The Australian visual art and craft sector has benefited from a four-year $39 million package known as the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy (VACS). This initiative by the current Government, delivered through the Australia Council, was a result of the recommendations by Rupert Meyer following an inquiry in 2002 into the health and status of the visual art sector.

The Australia Council organised a meeting in Adelaide in March, 2006 for the protagonists and recipients of the VACS initiative to discuss the upshot of VACS funding on the visual art sector. A representative from each of the art sector groups gave a report on the national outcomes achieved in their field. The following report was presented by Tamara Winikoff, National Visual Arts and Craft Network (NVACN).

Service Organisations

This brief presentation is made on behalf of a very heterogeneous group of entities which are broadly described as service organisations. In this instance they are, Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT); ArtSource WA; Artworkers Qld; Asialink; Craft Australia and National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA).

Generally speaking, service organisations:

1. are charged with the responsibility of providing leadership within their fields
2. to varying degrees undertake advocacy and lobbying and representation on behalf of all or parts of the sector
3. are a point of contact for information services and referrals
4. provide professional development opportunities and assistance to artists, other art professionals and in some cases to art organisations
5. seek to open up international opportunities for their sectors

Impact of VACS

The impact of the VACS has been as varied as the diversity of this grouping. Of these organisations, for one the funding only begins this year, another is getting only state not federal funding and a third is being funded for a specific project.

All organisations reported that the VACS funding has stimulated new excitement and energy and enabled the ability to plan new activities which go beyond survival and maintenance of the status quo. The process of the Myer Inquiry and the supportive response from the two levels of government also served to strengthen the confidence of the sector and increased its public profile. The formation by NAVA of the National Visual Arts and Craft Network (NVACN) has achieved a sense of solidarity and shared purpose and identity. The success of its lobbying in securing the positive response of governments is felt to have saved the sector from a slow demise through funding starvation.

For each organisation VACS has contributed as follows:

Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT)
ANAT is working on media arts education, r and d, accessibility distribution, infrastructure and commissioning models. Details are provided in the New Media Arts presentation

ArtSource WA
The funding that Artsource received from the WA State Government as part of VACS has enabled it to achieve an appropriate level of internal sustainability for the first time in ten year, gaining a breathing space from the continual concern about the bottom line. It can now pay staff at the rates advocated by the NAVA Code of Practice,

The funding also has allowed for the development of other programs such as Artsource's Regional and Indigenous Program. This program saw the employment of two Indigenous personnel, with two more regionally based about to be appointed. However, although the program is exceptionally successful and has solid links to Artsource's Employment Program, while its funding continues on a project basis, its capacity to deliver meaningful and connected professional development to regional WA will remain limited by the availability of those funds.

Artworkers Qld
The VACS funding for Artworkers is for a particular project, the highly successful Arc Biennial which assembled an ambitious program, included overseas and interstate speakers and drew large appreciative audiences. Its ambitious scope and quality substantially increased the profile of Artsworkers. The VACS money equated to approximately one third of the total event expenses with the remainder of money coming from non government investment and organisational reserves. The downside is that the VACS funds replaced core funding, with core programs being concomitantly reduced to deliver the Biennial.

Asialink
Two year funding gives Asialink some stability organisationally and enables it to adequately support international tours of Australian art in Asia, including in North Asia, something not previous possible eg Destiny Deacon's show in Tokyo in April.

It also allows better lead time to develop exhibitions and arrange international tours. Previously with presentation and promotion funding, Asialink heard only at the end of the year just before tours were meant to start. This resulted in a lag to develop them to tour-stage and then place them in good venues.

Extra funding and extra time means Asialink can look positively at new ideas for exhibition displays, promotion and education, include seminars and involve more and different audiences.

Craft Australia
The Craft Australia website, the portal for information on matters relating to Australian contemporary craft and design is expanding its services to include Craft Galleries On-line. This is focused on commercial and public galleries that specialise in Australian contemporary craft and design to provide a service to makers, collectors, agents, retailers, researchers and interested members of the public.

A youth and emerging practitioner research project will be conducted along with an on-line forum entitled Youth @ craft·design to inform a response to future training needs and opportunities. This builds on the success of a previous online forum Interact: Contemporary craft in a digital future.

The previous export program is now replaced by collaborative work with AusTrade, DFAT, Australian Craft and Design Organisations (ACDO) and others to assist the sector to become more globally competitive.

National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA)
The funding increase has allowed NAVA to broaden its national reach through being able to employ a Projects Manager and hold events and undertake research around the country.

In addition NAVA is attracting more experienced staff through being able to offer better salaries. Prior to this there was a great deal of staff movement and the resultant loss of corporate knowledge and stability.

It has also meant that the much admired and heavily used Visual Arts Net gateway website to Australian visual arts and craft, established through project funding from DCITA and the OzCo, has been able to be incorporated as a part of NAVA's core operations. This year, drawing on reserves, it will be substantially redesigned with a bevy of new functions.

Evaluation framework

Because service organisations are not involved in bringing the work of creators to the public, they do not fit easily into the mould which is the predominant grouping supported by the Australia Council's Visual Arts Board and state/territory arts funding authorities. This is reflected in the scope of the evaluation document.

We wish to make some suggestions about broadening the scope of the evaluation framework to adequately cover the reporting and analysis of Service Organisations' work. For example there is no place for reporting of all the research, advocacy, lobbying and policy change work, especially that done on behalf of artists.

Catrina Vignando, Craft Australia raised the question of multiplier effect.

The criteria used to assess the value of national industry bodies is very scant. (These criteria) fail to include the benefits of why this is being done, and why it needs to continue to happen, which I believe will be a more convincing argument. We can provide quantitative data about the increase in the number of services, but this does not measure the multiplier effect of these programs. This is more ambiguous to measure, but I believe is vital to convince government of the impact of their VACS money.

This is also the case for organisations delivering exhibition programs. For example to measure exhibitions strictly on a numeric basis, better quality and more of them, does not assess the outcome of the exhibitions. Often this may be to give artists exposure, but often there is also a strategic outcome for the shows. For example, global local by Object featured Australian young craft practitioners and designers. The show was part of a reciprocal program presented in London at the V & A along with shows by several other countries, showcasing Australian work in an international arena. This context proved hugely beneficial for the participating artists who have gone on to have other international exposure. The value added by such initiatives is what will convince government to continue to fund VACS, yet this measure is not included.

Collecting this data can be difficult, and often beyond the resources of organisations to measure impacts which can be long term in their delivery. Perhaps this data needs to be gathered and evaluated as supplementary to that requested ... and can be measured by external bodies to alleviate the burden on already over stretched organisations. Perhaps this is where the national advocacy bodies can be provided with resources to gather this data. The 3 years of VACS funding provides an excellent case scenario, it is such a clear pre and post VACS outcome. This data can then be used convincingly for other areas of government lobbying to validate the benefits of investment in the arts and the long term benefit of such support. We have not had such an opportunity in the past ...

And from Alison Carroll, Asialink

• i) Outcome 2 - there is a disparity between the "high quality" exhibitions/catalogues in the heading and the measurement being only statistical. I think the word 'qualitative' analysis should also be there and it can be measured in terms of critical responses, reports of (in our case Australian posts and) visiting curators and press coverage.
• ii) Outcome 3 - there is no international agenda in the strategy and evaluation: one that is strong and clear.

Looking to the Future

Recommendation 1

The VACS funding has provided some respite from the stringency of the struggle for sustainability. However, the recommended level of $15 million was not allocated nor indexed. The $39 million over four years was not sufficient to fulfil all Myer's recommendations. These shortfalls need to be addressed from 2007 onwards and this new funding level to become the benchmark for increased government funding to this sector with annual indexation. It is onerous to have to come back every four years to make the same case again and to suffer the loss of continuity, certainty and impetus that this entails.

Recommendation 2

The VACS funding has gone some way towards assisting organisations to meet the community's expectation for high quality artwork and high production values in its presentation. However, the bulk of the funds have been allocated to organisations, with under 17% going in direct grants to artists. While it is clearly the case that infrastructure organisations are a vital support mechanism, the falling level of artists' incomes continues to be a major issue. This has been made evident by the longitudinal studies undertaken by Professor David Throsby. In response, the Australia Council has made this one of its current priorities. As advocacy organisations, this group too has very real concerns for artists' wellbeing.

We contend that one obvious means to assist artists is the payment of artists' fees in publicly funded spaces. Organisations across the board support the payment of artists' fees but NAVA's 2005 research shows that even with VACS funding, many of the organisations struggle to find the means to do this adequately if at all. All organisations have cooperated with NAVA in its research and support a call for an increase in the federal government's contribution to VACS funding of a minimum of $3 million for this purpose. NAVA is recommending that this $3 million should be allocated through a fund managed by the Australia Council to which organisations would make application.

Recommendation 3

The non-financial recommendations of the Myer Inquiry also need to be taken up by governments starting with the urgent introduction of Artists' Resale Royalty legislation. While some valuable changes have been made to artists' income tax through NAVA securing a public ruling from the ATO, most of the other legislative and regulatory changes remain to be addressed.

These three recommendations should be the starting point for a long term commitment to and expansion of VACS funding by federal and state/territory governments.

Tamara Winikoff   March, 2006
Executive Director
National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA)

This article was written by Tamara Winikoff and will be published in the June 2006 edition of the NAVA Quarterly.