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 Christine Ballinger, Australian Craft and Design Organisations (ACDO).

Overview

Before I commence with this presentation, I would like to announce a name change for Craft Organisations Australia (COA) to Australia Craft and Design Organisations (ACDO).

While the craft and design organisations have been instrumental in developing and professionalising craft practice in Australia over the last three decades, the new name reflects the dynamic changes and spectrum of practice now occurring within the sector.

When Rupert Myer was undertaking his inquiry, the recognition of the creative industries paradigm was underway by governments and tertiary institutions within Australia. Yet at that time, the craft and design organisations were already responding to the hybridisation and blurred boundaries of practice, developing programs and services to create demand.

Australia Craft and Design Organisations (ACDO) represent a range of diverse, dynamic and innovative organisations well placed to respond to sector needs.

Strengthening the infrastructure

It was November 2003 when I was a brand new, wet-behind-the-ears Executive Director of just two months, that Craft Queensland's administration manager received a phone call informing her of the successful adoption by the Federal and State Governments of the majority of recommendations from Rupert Myer's inquiry into the visual arts and crafts.

Her response ... she sat at her desk and cried for a long time. She had been with Craft Queensland for over 6 years and had been integral member to a very small team that held together an impossible combination of a full exhibition program, public programs and professional development with financial and HR resourcing at subsistence levels. Both she and the organisation were exhausted.

The Visual Arts and Craft Strategy was a lifeline. ACDO wishes to sincerely thank the Federal and State governments for recognising the struggle and responding to it.

We are now halfway through, so what has changed, what has been achieved and what still needs to be done?

There is no doubt that the Visual Arts and craft Strategy (VACS) has delivered to the majority of the organisations operational stability. This, in turn, has resulted in increased capacity to not only respond to sector needs, but also actively pursue AND generate opportunities.

For the Tasmanian Wood Design Collection, VACS has enabled them to develop a range of new programs to service regional communities in the State. These services include a high-quality and diverse exhibition program, education initiatives and increased contact with practitioners across a design forms including furniture, graphic design, architecture, jewellery, ceramics and glassmaking.

With VACS funding, Craftsouth was able to curate Wishlist, a major exhibition of members work and the first over 10 years. After years of delivering programs to boost creative skills, encourage innovation, develop markets, and improve business acumen for members, it was apparent in Wishlist how Craftsouth has boosted the quality and diversity in South Australian craft and design.

On the other hand, Object has recorded an increase in its audiences of over 40% to over 190,000 individuals annually. This embraces exhibition, publication and retail activities. The organisation has pursued new opportunities to tour major contemporary exhibitions by forming a 3 year agreement with Melbourne Museum to exhibit 2 major Object exhibitions annually and developing a national and international touring exhibition of Australia design, Freestyle.

Craft ACT's VACS funding has been channeled into its exhibition program to be responsive to an increasing volume of artists, new ideas, new technologies, new materials and new audiences distant from its inner city location. Some examples include the Raw Heat Hot Clay conference which coordinated a total of 10 exhibitions stretching across the ACT region and into NSW and Hot Art Cool Glass, a partnership with the ANU School of Arts Glass Workshop, and which presented a diverse and high profile program of public events to focus on Canberra's unique reputation for studio glass.

While based in Canberra, the restructured Craft Australia is excelling in its role as the national peak industry body for the professional contemporary craft sector. Drawing on strong relationships and partnerships, Craft Australia has set ambitious strategies for communication and debate; advocacy, research and market growth. One specific VACS funded initiative includes Craft Galleries Online. This online directory promotes Australian contemporary craft by focusing on commercials and public galleries that specialise in Australian craft and design. This is a tremendous online resource for makers, collectors, agents, retailers, researchers and the interested public.

Craft Victoria, on the other hand, has reached from the regions of Australia across the oceans of the southern hemisphere to bring one of the most ambitious ACDO programs together. The scale and scope of the South Project is staggering. The VACS funding, in stabilising the organisation, has enabled an explosion of capacity which the organisation has used to broker remarkable partnerships in Latin America, South Africa, NZ, India and many Pacific island nation states.

Common Goods - Cultures meet though Craft opened in Melbourne on Tuesday night at the Melbourne Museum and Craft Victoria. The exhibition presents the work of a collaborative residency program with artists from the countries previously mentioned and regional Australian practitioners.

Each ACDO organisation reflects the sector, region and state dynamics in its operations. FORM, from Western Australia, truly represents the scale and challenges of servicing Australia's largest state with the lowest population per square kilometer.

Vast Terrain, an exhibition conceived to explore the natural recourses, the materials of manufacture, the landscape and life within it, and the possibilities conceived in the mind was just one of the ambitious projects enabled by VACS funding. The exhibition, which opened at the Sydney Opera House before undertaking a touring program, was supported by a very sophisticated catalogue and brought to the sector an impressive new audience.

And since we in are in Adelaide, then everyone in this room here must have been into the JamFactory. Back in our offices as we go about the administration processes required to keep our sectors supported and activated, we are removed from the immediacy and physicality of the creative process. The smells of sawdust in the furniture workshop, the dry intense heat from the glass kilns and the sculptural contours of greenware ready for firing in the ceramics studio brings us back to why we do what we do.

Because the operations at the JamFactory are so extensive, I will take just one example to illustrate how VACS funding has halted the downward slide and reinstated an opportunity. With the funding, JamFactory has been able to reopen its furniture training studio. In the intake of young associate designers this year, they have recruited an Indigenous Associate. This is an historical first.

Before I discuss the VACS enabled achievements of Craft Queensland, I wish to herald a few sobering points about the funding and which, as part of the evaluation ahead of us, must be recognised.

1. The distribution was inequitable - for instance Territory Craft received no VACS funding from either the State or Federal Government.
2. The current funding arrangements sees us all back here in another four years advocating again for the retention of VACS. Security and sustainability is not currently assured in the long-term.
3. The funding addressed chronic organisational fatigue. Now, two years on and with some of the fatigue addressed and capacity greatly enhanced, achievements cannot be expected to extrapolate. Many of the organisations have now reached their capacity to deliver any more and must plateau in there performance if sustainability, which was one of the pillars of VACS, is to be truly achieved.
4. The evaluation framework does not capture the extensive flow-on and value-adding of programs.
5. Some of the VACS recommendations have not been achieved. I refer to Recommendation 5 - the introduction of a resale royalty. I urge all Federal politicians to support the private members bill which will be before the House this month I understand.
6. The full recommendation was for fifteen million dollars. Twelve million was the outcome. The balance accounts for the funding required to address critical issues such as artist's fees and new funding instruments for the sector.

And before I move to discuss my own organisation, I wish to respond to Senator Kemp's request in his opening address ... where do we want to go and what do we want to achieve? For ACDO, it is a global vision. A vision which sees the increased capacity achieved through VACS funding enable the organisations and Australian artists achieve a place in the global arena. An arena where they already have the ability to showcase and compete with the world's best, but lack the resources to do so effectively.

And finally to Craft Queensland and to conclude. VACS has enabled the organisation to undertake two export initiatives in to SE Asia which resulted in over 40 artists receiving international exposure with eight receiving further export opportunities.

I assisted with the installation of the exhibitions and presented a number of seminars at Singapore tertiary design institutions. Additionally, I spend some time gathering market intelligence on products similar to those Craft Queensland manages in Australia. In doing so, I realised that I was not seeing Singaporean designer-maker's work in the marketplace. When I inquired about this, I was informed that the Singaporean government invests only in painting and sculpture, not in craft and design.

And hence this realisation ... when a government does not invest in the creative sector, there are no makers, no markets, no audiences and no innovation.

Thank you

Christine Ballinger   March, 2006
Executive Director
Craft Queensland