Table of Contents
The re-visioning of arts and cultural policy has occurred to varying degrees across the international stage. Partly, this has been in response to trends in cultural participation and consumption, as well as changing approaches to strategies of support. In particular, a number of trends are characterised by trade-offs between the following factors:
the ability to be financially self-sufficient or non-reliant on government largesse;
the ratio between the costs of cultural practice and production, and ability to generate revenue;
the size and market profile of audiences and consumers of arts and culture; and
the degree of cross-form transformations of cultural practice.
When these relationships are investigated, it is clear that artistic and cultural forms that rely most heavily on government support are those that are least popular. Moreover, these are the artforms consumed by audiences with the greatest capacity to purchase the culture they desire, namely, that segment of the population with high incomes and high cultural capital (and who are older, more likely to be female and live in inner-city areas). Conversely, those artistic and cultural forms that rely least on government support are consumed in greater quantity, are more likely to have a mixed consumer base and tend to offer greater choice (Australia Council 2000; 2003; Hill Strategies 2005c; Keane 2004; Lee 2004). Cross-cultural comparisons show similar patterns (e.g. Mandel (2006) on cultural participation in Germany).
Consumer spending on cultural goods and services in developed countries has increased, in aggregate terms, by almost half in less than a decade. A closer look at expenditure data reveals, however, that a significant proportion of spending has been concentrated on the consumption of books, live performing arts (broadly defined), and admission to museums and heritage sites/national parks/botanic gardens. The most popular cultural goods and services are movies and DVDs, popular music and CDs, street markets and community fêtes, festivals, and art/craft hobbies. Without incentives, only a minority of ordinary people choose to spend money on traditional arts and culture. Yet, despite the low demand, the number of professional artists has more than tripled over the same period. In other words, there is a dramatic over-supply of cultural practitioners particularly in the least popular cultural forms (meaning, these practitioners have low incomes and contingent earnings).
The rationale of provision rather than consumption has supposedly been endorsed by statistics showing that people generally support cultural venues whether or not they are themselves customers. As one might expect, and customers might know, libraries are the most supported cultural facilities. Museums, performing arts venues and art galleries are supported to a lesser extent. While support certainly increases with use, only a minority of non-users support the need for generous government support for culture as a broad category. At best, statistics on usage have been used to justify continued funding for art and culture. But when we look at patterns of cultural consumption they show that people continue to prefer ‘popular’ cultural activities to ‘high culture’ ones.