Professional resources
National Health & Arts policy forum
It's exciting to have been invited to a national Arts & Health Policy Forum at Parliament House in Canberra on 27 June. The forum has been supported by the Minister for the Arts, Simon Crean and the Minister for Health, Tanya Plibersek, following a decision last November to develop a national arts and health policy framework.
This will be a great opportunity to help policy makers understand the breadth and impact of arts and health practice and to shape their ideas about future policy.
Broader participation will be invited via online broadcast featuring a live audio stream, twitter feed and digital showcase of arts and health stories across the country.
The organising partners are the Arts and Health Foundation, the National Rural Health Alliance and Regional Arts Australia.
Review of Private Sector Support for the Arts 2011
The Harold Mitchell Review of Private Sector Support for the Arts has just been released by the Minister for the Arts as part of the wider consultation about the new National Cultural Policy.
The Mitchell review recommends several ideas that might help attract new donors to the arts, noting that “The limited funds available to many arts organisations creates a situation where they cannot afford dedicated staff to drive a strategic approach to fund-raising”.
Mitchell also recommends the merging of the Australian Business Arts Foundation with Artsupport Australia “under the auspices of a new body with responsibility for all private sector support for the arts in Australia”.
Today is also your last opportunity to respond to the Australia Council review, another important part of the Cultural Policy consultation process.
Tanja Liedtke digital archive
In news that will particularly interest Australian dance researchers, educators and students, the Tanja Liedtke Foundation has announced that it has created the Tanja Liedtke digital archive, now freely accessible to anyone who is interested in knowing more about Tanja’s life and work.
The Foundation has also announced that one of Tanja's works, construct, has been voted by The Monthly magazine as one of 20 Australian masterpieces, across all art forms, since the year 2000. The work was declared the masterpiece in the category of contemporary dance, a great achievement!
Dance support organisations meet in Paris
Last week 25 dance support organisations met in Paris for three days of talks, presentations and performances. As we are members of the World Dance Alliance Asia Pacific, we had also organised for WDA people to provide this mainly European group with more information about its activities.
These annual meetings are an opportunity to share dance support strategies, ideas and visions for the future. We were invited on the first day to share this year’s achievements, a challenge for many European organisations that face severe funding cuts. Despite funding difficulties all round, presentations were inspirational and visionary for dance, and we came away with many ideas for collaborations and future planning with now-familiar colleagues such as Madeline Ritter and Ingo Diehl (Germany), Caroline Miller (Dance UK) and our French colleagues Agnès Wasserman and Frédéric Moreau.
Delegates at Paris meeting of dance support organisations. Ingo Diehl (centre) is the Tanzplan Deutschland Educational Program Director.