New arts plan should cover all 'creative industries', arts minister says

Gordon Ramsay said the new strategy would include a review of arts organisation funding, a priority for the next term if the government was re-elected.

"I think that it's now time for us to move beyond simply an arts policy and to develop a holistic creative industries policy," Mr Ramsay, speaking on Wednesday at an online arts election policy forum organised by the Childers Group, said.

"It probably was going to be the case to do that anyway, but I think, if anything has pushed us really into that space it is the fact that we are in this emerging COVID, post-COVID situation."

But Mr Ramsay faced criticism from outgoing Liberal member Vicki Dunne, who said the current ACT government had ignored the arts sector.

Mr Ramsay said the current arts strategy was "not an ancient policy by any means" and work on the arts had continued in the last four years.

Mrs Dunne told the forum the government had made poor decisions which led to failures in the arts sector in its last term.

"There has been poor policy or no policy as the policy has not been updated or rewritten since 2015, and we believe that the arts policy needs to be a very living document," Mrs Dunne said.

Mrs Dunne said Labor had failed to deliver the Kingston Arts Precinct and its consultation on the project, which has made slow progress since Geocon was announced as the winner of a tender process in 2017, had been poor.

Mrs Dunne said Liberal Party wanted to increase mass participation in the arts and hear more from arts consumers in planning for the arts sector, while also cutting red tape which hampered artists' access to support.

"I do believe that individually artists are entrepreneurs, and we need to help them achieve what they can on their own merits and do that in a way which is a light touch," she said.

"Heavy, onerous grant applications and the constant churn of grant applications is a drudge and detracts from people's artistic endeavour."

Greens candidate for Ginninderra Jo Clay told the forum her party wanted to see more access to arts facilities and make sure artists at government-supported events were paid correctly and on time.

Ms Clay also said festivals in the ACT should have local content quotas to ensure the events offered more opportunities to resident arts communities.

She said artists, who often worked individually, struggled to talk about money and payment, which had created a poor culture around the monetary value of art.

"That has led to a situation where art is free and everybody understands that professional athletes get paid and that sport gets backed. And everyone understands that art should be something people do for the love of it. And I, frankly, don't think that is a good starting point for negotiations," Ms Clay said.

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Ms Clay said artists needed to be provided with better longer-term funding, with a focus on residencies rather than grants made for one-off projects.

"We're looking towards making much more long-term opportunities and the ones we've hit on so far are residencies but we are genuinely open to a conversation to what that might look like in future," she said.