Reset: A New Public Agenda for the Arts – conference

BCCM CEO Melina Morrison is speaking in an in-conversation panel on A Fair Deal for Artists: winning the economic rights of cultural workers on Friday, 12 November.

There’s no doubt that the arts and cultural sector is facing a crisis in Australia. After years of cuts, the gig economy, undermining of the public and democratic value of the arts, and the ever-widening gap between haves and have-nots, the sector has been slammed by the pandemic, with long-term consequences set to last years.

The way out of this mess cannot be incremental tinkering, but rather a transformative reset of policy and advocacy – a bold new public agenda for the arts.

How do we return arts and culture to their rightful place in public policy? What would public reconstruction of the arts look like? How could we create a fairer deal for artists and arts workers? What kind of new ‘policy imaginary’ can place arts and culture at the heart of a healthy, diverse, inclusive, and participatory democracy?

Reset: A New Public Agenda for the Arts offers two days and nights of thinking and discussion about how the arts and cultural sector could work to break out of the current impasse through a radical reorganisation of cultural practice and policy.

Presented by: Arts Industry Council of South Australia and Reset (Flinders University, University of Adelaide, and University of South Australia), in association with the Don Dunstan Foundation.

The conference takes place online and in-person in Melbourne.