Australia’s creative and cultural industries and institutions

Submission 110

AUSTRALIA’S CREATIVE AND CULTURAL INDUSTRIES AND INSTITUTIONS

The direct and indirect economic benefits and employment opportunities of creative and cultural
industries and how to recognise, measure and grow them

According to the Federal Government, the creative and cultural industries are engines for job
growth:

• The creative and cultural industries employ 645,000 Australians

• The creative arts alone employ 194,000 people – 4 times the number employed by the coal
mining industry
• Before the pandemic, creative industries jobs were increasing at twice the rate of the rest of
the Australian economy.

According to Prime Minister the Hon Scott Morrison MP, small business drives the Australian
economy. 99% of the Australian creative industries are small businesses, working to support their
families and build employment for Australians from the ground up.

In 2018-19 Country Arts SA employed 1,752 artists and artsworkers, of which 1,197 lived and worked
in regional areas. The Regional Australia Institute sees the creative industries as an engine for
economic growth in regional Australia. Creative businesspeople also play a role in local innovation
and liveability, which attract and retain people in regional areas.

The creative and cultural industries contributed $63.5 billion to the Australian economy in 2016-17.
The industries also have positive downstream impacts on the economy, including tourism and
hospitality. Creative industries add critical value to Australian industries:

• Advanced manufacturing + industrial design = niche valuable consumables and improved

manufacturing security for future pandemics
• Medtech + gamification, user experience design, data visualisations = export-ready, high-
value medtech products and services and improved medtech security for future pandemics
• Ageing and aged care + games for dementia, architectural design for positive aged care and
end of life facilities = export-ready aged care products and services and greater quality of life
for Australian residents
• ICT development + user experience design, big data visualisations = export-ready ICT
services
• Agriculture + Augmented Reality crop disease identification = more efficient and competitive
agricultural sector and greater domestic food security
• Defence and aerospace + military simulations = export-ready services and improved
Australian national security

To better recognise, measure and grow economic benefits and employment:

• introduce additional questions to the Census under Income and Work and Unpaid Work to
gather data on creative practice, hours worked, and creative and cultural output, capturing
more than just the one professional activity to improve our understanding of the numbers of
artists and creative practitioners in Australia
• consult with industry to guide the composition of the ABS data sets that inform the Cultural
& Creative Satellite Accounts, and harmonise these where possible with international
approaches to facilitate global benchmarking to produce helpful, accurate aggregate data on
cultural and creative activity
 Australia’s creative and cultural industries and institutions
Submission 110

• Remove the efficiency dividends from Australia’s National Cultural Institutions and public
broadcasters
• Permanently double the Australia Council’s budget and the Regional Arts Fund

The non-economic benefits that enhance community, social wellbeing and promoting Australia's
national identity, and how to recognise, measure and grow them

98% of all Australians participate in the arts as artists, arts workers or audience members. They
benefit from enhanced creativity and innovation, community cohesion, cultural understanding and
appreciation, and life-long learning and education.

Connection to arts and culture has never been so important, especially for regional communities
who continue to face an extraordinary level of disruption and loss through drought, flood, fires and
Covid-19. Communities need assistance to recover, heal and commemorate through coming
together, share their stories, develop resilience for the future, and return the balance towards
positive social cohesion and wellbeing.

According to Creative Recovery Network, “a growing body of evidence indicates that, particularly in
times of community distress, the arts can provide great benefits to personal and community
wellbeing, such as increased community cohesiveness, confidence and resilience, improved physical
and mental health, reduced feelings of isolation, new personal and creative skills, strengthened
connections to place, and a sense of shared optimism.”

The Australian Major Performing Arts Group from January 2020 also identified that: “The arts, with
its deep engagement in the human experience, can make a significant contribution to how
communities process unparalleled natural disasters, helping to understand their ‘story’ and to
rebuild a sense of place and shared resilience. In the longer term, the arts also have the potential to
support economic recovery through stimulating creativity and new ideas as well as tourism
initiatives.”

Middle Australians believe that arts and culture are fundamental to the Australian way of life. They
want local arts and culture which reflects Australia’s multiculturalism, creating a sense of national
pride and identity.

Health: County Arts SA’s arts and health program has created bespoke engagement opportunities
and new work in regional clinical and community settings, supporting individuals to build their sense
of wellbeing in their communities.

Aged care: The arts help people to stay in their homes longer, lowering the government’s spending
on residential aged care. Arts engagement reduces the likelihood of developing dementia and
improves older people’s mental health, wellbeing, physical health and quality of life.

Primary health care: Arts interventions lead to savings in medical and pharmaceutical costs. For
example, visual arts in hospital design has proven clinical benefits, whilst creative writing reduces
HIV-viral loads.

Mental health and productivity: Arts and cultural participation improves people’s wellbeing,
reducing the cost of government’s spend on mental health services and pharmaceutical subsidies.
 Australia’s creative and cultural industries and institutions
Submission 110

Young People: Arts-rich education has also been shown to improve school engagement, motivation,
memory and the creative skills required by the workforce of the future.

The Prime Minister has argued that ‘we must also combat the negative influences on our young
people that lead to depression, suicide, self-harm, abuse and antisocial behaviour that in turn
threatens our community. We need to help our young people make positive choices for their lives
and be there to help them get their lives back on track when they fall.’

Country Arts SA’s focus on young people and the arts has supported regional young people build
skills and careers in the arts as leaders, artists and arts workers. They are now catalysts for
engagement, employment and empowerment in their own communities. Supporting at-risk young
people is a complex task and we need all the tools we have available to help young people,
especially the COVID generation. Specialist arts and mental health workers can form part of this
alliance, engaging at-risk young people, helping them to see a future for themselves.

The best mechanism for ensuring cooperation and delivery of policy between layers of government

• Recognising the significant and growing role of local government in arts and cultural policy
and investment, expand the Meeting of Cultural Ministers to include local government
permanently
• Complement the expanded Meeting of Cultural Ministers with a forum that includes all
ministers with cultural portfolios such as tourism, regional development, cities and
education.
• Empower the expanded Meeting of Cultural Ministers and the revamped Cultural Ministers
Council to act on briefings on non-economic benefits at each meeting, ensuring that the
value of the creative and cultural industries is well recognised and able to be applied across
all relevant portfolios
• Working with the expanded Meeting of Cultural Ministers and the Cultural Ministers Council,
develop a national plan that ensures all Australians benefit from the value created by our
creative and cultural industries
• Maintain clear distinctions between the role and purpose of the Office for the Arts and the
Australia Council, such that all industry development and competitive grant processes (e.g.
COVID-19 support) are administered through the Australia Council, while the Office for the
Arts focuses on access, participation and regulatory management.

The impact of COVID-19 on the creative and cultural industries

Covid-19 forced the shut down of our five arts centres and all our arts programs. All 150 casual
employees were immediately without work. Our ongoing staff we transitioned quickly to working
from home, which in the case of some staff at our arts centres meant undertaking desk work when
they would normally be called upon to deliver performances. We all had to learn digital skills quickly
and find ingenious ways to build comradery within teams and communications across the
organisations.

As Covid-19 continues to be a major factor in our lives, we recommend:

 Australia’s creative and cultural industries and institutions
Submission 110

• Expanding eligibility for all COVID-19 income support measures, including JobKeeper, to
local government and universities, as major owners of galleries, museums, collections and
art schools
• Avoiding packaging industry relief packages with loan options, offering instead a
Guarantee Against Loss scheme (similar to the one formerly delivered by Regional Arts
Victoria on behalf of Creative Victoria), to encourage entrepreneurial response to audience
demand rather than creating debt
• Permanently harmonising income averaging arrangements between the ATO and
Centrelink, recognising artistic practice as professional activity, and ensuring that fees or
grants received will not be treated by Centrelink as income that contributes to living
expenses (thus jeopardising JobSeeker payments)
• Given its employment intensity and high jobs generation, prioritising the cultural and
creative industries as the centrepiece of Australia’s COVID-19 recovery planning – crucial
to strengthening the entire economy as well as restoring our local communities, our social
life, and our vision for the future.

Avenues for increasing access and opportunities for Australia's creative and cultural industries
through innovation and the digital environment.

COVID-19 has forced arts and cultural organisations to adapt, pivot or completely reimagine
existing programs and activities to take advantage of new digital and remote workplace and
delivery initiatives.

The rush to do so immediately made the sector more accessible for many who had previously
faced barriers to sector engagement. However, many do not take into account the digital
inequality or the difficulties many regional or remote communities face in terms of insufficient
bandwidth. Without sustainable support, it is difficult to ascertain whether the changes that
have been made will become an ongoing part of programming.

We recommend:

• On industry advice, develop national standards on accessible digital presentation, apply

them to all National Cultural Institutions, and open a fund through the Office for the Arts to
support organisations to meet those standards
• On industry advice, ensure that best practice on artist payment and intellectual property is
observed across all such digital delivery
• Continue to upgrade digital connectivity across the entire country, with a focus on regional
communities who are currently left behind.
• Support the development of new work in regional Australia that can be accessed digitally,
or when it’s safe to do so, be toured to centres across the country.