Funding fails arts in wealthy west

It was hardly a statement I intended to make to Western Australia’s arts minister, David Templeman, but last year I found myself delivering a blunt assessment: “If I were any kind of creative artist in WA, I’d pack up and leave the state”.

As Perth Festival season ends, we can feel grateful that many of our artists stick around. Some have left, however, and many others hold views as bleak as mine about the state of our cultural life.

For three decades, it has been my privilege to report on all facets of that cultural life for national and local media. I’ve interviewed visual artists, theatre performers and designers, composers, young graduates from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, script writers, musicians, sculptors, architects, performance artists, band members, authors, furniture designers, circus professionals, video and film innovators, and Indigenous artists in remote art centres and urban studios.

This creative workforce is every bit as crucial to WA’s wellbeing as the fly-in, fly-out workers in the resources sector. The difference is that the latter group is unquestionably valued, while the former battles for proper recognition and support.

I’ve had hundreds of conversations with people, often triggered by events: a venue closed, an organisation defunded, an exhausted arts manager getting out, a publicist toying with early retirement due to declining media coverage of the arts.

In the cultural sector, even good news often reveals a history of neglect. A case in point is Perth Concert Hall, which will undergo a $150 million facelift (starting 2025) after 50 years, while the West Australian Symphony Orchestra will have its first permanent home.

But it comes after years of chronic neglect such that props have been holding up the sagging concrete ceiling in the underground car park.

Contrast that with the 50-year-old Sydney Opera House, where a $300 million refurbishment began 10 years ago and has just been completed. Two concert halls in two capital cities, two very different stories.

More clues to neglect lie strewn across the WA arts landscape. For more than a decade, globally respected Spare Parts Puppet Theatre tried to attract the attention of the state government to the parlous state of its Fremantle theatre headquarters.

In 2022, the building was condemned. Spare Parts now operates out of a temporary home in the Claremont Showgrounds, only made serviceable after a hasty $3.8 million upgrade.

Seesaw Magazine, a lively online arts site for critique and commentary, has ceased operation due to insufficient support from either government or private sponsors.

Even the sector’s own peak body, the Chamber of Arts and Culture Western Australia, came close to closing its doors and was only rescued by $400,000 a year for the next two years from the WA government.

The chamber has the enthusiastic backing of experienced arts advocates but faces a huge task to rebuild its own ranks.

An insight into the lowly ranking of arts and culture in this state emerged at a journalists’ panel discussion late last year.

The West Australian editor Anthony De Ceglie was asked why the paper’s arts coverage had been drastically cut.

He replied that he had sat down with his staff to find savings for other ventures.

“We went through the paper and looked at which pages we could lose,” Mr De Ceglie said.

The answer was to reduce the arts pages, with Mr De Ceglie adding “I didn’t get a single complaint until now”.

This revelation by the editor of the state’s only daily newspaper was a candid declaration of the arts sector’s irrelevance. An irate arts publicist responded that she and several colleagues in the audience “might as well go into early retirement”.

Mr De Ceglie replied that the paper was covering arts content in a different form, launching a best short story and short film competition.

The exchange was met by resigned shrugs.

“Ascribing value to culture has never been WA’s strong suit,” one attendee observed afterwards.

“This is a frontier economy in some ways.”

Perth Concert Hall will undergo a $150 million facelift after 50 years. Photo: Michael O’Brien

Positive note

There are glimmers of hope, like the recent resurrection after several years’ hiatus of Politicians for the Arts, a group of parliamentarians who will (it is hoped) advocate for the creative sector at state budget time.

And there’s a new ‘10 Year Vision for Culture and the Arts in Western Australia’ in the offing, based on 1,000 industry responses to a survey by the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries.

Couched in bureaucratic phrasing, its findings require translation. An example: “Individual and organisational capacity have been identified as the primary preoccupations of the WA arts and cultural sector in 2023.”

What that means is that many arts bodies and individuals staggered out of COVID lockdown and are still recovering.

When the Chamber of Arts and Culture asked its members how they were faring in a mid-2022 wellbeing survey, half of all small-to-medium arts companies predicted they would soon be operating on reserves.

The chamber found that 63 per cent of respondents had “immediate issues with their operating costs, totalling $30 million”.

“The chamber is devastated that the sector continues to be undervalued and unsupported,” then-executive director Kim Jameson said.

“We see no relief in the short to medium term for this industry.”

Ms Jameson noted the state budget that year had managed to find $21.1 million for Tourism WA and a further $30.7 million to fund “additional blockbuster and business events”.

She could have added that WA is undeniably rich; it boasted an operating surplus of $5.1 billion in 2022, with a sixth consecutive surplus predicted for 2023-24.

So why such a dramatic shortage of government funding that means 78 per cent of all applicants for arts grants are unsuccessful?

The financial squeeze on arts companies is only likely to get worse. Contemporary dance company Co3 can only afford to stage one-week seasons, not the preferred two, because it costs too much to hire the government-owned venues built for them to perform in. Hire costs are destined to go up as technical staff operating the venues recently received a pay rise.

Starved of any meaningful money from government, many cultural organisations now rely heavily on the generosity of the resources sector. Rio Tinto, BHP and Wesfarmers Arts together contribute arguably more than grants from the state’s arts budget, and some of their arts partnerships have lasted decades.

That makes for interesting bedfellows. For more than a decade, Indigenous theatre company Yirra Yaakin has relied on funds from Woodside Energy to train the next generation of First Nations artists.

Woodside provides development money for the critical work of shaping the careers of young theatre practitioners who will succeed nationally important artists such as Kelton Pell and Kylie Bracknell, who both got their career breaks with Yirra Yaakin.

Increasingly, such funding is caught in the crossfire of climate wars, accused of being tainted money. Perth Festival has now been joined by Fringe World in parting ways with its fossil fuel patrons.

Many people I discussed this with urged caution, suggesting if big miners and resources companies withdrew after attacks by activists, or simply because they were no longer invited in, the arts companies would be the ones to suffer.

As one insider told me: “This state’s entire economy is built on iron ore, oil and gas. We need a grown-up debate; although it wouldn’t harm the companies if they withdraw entirely from the arts, the government is not going to plug that gap.

“And if you take money from a state government that relies substantially on royalty money, it’s just one hand away from taking it directly from the resources companies.”

Finding funding

So what do we get for decades of chronic underfunding across the cultural sector in WA? Let’s look at the visual arts.

The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) is currently hosting a hauntingly memorable exhibition of Yhonnie Scarce’s glass sculptures, curated by AGWA’s gifted curator Clothilde Bullen and praised nationwide for its excellence.

Yet the fact remains that AGWA has been less visited, less accessible online and more chronically short of storage space than most state or national collections in the nation.

During her tenure as Chamber of Arts and Culture executive director, Kim Jameson said the sector was undervalued and unsupported. Photo: David Henry

AGWA director Colin Walker, a personable and savvy arts bureaucrat, has been criticised because he is not an art curator.

His background is not the problem, but rather the fact no holder of that job could surmount the real challenge facing AGWA: a lack of significant funds from either government or WA’s wealthy private patrons.

Contrast that with Victoria, where the National Gallery of Victoria received a $100 million gift from trucking magnate Lindsay Fox to build NGV Contemporary, a new home for contemporary art and design.

The largest cultural gift by a living donor for an Australian gallery’s capital program, it was followed by another $100 million in total from a dozen more sponsors.

No gift even close to these Victorian amounts has been donated to AGWA, either by government or entrepreneurs. Currently, an AGWA patron who gifts $20,000 is considered a major donor; a tiny few give $50,000 a year. This is despite Western Australians’ collective boast about being the nation’s economic engine room and hosting the nation’s richest postcodes.

It leaves Mr Walker defending an ageing state art gallery against a barrage of questions about its chronic lack of space to store and conserve valuable art, and the routine necessity of closing an entire wing to the public because it leaks.

While most major public galleries in Australia have an up-to-date online digital archive and a library staffed to assist researchers and students, AGWA’s library has been closed for years. It makes a great collection largely inaccessible to scholars, researchers and artists. A single volunteer is tasked with responding to any requests.

I repeat, it is not AGWA’s fault we have a moderately good state art gallery aspiring to be great. In fact, Mr Walker has been proactive in seeking solutions, having previously worked in the state government’s arts and culture department.

He was also one of the architects of detailed plans to upgrade and revive the cultural precinct on which AGWA sits, in Northbridge. In late 2019, the Perth Cultural Centre Taskforce was established to “support the development of a Perth Cultural Centre to become a tourism hub for WA’s rich cultural diversity.”

Government ministers saw the plans but the money never flowed. A modified upgrade of Perth Cultural Centre has been mired in delays, and no start date announced.

Meanwhile, a Tourism WA Entertainment Precinct survey was released in February last year to assess “the wants, needs, perceptions and impact of entertainment venues and precincts”. It reported a decline in interest in people visiting Perth’s cultural hub.

“Perceptions of safety and enjoyment have dropped noticeably for Perth CBD, and Northbridge continues to be the precinct that is perceived to be least safe,” it reported.

Yet the Tourism WA survey reflects a baffling ignorance of what constitutes a cultural centre.

You might assume the survey asked people about cultural attractions such as theatres, the art gallery, museum, pub bands, arts events or street theatre; not just places to eat and drink.

After all, every travelling Western Australian seeks out such sites in Tokyo, Paris, Bangkok or London. But no. Astonishingly, Tourism WA’s survey contained not one single word about those attractions.

“For them, entertainment is a bar or bistro,” a tourism industry veteran told me. “It’s a vacuous survey.”

With its Fremantle building condemned in 2022 (pictured), Spare Parts Puppet Theatre now operates out of a temporary home in the Claremont Showgrounds. Photo: Attila Csaszar

Yet the tourism appeal of exciting, well-funded cultural venues is evident in other cities.

Let’s return to the Sydney Opera House. Ten years ago, the Opera House’s social asset value was $4.6 billion, according to a Deloitte report entitled ‘Valuing An Icon’. Even its iconic value, meaning its value to people who did not attend its performances, was estimated at $2.1 billion. That value has only gone up.

Last July, Perthites celebrated the fact that their city was nominated 12th in the world’s most liveable city ranking. In terms of quality of living and cultural activity, however, Perth rated far lower (21st), which came as a shock to Lord Mayor Basil Zempilas, who publicly expressed his surprise and could offer no explanation.

Former AGWA director and ex-Perth Convention Bureau chair Alan Dodge, who was in the audience when the lord mayor made his remarks, sent Mr Zempilas some crisp answers.

“For years, the major arts institutions in Perth including AGWA, the WA Museum, State Library, WASO, the WA Ballet and WA Opera have tried to play catch up from years of underfunding,” Mr Dodge said.

“In fact, most notable increases in recurrent or project funding always seem to be reactive rather than pro-active and usually one offs.

“The arts will never flourish as a major asset in this city and state unless they are taken seriously as part of a greater strategy for the cultural wellbeing and future of WA.”

Cases of cultural infrastructure not delivered are legendary. I have wandered around Dalkeith’s derelict Sunset Heritage Precinct, regularly described in official reports as a “unique government-owned asset for arts, cultural and community use”.

Former premier Colin Barnett vowed to transform Sunset into a vibrant arts precinct.

A decade later, talks are still ongoing with a development company whose identity remains under wraps, like the building site itself.

One of the Sunset buildings houses a valuable museum archive of WA’s local screen culture history, including metallic tapes and film hardware. The museum has been given notice to move out; it has nowhere to go.

Another example is the East Perth Power Station. I stood inside the building’s cavernous shell, on a crust of pigeon droppings, on the day then-treasurer Ben Wyatt effusively talked up its potential as an Indigenous art gallery. Six years later, it remains mothballed.

Plans for a film backlot and studio have been in flux for nearly a decade. At last, a revised location at Whiteman Park has been given the green light and the first sod turned on construction. No doubt the state’s burgeoning film industry will welcome its opening sometime in 2026.

By then, 15 years will have passed since South Australia opened Adelaide Studios as a creative hub for screen businesses. It has since created local jobs and attracted high-profile projects from around the world.

Wins, too

WA has enjoyed some built infrastructure gains, including the award-winning Western Australian Museum Boola Bardip. And big hopes are held for Edith Cowan University’s move to a new city campus, with a government promise it will enliven Perth’s CBD with “over 300 WAAPA performances a year, in cleverly stacked, state-of-the-art performance spaces”.

But unlike Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, Perth still lacks a big-picture plan to guide future cultural development. In all those cities at some time their premier has directly taken on the arts and culture portfolio. This has never happened in WA.

“Under Mark McGowan, there was never an awareness that Perth had more than mining,” one commentator said, adding that new premier, Roger Cook, “might be on side and see the opportunity for the arts sector to provide solutions to a range of problems in our state.”

A better version

So, what can happen when our state’s creative industries are hired as problem solvers and suitably funded? For an answer, you need only travel to the Pilbara mining town of Newman and stand under the giant shade-giving eaves of the East Pilbara Arts Centre.

The ‘Big Shed’ as it’s called locally was built to house Martumili Arts, a bright star in the stellar constellation of WA Aboriginal art centres that have attracted a global following.

Good design was harnessed from the outset. The Big Shed is the first civic building in regional WA to emerge from an architectural competition, and it has since won a prestigious international design award.

So successful was the combination of design and close partnership with the local Martu people that, within one year of the shed opening in 2016, more than 1,180 artworks were produced, 51 new artists recruited and nine young artworkers employed.

It all strengthened the region’s economy, state tourism and Martu wellbeing. And it was jointly funded by visionary collaborators BHP Billiton, the Shire of East Pilbara, Pilbara Development Commission and Lotterywest.

In Fitzroy Crossing, Mangkaja art centre partnered with a Melbourne-based fashion label to create limited-edition lines from the designs of five senior Indigenous artists. They sold to 40 fashion stores and online, and pioneering copyright deals were struck.

If creative industries can blossom in the remote bush, just imagine what they could achieve if we backed them in our state’s cities and towns. Yet arts companies struggle to survive on annual budgets that equate to a small mining firm’s monthly travel costs.

Actors, designers, musicians and artists raise their families on incomes hovering just above the poverty line. If Fair Work Commission provisions were truly enforced in this state’s arts sector, many companies would be forced to close.

Pure philanthropy is emerging in Perth, such as Arts Impact, a group of individuals who donated $500,000 to 12 arts organisations in the past two years.

More than 1.5 million people have visited WA Museum Boola Bardip since it opened in 2020. Photo: Michael O’Brien

However, another longstanding donor said WA remained almost a foreign country when it came to philanthropy.

“People don’t seem to regard culture in the same way as sport,” they said.

“And in WA, a high proportion of wealth is first generation; it’s only later that money is given as a noblesse oblige gesture.”

A passionate music impresario observed that when the talk in corporate Perth circles is about sport and its many heroes, the arts sector gains no allies. And if media outlets sideline the arts as unimportant, the general public will never hear about, let alone attend, a new music festival or this state’s world-class children’s theatre.

And just a reminder, the government’s 2022-23 report on ‘arts versus sport participation’ shows that arts and cultural activities attract 15 per cent more Western Australians than organised sport and recreation. Arts has a 78 per cent participation rate, sport 63 per cent.

Optimism

There are reasons to be cheerful, or at least hopeful.

Tourism WA has made its biggest investment yet in an arts event, having funded EverNow, a two-year Indigenous arts festival initiative that attracted 100,000 people in its first year. And Tourism WA has invited Perth Festival’s artistic director Iain Grandage to become a board member.

Last year, I was asked to sit on a panel to advise the state government about ideas for cultural events during WA’s forthcoming 2026-29 bicentenary celebrations. I came away feeling that a government genuinely in tune with its creative sector shouldn’t need such a committee.

Arts companies already have as many brilliant ideas as they lack money to make them a reality. Reimagining our state’s history and its people is what they do daily.

Think Black Swan State Theatre Company’s play York about colonial ghosts, or Marrugeku’s Jurrungu Nganga: Straight Talk, a topical dance performance about deaths in custody. Or Theatre 180’s creative retelling of the lives of WA legends such as writer Albert Facey and prisoner-of-war heroine Vivian Bullwinkel.

The sector has ideas, fertile and multitudinous ones; they spring from the earth of this place. Our artists, musicians, designers, videographers would love to make exciting works of scale as we approach our historic state milestone. Our cultural institutions are desperately ambitious.

What they need is a state, a government, a premier, a media and above all a general public that values the creative sector and will back it.

And in return those creators will vastly enrich our identity as Western Australians.

• Victoria Laurie is an award-winning feature writer for national and state publications