Would you like a little culture with that?
Otto Pliny, ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ (image via http://www.artvalue.com)
Cue drum roll…..
The day has dawned. Minister for the Arts, Simon Crean, will unveil the Labor government’s National Cultural Policy at the National Press Club today (I’m hoping he teases us, and reveals the details slowly… enticingly… think ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’).
We haven’t had one of these since Paul Keating’s much-vaunted ‘Creative Nation’ in 1994 – a cultural policy that (ominously for the current government) didn’t survive Keating’s ignominious ousting in 1996. In the lead-up to the release, Mr Crean has trotted out those well-worn public service buzzwords: ‘consultation’, ‘stakeholders’, and ‘arts constituency’. Do you think they’ll manage to squeeze a ‘paradigm’ and a ‘benchmark’ or two in there? One thing’s for sure – given the government’s obsession with holding onto a surplus in the upcoming budget, any spending they plan to do on the arts will certainly have to be smart. And creative.
If you can’t wait, or can’t be bothered trying to find the journalistic wash-up in tomorrow’s papers, the launch is to be televised and can be viewed live from 12.30pm (EST) today… link here.
Art matters 
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