Draft arts curriculum launched for consultation
Ausdance welcomes the launch of the draft of The Australian Curriculum: The Arts for public consultation, announced yesterday by The Federal Minister for School Education, the Hon. Peter Garrett. The consultation period will be for three months, until 23 September.
The new curriculum will, for the first time, entitle all young people to learning in dance at school, a major breakthrough for students and dance educators. The four other subjects in the arts curriculum are drama, media arts, music and visual arts.
Ausdance has played a strong lobbying role in having dance included in The Australian Curriculum: The Arts, and has supported ACARA—the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority—in the development of the dance curriculum.
We encourage you, as dance teachers in schools, students and parents, to continue having your say throughout this next consultation stage.
Ausdance welcomes new treasurer
The Ausdance team is pleased to welcome Peter Bayliss from Into Tomorrow on board as its Treasurer. Into Tomorrow is a Chartered Accounting firm that provides a variety of services to music, arts and community sector clients. The company was founded by Peter in 2009 to combine his passions for music, the arts and community services with his skills as an accountant and business manager.
Screen dance initiative 2012 – 14
Carriageworks will undertake a 3-year $300,000 Screen Dance initiative established by the dance board of the Australia Council for the Arts. The initiative has been developed in response to major shifts in the cross-disciplinary, collaborative nature of choreography, visual arts and film.
The National Arts & Health Forum
The forum at Parliament House on 27 June was an important step in developing a meaningful and effective arts and health policy framework. The forum media release gives you further details of speakers, topics and the outcomes of the meeting.
The audio of the forum is now available on Place Stories, as is the opening speech by the Minister for the Arts, the Hon Simon Crean MP.
Until recently the forum was referred to as a one-off event. However, the organisers now see the need for it to continue, informing the advice that the Arts & Health Foundation provides to the Ministerial Working Group on Arts and Health.
We have been invited to be part of this ongoing process, and hope that our members will contribute their experiences and amazingly successful dance and health stories via the Arts and Health PlaceStories website. More resources will be posted on PlaceStories in the weeks ahead.
Keith Bain tribute
Keith Bain OAM passed away in Sydney on 4 July, 2012. He was much loved and repected by the Australian dance community and will be greatly missed. Keith's inspiration, insights, generosity, humour and vision were valued by many.
Keith's funeral was held at the Eastern Suburbs Crematorium on Tuesday 10 July.
About Keith
Keith began as a ballroom dancer in the country town of his birth, Wauchope. He graduated as Dux of the year from Armidale Teachers College in 1945 and taught at Kogarah Boys High and Temora High where his students experienced quality music, drama and dance.
It was in Temora that he saw the Bodenwieser Dance Group perform, and after talking with the dancers, Keith said that he
...sensed that [he] had the eyes to analyse the work, the head to appreciate it and a body that might someday master it.
Keith moved to Sydney to begin his modern dance career.
2012 National dance research forum program
On the weekend of 4 – 5 August 2012 Australian dance researchers will meet in Melbourne to share their work, ideas and develop their dance research networks. Participants include dance researchers working in choreographic cognition, technology, injury prevention and management, intercultural research, audience development and dance education.
Australia Dancing leaps into Trove
The National Library of Australia has integrated the Australia Dancing service into the national discovery service Trove.
Trove is an exciting destination for dance researchers and expands the potential of finding new and rare materials in many diverse collections. Trove takes you to resources in libraries, archives, performing arts collections, galleries; to biographical databases and online collections including pictures, digitised newspapers and finding aids. Trove also incorporates the National Library's dance resources, which continue to grow each year.
BlakDance 2012 triumph
BlakDance 2012 festival in Brisbane highlighted a wonderful range of contemporary Indigenous dance from Australia and New Zealand.
Choreographers, dancers, industry members and audiences came together to celebrate and gain a deeper understanding of contemporary Indigenous dance practice.
Responses to the Australia Council Review
The Australia Council Review was a comprehensive and complex document covering many facets of governance, funding, peer review and relationships with other agencies, plus important recommendations for additional arts funding.
Ausdance responded to the Review, as did many other arts organisations and individuals.
We then joined with ArtsPeak colleagues to make a joint statement where there was common agreement across art forms.
We now await the Government's response to this consultation, and the eventual release of the National Cultural Policy.
Graeme Murphy honoured
Congratulations to Graeme Murphy, who was yesterday appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.
Graeme Murphy, AO. Photo: Greg BarrettBallet companies make news on the ABC!
This year West Australian Ballet (WAB) celebrates its 60th birthday and The Australian Ballet (TAB) celebrates its 50th birthday. ABC TV presented a feature on the two companies on its 7.30 Report, 6 June. The segment includes brief interviews with David McAllister (Artistic Director of TAB since 2001), Barry Moreland (Artistic Director of WAB from 1983 – 97) and dancers Madeleine Eastoe and Kevin Jackson, both originally from WA and now principal artists with TAB.
New community arts unit at Deakin University
Managing Arts in Community Settings (MMM796) addresses the knowledge and skills needed to engage diverse communities in arts projects and manage community based arts initiatives.
A range of community-based arts programs are examined and the characteristics of community creative processes are identified and analysed. Find out more on the Deakin University website.
Northern Territory dance sector review
Arts NT, which provides Ausdance NT’s operational funding, announced to the organisation its intention to “employ an outside consultant to examine the dance sector’s needs and determine the best model for dance support relevant to the NT.”
This review is expected to take place between July and September 2012 and will be a joint initiative of Arts NT and Ausdance NT, with Arts NT as the lead agency. Read more.
ArtsPeak comments on Australia Council review
As one of the ArtsPeak co-convenors, we have commented briefly on the Review of the Australia Council, published yesterday.
We're now working on an analysis of the Review, and will be inviting the Ausdance network to comment and provide feedback before the closing date on 8 June.
Australia Council review released
Arts Minister Simon Crean has released the review into the Australia Council which will help inform the National Cultural Policy.
The Minister notes that 'the review makes 18 recommendations for reform of the Council and provides an opportunity to reflect on its success and to consider the major challenges ahead'.
We'll be commenting with our ArtsPeak colleagues, but we'd also like to hear from you. Please leave a comment when you've read the report.
The Budget and the arts
In an announcement made by Arts Minister Simon Crean, last night's Federal Budget revealed some welcome new money for the arts, and a new income tax-free threshold of $18,000, which will be of great benefit to the many artists who live close to the poverty line.
As co-convenors of ArtsPeak, Tamara Winikoff and I met this morning with the Minister's arts adviser, Helen O'Neil, for a post-Budget briefing. We discussed many issues around the Budget, including the whole-of-government approach to arts funding, philanthropy and delivery which will be outlined when the National Cultural Policy and the Australia Council review are finally released.
Tamara and I have made an Artspeak statement which reiterates some of the issues already flagged in previous submissions to the National Cultural Policy, and welcoming the new funding in the Budget.
Dance Board assessment report—February round
The Dance Board of the Australia Council has announced the results of its February 10 funding round.
The assessment report includes the list of successful applicants and projects, statistics on the round and the Chair’s report.
Federal Budget day
It's Federal Budget day, and we're all keen to see how the arts and cultural industries fare in the absence of the long-awaited National Cultural Policy.
We're off to the Arts Minister's office tomorrow morning to discuss the Budget outcomes and to hear about the Government's plans for the release of the National Cultural Policy later this year.
National Cultural Policy—messages from the field
We've joined our colleages at ArtsPeak and the Council for Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences (CHASS) to comment on the delay in releasing the National Cultural Policy.
On a positive note, the delay will enable us to look more closely at the small to medium performing and visual arts sectors and prepare a more detailed submission to Government. We'll keep you posted about progress once next week's Federal Budget has been delivered.
National Cultural Policy delayed
It's been reported that the release of the long-awaited National Cultural Policy has been delayed by several months.
We've verified this report with the Office for the Arts in Canberra, and have been informed that full details of the NCP's release will be announced in next Tuesday's Federal Budget.
Ausdance, along with our ArtsPeak colleages, has been supporting the Minister's push for a new National Cultural Policy for several years now, and contribtuing to its development. We hope Arts Minister Simon Crean will continue his strong support for increased funding through the policy, and we'll respond more fully once we see what announcements are made in the Budget.