Long Road

The ball is rolling (as I have been blogging about the last few weeks) here in the NT. As the federal government marches on with its ‘intervention’ plans (and at the same time dismisses the UN’s declaration of rights of indigenous peoples passed today without Australia, US and Canada), local art centres (among other groups such as the Rangers see the ABC report here) are lobbying government to amend their decision to scarp CDEP. The national CDEP Arts Centre Action Group has put together some literature and policy statements focused on their immediate concerns: keeping art centers open and artists working. In their summary statement this week (see attachment below), the group argues that:

The Governments stated policy objective is to support the NT intervention, moving people into jobs, improving services and infrastructure, and providing longer term support to build better communities and implement quarantining of Aboriginal incomes. However in the case of art centers we submit the following:

-Artists are already employed, typically as self-employed individuals or as members of an enterprise in which the work of higher earning artists contributes to running costs of the whole.

-Moving to one of the alternatives offered Work For Dole or a STEPERS programme, is a move to unemployment and a retrograde step for artists and for artsworkers employed in supervisory positions. Work for the Dole will require these people to be engaged in activities like cleaning the communities rather than formal arts production and arts management.

-This will set back the planned progression towards a business model that many art centres have in place already.

-Reduction of artists base pay rate, and the move to WFD or STEPERS, will add to the power of carpetbaggers who are recognised as an existing threat to the industry.

-Reduction of incomes across the board will put more pressure on artists, many of whom are grandmothers, and many of whom are elderly, thereby further reducing individual community capacity to contribute to the Indigenous arts industry

-There is the potential to lose qualified arts centre managers who are unlikely to become WFD supervisors

-Some smaller art centres have already closed.

Art centres–and other productive and meaningful CDEP programs–need support and certainty from government. They want to know that their work can continue and that their contribution to the local, regional and national communities and economies will endure. Why should these artists be sacked simply because they are on CDEP? Certainly, like all programs, CDEP is not perfect, and improvements can be made. The groups suggests the following:

We recognise that the CDEP scheme has had flaws, and whilst there are many excellent CDEP arts projects, there are also a small number of projects that deliver modest or negligible outcomes. But this is not a reason to abolish the entire program (throw the baby out with the bathwater), more a reason to encourage the good ones and provide assistance to those underperforming.

We also argue that underperformance of specific projects is not necessarily a failure of implementation but the outcome of structural problems in the way CDEP has been resourced and managed.

The following things would make CDEP better:

-Multi-year funding
-Realistic administration and capital on-costs
-More participant numbers
-Investment in organisational capacity and governance
-Robust and transparent evaluation CDEP arts projects/activities around Australia
-Improved planning, funding and allocation of resources to ensure integration between training providers and CDEP activities
-Identification and documentation of best practice CDEP projects in a range of sectors and situations (remote, outstations, towns) that can provide role models for other projects
-Improved HR management for CDEP programs including:
o position descriptions for participants, supervisors and managers
o documented policies & procedures, and
o formal recruitment of appropriately skilled CDEP managers/supervisors and provision of cross-cultural training and induction (when recruited externally)
o an appropriately funded career path through CDEP with different levels of payment
o professional development opportunities for participants with mentoring and accredited training provided where appropriate.

If John Howard and Mal Brough are interested in helping Aboriginal communities secure their futures, here’s a starting point: listen to the people who live in these communities, who work in them, spend their money in them, and are working to maintain them in spite of the continuing attack on their integrity.

The women who work at Julalikari Arts in Tennant Creek (see my previous post here) and their manager Alan Murn have sent a letter to Senator Helen Coonan Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts describing their position, their uncertainty and their suggestions for the future of Julalikari Arts. Here is what they are asking for:

Our immediate solution is to continue Julalikari Arts business with people employed and receiving usual payment whether CDEP or under some other arrangement, but as employees, not on work for the dole.

We would like support from DCITA, IBA, DEWR or a similar appropriate agency, to enable us to incorporate our Art Centre and to continue to operate as a benchmark for successful enterprise in Tennant Creek and in the Indigenous Art Industry.

We would like to have the resources to continue to employ the Julalikari Arts manager under an appropriate contract to guide us through to incorporation. We know he has the skills and commitment to see us through.

Our Art Centre is a success story. Our livelihoods are about to be taken away from us on the 30 September. Please help us solve this problem now.

The entire letter is attached below.

If you would like to support Aboriginal art centres, send a letter to Minister Coonan and Mal Brough, include Howard too, why not he’s squirming a bit now anyway with the low pole numbers. This is a crucial time for Aboriginal art centres and their sister projects funded by CDEP. Link in, pass on the post and see if those in power listen.

cdep-issues-paper-130907.pdf

ministers-letter.pdf