of all artists to consider the potential for a diverse range of employment options beyond those associated with their artform. Let us take the example of a musician: most music students intend to pursue a career in performance, conducting or composition; however, academics and students alike are aware of the low probability of achieving such a career. Although performance is a fundamental part of a musician's life, engagement with performance, for many musicians, will be primarily through teaching, directing, technology and management: the reality is that artists have to work holistically within an increasingly complex and competitive cultural environment. It is crucial to bring to public attention the realities of artists' working lives; however, it is equally important to recognise that self-identity is crucial to career satisfaction, and it is imperative for students and artists to identify success in terms of establishing a sustainable career that meets personal and professional needs, rather than aspiring to purely creative careers which are few and far between.
Culture
Originally relating to the cultivation of soil, culture later became synonymous with good taste, manners and education. Chartrand stated that culture in the nineteenth century was defined as '"high culture", that is the cultural forms and activities of the educated elite. Both cultural diplomacy and cultural relations tended to be exclusively concerned with prestige and influence'. (1)
In the twenty-first century, culture in the sense of artistic and social pursuits considered within social policy includes a much wider cross-section of the community who access a variety of cultural pursuits including books, music and film; in its broadest sense culture refers to 'the whole way of life of society, the intellectual development of the population and the practice of the Arts'. (2) The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), which has played a key international role in cultural development, defined culture as something that is 'not limited to a particular set of activities connected with heritage and arts, but encompasses all those activities which define the identity of a particular human society or group'. (3) Given that definition, it is hardly surprising that the concept of global culture has proved to be somewhat problematic! In a move away from the more usual definitions of category or product, Helsinki's City of Culture Foundation defined culture in terms of process: 'Culture is the space or degree of material and spiritual development achieved over time with all its phenomena (4)', which encapsulated a significant move towards the function of cultural theory within cultural practice. In recent times, a more purposeful view of culture has been adopted in terms of measures of economy and productivity, social capital and cultural heritage; hence economic and public policies have become intertwined. The move towards economic measurement of cultural activities has had an acute impact upon the Arts, which cannot expect to be measured purely upon aesthetic interest, or upon cultural and social capital gained from the entrustment of core societal values to future generations. The products of culture have an economic value leading to the need to measure both tangible and intangible values of culture against economic principles. Taking a more optimistic stance, arts competencies are increasingly marketable given the economic shift from manufacturing to service and, most recently, to information and knowledge-based economies.
The results of economic measurement are also felt at the individual level: as one musician suggested, it is 'all very well having a bean-counter mentality; but the person counting the beans has to know the value of the beans in order to assess their worth'. (5) A recent report by the US-based RAND Corporation reiterated the difficulty of measuring the intrinsic values of the Arts, which it suggested to have been lost within the broad economic discourse concerning social and economic goals. (6) Kingsbury highlighted the ironic nature of tangible and intangible values when he cited Karl Marx, who said that 'although a piano maker engages in productive work, a pianist does not'. (7) Kingsbury's response was that 'a product is truly a cultural product not because it is marketable, but because it is meaningful'. (8) In other words, a piano has value only because someone wishes to buy it for the purposes of making music. It is evident that there currently exists little agreement upon the value or definition of cultural beans.
The cultural industries
Effective advocacy has the potential to increase the effectiveness of funding for education and professional practice, as well as advocating the social and economic value of culture. Unfortunately, a united voice for the cultural industries requires definitional agreement that is currently lacking. Although many artists resist the notion of the economic term 'industry', there is potentially great strength in the united voice of the Australian cultural industries, which are worth over A$19 billion in goods and services each year. (9) Representing 2.4 per cent of Australian gross domestic product, the cultural industries are as big as the education, road transport or residential building industry.
The lack of a common definition for the cultural industries in Australia is well documented. In considering a definition for the cultural industries, Create Australia suggested that there is no definitive definition; however, it is just such a definition that is required for an effective communication campaign. (10) Costantoura concurred, writing that '[a]t present the term "the Arts" takes on whatever meaning each individual who uses it chooses to apply'. (11) According to Hoegh-Guldberg, who defined the cultural industries as those industries to which copyright is applicable, 'many different definitions of the Arts and Culture can be adopted'. (12) Similarly, United Kingdom policy (developed as part of the Knowledge Economy initiative) was based around activities that had the potential to create something that would attract intellectual property rights. (13)
Reflecting Florida's concept of a creative class (14), Throsby and Hollister summarised the emergence of the cultural industries:
All sorts of creative people are seen as content providers for the Information superhighway and as the source of innovative ideas in inventing the future. This has led to the identification of a 'creative class' within society, and of 'creative workers' within the labour force--artists, designers, scientists, researchers and others whose work generates new ideas, new processes and new products. (15)
Definitional issues are not confined to Australia; there is also international disparity regarding the cultural industries. In Canada, for instance, cultural goods and services such as film and television, literature and publishing, visual, performing and...
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