The number of the arts beast

The press release arrived via email just moments ago, hot from the creative types at something called Free The Arts, where George Brandis’ decision to divert $104 million from the Australia Council seems to have prompted a reaction very close to apoplexy.

“The Australia Council has been cut off at the knees just as it was working to become a more nimble and responsive funding body with a clear mandate to support and promote a distinctively Australian arts practice,” the statement concludes after numerous paragraphs of windy ranting about the injustice of it all. Attributed only to an unnamed “spokesperson for the Free the Arts campaign”, the overall thrust seems to be that publicly funded artists, unlike workers in the private sector, have a moral right to the security assured by an ongoing flow of public funds.

So who was behind the press release? There was only one clue, a telephone number —  0407 690 444 — for those seeking more information. A quick Google search established it to be a contact for an entity that goes by the name Feral Arts Group.

Never heard of it?  Then you haven’t been keeping tabs on where public arts dollars are going, because the Brisbane-based organisation scored a whopping 1.3 million of them from the Australia Council in 2013.

A little more tapping at the keyboard revealed that Feral Arts’ chairman, John Willsteed, was blessed with $20,000 off his own bat in 2014 to write some new songs. In a former existence, as a member of the Go Betweens rock group, he underwrote his own muse. Perhaps his day job as a lecturer in sound design at the Queensland University of Technology pays so poorly he is too distracted to find the right chords without government assistance.

Further poking about on the web produced the information that Free The Arts’ protest page on Facebook is hosted by Urban Theatre Projects, which has accepted some $2.2 million in Australia Council funding since 2008. An example of what that rather significant sum purchased can be viewed here. Shakespeare it ain’t, and neither is this.

In the unlikely event that the Attorney-General is at all anxious about Free The Arts’ luvvie hordes descending on the national capital to demand their fair share of other people’s money, as they plan to do on Thursday, he should watch this video in which two members of a three-piece dance ensemble teach their fellow artists some special moves to protest Brandis the Philistine. Unless afflicted by an irrational fear of flat-footed clumping, he has little to worry about.

The instructors go by the name of The Fondue Set. And guess what, they scored $25,000 for their talents.

For more on Feral Arts, visit their site via the link below.

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