Currency house sydney (64 risultati)

Paperback. Condizione: New. Australian audiovisual production faces an uncertain future. The recent proliferation of new forms of digital delivery is both a promise and a threat to the screen content business and poses challenges to established forms of government intervention. Many ambitious predictions have been made about the impact on the Australian media landscape and the explosion of sites such as, and the investment of media moguls like Murdoch and Packer suggest profound change is taking place. But where does Australian content-our stories-stand? Recent media legislation debate was all about technology; the issue of content was notably absent. This is of serious concern because the fracturing of the media sector and copyright laws, globalisation of production and distribution, have the potential to undermine the existing structure for the creation, production and distribution of Australian material.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Lex Marinos was born into a family of Greek café owners and grew up in Wagga Wagga, where the acting bug found him at a time when Australian forms of theatre were just being reinvented. With his Australian voice and Greek features, he set a puzzle to casting agents; but as new forms of public entertainment emerged he built a set of freelance skills to last a lifetime: radio presenter, stage and screen actor and director, all-purpose 'ethnic' in TV comedy, host of multicultural celebrations. To government he became an adviser on public events and ethnic issues. In this paper, another in the Professionals series by senior artists, Marinos reflects on how our society has transformed; and engagingly discusses how to succeed in one of the most discouraging professions in the world.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Back in 2001 at a time of high uncertainty, Currency House 'was conceived out of a conviction that the arts are fundamental to a civil society; that a society that does not value its own arts is a nation alienated from its own culture'. With this in mind, its editor, Katharine Brisbane, reflects on the legacy of the 62 authors published since 2004 who were given the brief to tell what it means in Australia to be an arts worker and defender of the public good. Since then, the lives of artists have been overtaken by the digital realm, reforms to policy and globalisation. Some have used these incentives to achieve international success; but, for most, survival is more precarious than ever. Our public institutions, dedicated to providing accurate news, informed opinion, health care and social research, have also suffered. In 2020, Covid-19 has exposed the fragility of such a society. This paper reviews the problems faced, and the opportunities now opening for us to set the arts on a more secure foundation. …

Paperback. Condizione: New. Once, the idea of the arts participating in what are undeniably trade fairs, complete with product booths, giveaways and funny hats, would have been a breach of faith with their sponsors. Today, it is the norm. These events range from the huge and grotesque, such as APAP (American Performing Arts Presenters) to the less daunting, such as CINARS in Montreal or APAM in Australia. From the US, the concept spread around the globe and while Europe has largely resisted the trend, there are now arts markets throughout Asia, North and South America and the Pacific. But the question now is: has the arts market outlived its usefulness? Have the new digital platforms made touring redundant? Has the rapid, borderless exchange of artists, and the worldwide experience of co-productions, residencies and other collaboration, made them superfluous? Isn't the world simply saturated with dance, physical theatre and new music, not to say festivals and circuits? Veteran marketeer Justin Macdonnell is uncompromising in his advice. APAM is seeking to reinvent itself from an intensive four-day conference every two years to an elongated 'process' in Melbourne. So, an awareness of the need is in the air. But change to what and where might it end? This paper questions the assumptions underlying the whole notion of a market: the role that government agencies have played in advocating, enabling and even owning such events; and re-evaluates their achievements and shortcomings. It suggests other possibilities, including those now under trial in Australia.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. In this paper Alison Croggon, one of Australia's most insightful cultural critics, looks back from the days when the daily broadsheet newspapers were unrivalled in authority, to the collapse of the print media and opening of a free market for digital public opinion. The dramatic downsizing of the Fairfax empire's Sydney Morning Herald and The Age hit arts journalism badly and coincided with the rise of arts-oriented websites across Australia. Croggon sees the demise of the old criticism as a loss of power and received wisdom but also an opportunity to engage artists, critics and audiences in conversations of global collaboration and reference. With this breakdown of institutional criticism, which, she says, had latterly focussed on art as a commodity, came the opportunity rethink our assumptions about what critical responses to art might be. It has offered a chance to open the door to new ways of thinking, a way of enriching both the communities around art and the process of making art itself.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Dance, by its very nature, is fleeting. Compared with other art forms it is not easily documented, notated, or archived. Dance is constantly shape-shifting, re-negotiating its visibility. This is, of course, its magic; the potency of dance lies in its impermanence. However, this presents paradoxes and survival challenges for Australian choreographers, who make their work in an increasingly precarious and complex ecology, in which tangible outcomes and material success hold sway. Sue Healey has spent many years experimenting with the moving image in conjunction with choreography, seeking an antidote to this ephemerality. In this paper she describes her journey from the 1980s to the present, a period of great advancement in technology yet diminishing resources for dance-making. It outlines her strategy to survive by diversifying, adapting, becoming interdisciplinary. How might something new come from re-imagining the power of the human body through the medium of film? How could film capture the visceral, fleshy reality of live performance, and take us beyond the vanishing point, into something new? This Platform Paper contains Vimeo links to examples of Sue Healey's work. …

Paperback. Condizione: New. In a considered account of composers' pursuit of an Australian sound in contemporary music, from John Antill's Corroboree to the rappers of today, Christopher Sainsbury, composer, academic, activist and member of the Dharug people, uncovers the powerful bond between heritage and musical expression in the members of Ngarra-burria: First Peoples Composers program. For non-Indigenous Australians the long tail of European tradition continues to burden our music, he says; but the new Indigenous composers draw their inspiration from their own history, their country, stories, politics. Years of separation and misunderstanding have led to the misappropriation of Aboriginal songs and rituals in search of Australian-ness. Sainsbury calls for a rethinking of this, based on respect, and a new collaboration to begin between First Peoples composers and the new music sector, in which the former can be recognised as creators and performers of a real Australian sound that echoes back to the dawn of history.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Documentaries matter now more than ever. Documentary storytelling is a vital way to explore our world and who we are as a nation. In this they are as much an art form as about real life-and that's sufficient reason for them to have a strong cultural imperative. But in this evolving digital era, a new landscape has emerged. Much has changed: new storytelling tools, a new global base-but with reduced government funding and increased fragmentation of the distribution sector. The once self-reliant TV broadcast industry has re-structured around ratings and perceived audience taste. So it is outside the broadcast sector that we must look for ambition and innovation. We are now at that historical moment of transition from an outdated broadcast model to a digital future of many platforms. The systems created by the Internet will be the future. But they cannot survive without government regulation. Currently they have no local content obligations. These global companies must engage with Australian-originated projects right from the start. Zubrycki calls for similar content regulation to that of the commercial broadcasters. 'It's not going to happen any other way', he insists. 'Quotas are not just necessary, they are essential.'.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. What are cultural rights and why do we need them? In the author's words, 'Everyone, everywhere has a right to thrive.' It is an issue of justice, an essential service like education, health. Culture is not benign, he says. It is a powerful narrative contagion which binds us together. We need to pay attention to it and be vigilant, not for the few but the whole. Because if we don't it can be used against certain sections of our society, demonising them or rendering their story invisible and citizens vulnerable. In Australia we pride ourselves on our cultural diversity but have little self-knowledge. This paper draws from Rankin's 26 years' experience living with Big hART, a regional performance company and digital content producer based in Burnie, 'the poorest electorate in Australia', that uses the arts and performance to stimulate social development and better cultural understanding. He reflects on the lessons learnt from their successes and failures; and places their body of work in an international context of alternative company practice.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Some years ago, writes Mark Williams, an international cabaret performer was told by a sensible Australian aunt: 'All you'll have at the end is a scrapbook and some memories.' What is the risk-reward path really like for Australian performance artists? Williams says things are worse. Studies show that among professional artists and crews, the level of mental ill-health, suicidal ideation and suicide is nearly nine times that of the general population. In a stark reflection on the history of performers' practice, Williams shows how government and industry services, in determining purely monetary rationalism, have unwittingly discriminated against those with individual specialised skills who work irregular hours in hard conditions at low pay because it is their vocation calls for more flexibility in public services, whole-of-life planning and self-awareness in early training; and sees opportunities, particularly in social capital housing. Without a home to come home to, he says, our artists today 'are in terrible danger of falling through the gaps'.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. In this prophetic, passionately argued essay Justin O'Connor navigates his way through the social changes since the 1960s that have divided art from culture and married creativity to material profit. Today the rapid growth of cultural consumption and the contribution of cultural services to the wider economy have brought about a crisis in cultural policy which has devastated the arts. So trapped are the arts in the language of metrics that their real intention can no longer be understood. We must learn to share a common language of public value. The cultural sector deserves to be treated as other public good is, like health and education, which occupy a large place in our market, and yet the market is not seen as the reason for their existence. O'Connor calls on the cultural sector not to retreat from the marketplace but make a rigorous, open-eyed engagement with it. What is at stake in culture-as it has always been- are the great questions of ultimate value: of how we can live together and what the quality of our collective life should be.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. On Friday 13 May 2016, the Australia Council for the Arts released the results of that agency's 'Four Year Organisations' grants. The result was a bloodbath: 65 organisations were defunded, and more than a hundred that applied were also unsuccessful. The arts sector dubbed it 'Black Friday'. The defunding of a slew of Australia's best-known smaller arts companies derived from the funding cuts and changes made by the Abbott Government. All told, according to the Australian Labor Party's Mark Dreyfus, the Coalition cut approximately $300 million from federal cultural funding prior to this defunding. Before the 2013 election, arts funding had been a more-or-less bipartisan policy area, supported by both major parties. But bipartisanship disappeared in the ideological environment of the new government. The Coalition didn't just slash the Australia Council's funding. It launched a new attack on arm's length arts funding itself -- a principle that has enjoyed four decades of bipartisan support. Why did George Brandis and the Coalition do this? What accounts for this assault on the cultural sphere? This essay is an attempt to tell that story, and to question what it means. Australian culture is being attacked by political actors, beholden to an ideology of privatising the cultural space. But if there are troubling realities, there are also opportunities.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. An estimated $250 billion will be spent worldwide in the current decade on creating 'cultural precincts', collections of buildings with some arts-related function. Today, both capital and regional cities are building precincts which make grand claims for artistic collaboration, urban renewal, tourism and 'liveable' residential development while bringing substantial economic benefits. But is any of this true? Are they creative and profitable? Justin Macdonnell surveys the literature to uncover who really benefits. Once precincts grew where the people gathered, now they rise in neglected places, in the hope of attracting growth. There's evidence they sell more tickets, but not that they produce better art. Property values rise, but are artists better rewarded? Does the public have a richer experience or even a more convenient one? Are cultural precincts really just another commodifying of the arts? Is there a better way.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. This paper takes the opportunity to ask how and why a cultural institution of such significance as the ABC has been variously able, allowed, encouraged and supported to run its own race, to operate outside of, and with no regard for, a public policy framework for a sector of which it is a part.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. This is the second instalment of the Professional, an occasional series of Platform Papers that asks our senior artists to tell their story. Nigel Levings, today a much-honoured, internationally renowned lighting designer, upholds his role as a pioneer of his profession. Levings describes his beginnings as apprentice 'electrician' at Melbourne's Princess Theatre in the 1960s and the opportunities soon offered by the budding art theatres opening in the new wave. Since then he has lit operas and dramas in every centre of the world, won a host of awards, and is as much in demand as ever. And yet, he says, the best of his work goes unnoticed. 'Lighting designers,' he writes, 'stand at the gateway between the external world of the stage action and the internal worlds of our audience.' So what does this work entail? The demands are extraordinary. You need to read his account to believe it. …

Paperback. Condizione: New. In this paper Stephen Curtis, one of Australia's most respected designers for performance, draws on his 30 years' experience to argue for a deeper understanding of the designer's role as central to the development of any theatre performance. The task of giving concrete form to a play or dance work, he writes, is a team process in which the designer is a uniquely agile contributor to the dramaturgy by making meaning visually for both the participants and the audience, and offering an encompassing, fluid perspective. Curtis uses an historical overview of performance design to illustrate how the designer's role has evolved from scene painting to a complex discipline; and, in a valuable insider's account he investigates the way collaboration really works through sharing the intense process that brought The Secret River to the stage.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. What is art? What is culture? And what value do we place upon it today? Katharine Brisbane looks back on our changing culture and the way public subsidy since 1968 has built massive opportunities for our artists, performers and those who have built an industry around them. She also traces the divisions that have grown between the community and the arts sector, and the moral divide between art and commerce. She concludes that the promised pursuit of excellence has been fulfilled and exhausted; and proposes a way to salvage its achievements by throwing open our major institutions to public investment and private enterprise, releasing creativity into new directions and reconsidering how we might together build an inclusive cultural environment.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. In the week this paper went to press Malcolm Turnbull overturned the incumbent Prime Minister Tony Abbott and appointed Senator Mitch Fifield as Minister for Communication and the Arts. Now we wait to see if this new leadership will overturn the hasty decision by former minister George Brandis to seize more than $120 million from the Australia Council arts budget and place it under his own control. This paper shows how this ill-conceived action has exposed the fragility of our national arts funding, and highlights the urgent need for change. Cathy Hunt argues the need for system-level changes to build sector resilience and enable the excellence called for to be achieved. This must include introducing a new funding framework with government and the philanthropic sector working together, new business models and new forms of financing to get there. Her findings are surprising.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. If Australians love musicals so much, why are there so few big works telling our own stories with our own music? In this provocative new Platform Paper, theatre designer, director and scholar John Senczuk dismisses each excuse and proposes a national development program to sustain new work right through to commercial readiness. Senczuk points out that despite large audiences this special fusion of music, theatre and dance remains largely unsupported and makes a case for a significant state-initiated commercial enterprise-a studio hub-to build musicals destined for touring Australia and overseas markets. He calls it the Perth Solution.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. As the National Curriculum gears up to offer fresh opportunities to teachers and students, our arts institutions are considering what a national arts curriculum will mean for them. Arts and education strategists Naomi Edwards and Meg Upton have been studying the new landscape and urge a radical rethink of arts companies' education programs and their purpose. At present they are largely aimed at performing required works and increasing audiences. The opportunity is there to reposition their company at the centre of innovation and social value by placing the participation of young people at the core of their business.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. This is the third of the Professionals, an occasional series within Platform Papers that hands our stage to our senior artists to tell their story. Andrew Bovell is one of Australia's finest writers for performance. His play Speaking in Tongues was internationally successful before being adapted into his groundbreaking movie Lantana (2001). Other plays include Holy Day, When the Rain Stops Falling and his multi-award-winning adaptation of Kate Grenville's masterly novel, The Secret River, His latest acclaimed work is Things I Know to be True (2016), a family drama that drew packed houses in the UK. In this paper he reflects on his diverse body of work and shares the influences upon it-growing up in Western Australia, his apprenticeship in Melbourne's independent theatre scene-before he was catapulted into an international career with Lantana (2001). He writes about the fervent friendships, collaborations and debate out of which of his plays grew, and the politics that drove them. 'I want every piece I write to be different from the ones that preceded it.' I want to venture into new ground each time I write a play.'.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Julian Meyrick discusses a rising controversy in the repertoire of our national stages. As the mainstage vogue for resetting familiar international classics in an Australian context continues, playwrights believe their work is being depreciated. The issue of adaptations, writes Meyrick, is a symbol of loss within the Australian dramatic consciousness. It is not about defending Tennessee Williams over David Williamson, but about the value of our national drama. He contends that audiences no longer understand the difference between making a new play and buying an old one. Something crucial has been lost about our ability and need to nurture and produce original drama; and public policy has been a contributor. To remedy this, he concludes, we need a national theatre. Not a building or a company but a co-commissioning, co-production house to address, seriously, the growth of our own classic repertoire. …

Paperback. Condizione: New. Tertiary music education is commonly understood as preparing students for a career as a performer. This, however, fails to address fundamental shifts in the ways most of us now typically encounter, and think about, music in our lives; and does not acknowledge the diminishing funding base that supports traditional modes of teaching. It is time to rethink both how, and why, we teach music on campus. In addressing the issues, Peter Tregear draws upon his experience after he was appointed in 2012 to lead the government-initiated takeover of the revered Canberra School of Music by the Australian National University, a time of intense controversy.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Does Australia really need to improve the quality and storytelling approach of its films? Or is it more important to change its film distribution? Film is in flux. The old ways have been undermined and new ways are not yet fully defined. Audience behaviour is changing. The author asserts that the Australian film industry is clinging to an archaic approach to distribution. For too long, policymakers have conflated the 'film industry' with the 'production sector' and chronically ignored marketing, distribution and exhibition as key factors that engage audiences and create demand for local films. This Platform Paper engages with those filmmakers working with peer-to-peer, crowdfunded, low-cost and direct-to-viewer delivery and asks: what can digital distribution do for Australian film? The answers are surprising and controversial. …

Paperback. Condizione: New. Expectations around theatre for young people are too prescribed today. Adults have long-held views on what works are appropriate and yet among all this concern for young people's creativity, it is not acknowledged as art. For the young people who work in the sector, the word 'value' is clouded by precedent: we struggle to be heard. In a startling expose of a system in serious need of reconstruction, Giles calls for a review of the accepted attitudes, and the embrace of a different paradigm that places young people at the centre of change. We must un-learn the past hierarchies, empower the engagement of children as a legitimate collaboration, and recognise the power of instinctive play and imagination as intelligent modes of exploration.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. On 13 March 2013, at the National Press Club in Canberra, Arts Minister Simon Crean launched Creative Australia, the country's first comprehensive cultural policy statement since Paul Keating's Creative Nation almost twenty years earlier. It was soon buried by the incoming Abbott Government. Since then cultural policy, and more specifically arts policy, and its instrument the Australia Council, have been blown back and forth by the winds of change. Where do we stand now? Throsby argues that Australia's cultural identity remains a contestable issue. The economic impact of our immigrant population has strengthened visibly and carried our changing culture into distant parts of the world. Artists and performers reflect this in their work. At the same time the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture in defining Australia's cultural identity continues to be of fundamental significance. Questions of who we are as a country and where we are heading remain important matters for public discussion. We don't need another cultural policy document just yet, he says, but we do need to invigorate the national debate.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Artists are integral to making sense of our changing global landscape. They are society's antennae. Nations and societies that understand this are more culturally, socially, environmentally and economically viable. David Pledger brings powerful evidence to show that applying an industrial model to cultural production has seriously damaged Australia's creative heart. Countries that put art over commerce reap the greater economic benefit. But Australia has not heard this message. Artists' autonomy has been curtailed. Their numbers are decreasing. They are barely visible at elite levels of governance and advice. He lays blame on government but equally on artists themselves.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. After 50 years of growth the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) has come to be recognised as the pre-eminent theatre training school in Australia and one of the finest theatre schools in the world. Its graduates have been the mainstay of our stage, film and TV industries, and in many ways constitute Australia's most visible export. But in 2007 a new force with a different mission took command, determined to address perceived new challenges for the new century. Emotion has been high as petitions have been ignored and mentors marched away 'in an overt policy of removing all former practices and corporate memory from the building'.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. Australia's first Indigenous writer, David Unaipon (1872-1967) made a commitment to sharing his stories with non-Aboriginal people. Did he hope that they would be valued as part of our country's cultural expression? Since his time Aboriginal myths and stories have been widely adopted and adapted, often without reference to their origins or history. Homer and Shakespeare are no longer around to defend their work, but Aboriginal people are alive and outspoken about how they are depicted on the page, stage and on the screen. How, if ever, asks Muruwari playwright Jane Harrison, can Aboriginal themes be 'used' by others in a way that is acceptable to Aboriginal people? How can non-Aboriginal people learn to interpret themes, and indeed, what are Aboriginal themes? Who can give permission and who can refuse? What about our shared experiences and common history, do we not all have the rights to that? Harrison treads her way through the challenging issues of exploitation, referencing, literary fraud, blacked-up actors and community ownership. Sharing our history and stories is essential, she writes, for the health of Aboriginal culture. Bur first we must acknowledge who is in control.…

Paperback. Condizione: New. 'Those of us working in the classical music sector today', writes Canham, 'tend to have a very limited understanding not only of the general public's relationship with their own creativity, but also of the impact this has on their potential interest in the creativity of others. Which is a way of saying that none of our surveying and reporting and documentation for grant acquittals is really asking the essential question: "Why don't you, or wouldn't you, come to our concert? Or if you were to come, what would you like to see/hear?" ' But today we are in a unique position-the middle of a creativity revolution, inventing new forms of popular culture in which everyone can be a participant. Everyone is open to the idea of making their lives more beautiful or successful. Shouldn't we be adding the enjoyment of classical music to that list?' What really inspires us is awakening to our potential. Canham suggests how this might be done and describes her own experience of making 'deconstructed' opera developed with her audience.…