ART SUNDAY - 'WHAT MAKES ME'

“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” - Oscar Wilde

For Art Sunday today, I am sharing an art site that is sponsored by the Australia Council. The Australia Council for the Arts is the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body. They support Australia’s arts through funding, strengthening and developing the arts sector. They collaborate to build new audiences, foster philanthropic support and deepen understanding of the arts through research. Each year, they deliver more than $160 million in funding for arts organisations and individual artists across the country. This is extremely important in times like ours where the fragile world economy means that arts funding comes very low on the pecking order of government funding priorities.

Each year the Australia Council develops a set of Strategic Priorities to ensure efforts are focussed on areas identified by the sector as critical to capacity building. These priorities are informed by the art form sector plans, the leadership team, the art form boards and committees and research by the organisation. The Australia Council’s four over-arching Strategic Priorities for 2011-12 are:

Cultural Leadership: In 2010/11 the Australia Council conducted research to identify the characteristics of effective cultural leaders. The Council will work with the sector to identify effective development pathways, including the building blocks for leadership development.
Programs – Continuation the Australia Council’s Emerging Leaders Program a national framework for cultural leadership development.

Realising the potential of broadband: The commitment by the Australian Government to a national broadband network (NBN) is promoted as the largest single infrastructure project in our lifetime. It creates potential for all aspects of the arts community, including individual artists, arts organisations and arts administrators. Targeted projects in areas that are connected to the NBN will help the sector seize new opportunities.
Programs – Commissioned projects for small arts organisations, including cross platform transmedia and other new practices in targeted NBN connected areas new partnerships between the arts sector and media/technology companies the development of tool-kit and education program to extend the findings from the Australia Council’s online engagement research.

Innovative practice: This initiative will support new forms of artistic expression and presentation platforms, as well as the importance of supporting artists in the research and development of their practice at various stages of their careers.
Programs – Investing in a Creative Australia, the Federal Government’s $10 million commitment to assist artists to create new work and increase audience access to diverse creative expressions

Diversified models for support: Support structures come in many forms; financial, mentoring, new models, partnerships and collaborations as well as delivery methods such as touring. By considering diverse operating models, this initiative aims to strengthen the arts sector.
Programs – A project to research, pilot and evaluate new funding models (such as crowdsourcing) the development of a framework for national touring a developmental program for independent producers.

An online initiative of the Arts Council of the Australia that brings art closer to the people is the “What Makes Me” cube project. This gives people the chance to upload images, videos and music onto the faces of a cube. The website invites the people of Australia to review the importance art has on their life by creating a personal cube of art that has some personal significance to each individual creator. I have created a couple o f cubes, which are shown above. I have chosen to upload some of my photographs, my paintings but also images that hint at my music compositional activities and my sources of inspiration. It is a fun way to get people to think about art in their everyday life.