Two Newcastle city councillors have slammed the decision by the council to defund Newcastle’s noted This Is Not Art Festival, pointing out the festival features prominently in Newcastle City Council’s own tourism plan.
As Crikey reported last week, the nationally acclaimed arts and media festival was defunded by Newcastle City Council and may now not be held this year. Despite an international reputation for presenting innovative media arts and experimental culture, including being listed by Lonely Planet as the No.1 thing to do in all of Australia and the Pacific, the festival lost its funding after 10 years of support in a move Newcastle councillor Sharon Claydon describes as “appalling”.
“This Is Not Art promotes community and place,” Claydon told Crikey. Despite this, she thinks the festival has a better reputation nationally than within the city. “I’ve always said that This Is Not Art is better known outside Newcastle than it is in Newcastle.”
Claydon, an ALP councillor, points out that This Is Not Art is on Newcastle’s “Major Events Calendar” and that the festival features prominently in the council’s 2010-2012 tourism plan.
“Experience Newcastle“, the council’s 2010-2012 tourism plan, formally lists This Is Not Art as a key event in what it describes as the “leisure market event” category, describing events “designed to attract Newcastle residents and visitors from well beyond, many of whom would choose to stay overnight before or afterwards”. The plan appears to place considerable policy emphasis on This Is Not Art, mentioning the festival as a leading event in attracting overnight and longer stay visitors, and in cultural, musical and “funky” categories.
Councillor Claydon also told Crikey the decision to defund This Is Not Art was damaging Newcastle’s reputation at the very time the city had just invested in “Brand Newcastle“, a logo and visual identity rebrand with a budget of $88,000.
Claydon’s comments were echoed by another ALP councillor, Nautali Nelmes, who argues “it really shows a lack of understanding”.
“It’s an extremely conservative, male-dominated council,” Nelmes told Crikey. “Some of them don’t even know what This Is Not Art is.” Nelmes believes “some of the conservative councillors have gone on an anti-community projects crusade”.
One of those councillors may well be independent Aaron Buman, who got involved in a Facebook exchange this week after being tagged in a post by This Is No Art founder Marcus Westbury. “Its success should have seen it was self-funded by now, like many events in Newcastle that make certain claims, they too should also be self-funded by now,” Buman wrote in a post.
Buman refused a further interview with Crikey after finding a question comparing This Is Not Art to fringe festivals in Sydney and Adelaide “extremely offensive”.
“Do [the] Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide councils contribute to the event?” Buman wrote in a post. “And can I also point out that they have a lot more money to spend on event they [sic] we do, maybe they might consider supporting a regional centre.”
But This Is Not Art appears to have fallen foul of powerful enemies inside the Newcastle City Council bureaucracy, not least senior manager Simon McArthur who has been openly backgrounding reporters with comments that This Is Not Art had become complacent and had submitted a poor funding proposal.
Meanwhile, Crikey has learnt that at least one of the key events in This Is Not Art is on the verge of announcing it is leaving Newcastle for Sydney this year if the festival’s funding issues are not resolved soon.
This Is Not Art is a “festival of festivals”, made up of several related events such as new media arts festival Electrofringe, independent music conference Sound Summit and the National Young Writers Festival. This Is Not Art provides an umbrella to all the events, as well as production, venues and many types of logistical support.
According to Electrofringe director Estee Wah, “it’s tough times all round”. Wah points out that Electrofringe itself faces funding cuts this year after the decision by the Australia Council’s Visual Arts and Crafts Board not to support the event this year.
Another key event in the festival, the independent music conference Sound Summit, has announced it is formally separating its governance from This is Not Art. Sound Summit organiser Kirsty Brown issued a statement explaining that “in order to broaden the festival to its full potential, Sound Summit will cease its formal partnership with TINA and operate independently in 2011 and beyond”, in a decision made earlier this year after “much discussion” with the This Is Not Art and Sound Summit’s funding bodies. With This Is Not Art now losing its funding, Sound Summit will effectively go it alone “and will no longer contribute funds or resources to the broader TINA festival”.
“This will ensure that Sound Summit continues to run smoothly as it expands to encompass even more facets of the independent music community within its programming objectives and to deliver a bigger festival than ever before,” Brown stated.
Sound Summit will still be held in Newcastle this year as usual. But will This Is Not Art?
With so many problems related to governance in Newcastle the natural heritage of the Laman Street figs comes to mind, it is no surprise This is Not Art supported for several years by the community and council is being jeopardized. Councilors do not seem to understand that Section 232 of the Local Government Act is there to guide them in understanding what their role is!
(1) The role of a councillor is, as a member of the governing body of the council:
• to provide a civic leadership role in guiding the development of the community strategic plan for the area and to be responsible for monitoring the implementation of the council’s delivery program
• to direct and control the affairs of the council in accordance with this Act
• to participate in the optimum allocation of the council’s resources for the benefit of the area
• to play a key role in the creation and review of the council’s policies and objectives and criteria relating to the exercise of the council’s regulatory functions
• to review the performance of the council and its delivery of services, and the delivery program and revenue policies of the council.
(2) The role of a councillor is, as an elected person:
• to represent the interests of the residents and ratepayers
• to provide leadership and guidance to the community
• to facilitate communication between the community and the council.
These eight dot points are difficult to comprehend but where many local councilors are involved, it seems they are easy to ignore.
TINA puts Newcastle on the map, and Newcastle Council takes it off again…and, it saves them peanuts.
Stay classy Newcastle Council.
oh no! I was planning to go this year for the first time – and coincidentally my first trip to Newcastle! I’d planned to make a week of it… alas… 🙁
Humorously, as a child, in Newcastle I became adept, by age 11 at working out what the council had done (or not-far more usual), not done.
The council, almost to a person were rather tedious Merewether types, with absolutely no ability to understand art let alone appreciate it, who believe that their entire life should be revolved around making sure the council was paid more than adequately for the work they did, and that any of those arty-farty types were sent back to Sydney.
It certainly appears as though little has changed. I suppose on the balance it’s true to say that most councils are relatively useless, it’s just that Newcastle seems to be worse than most. That having been said, they’ve had 10 years of funding, and it appears to be a particularly successful sort of a festival, so perhaps it’s time they started making it pay for itself, rather than expecting ratepayers to support it just because they can.
“Buman refused a further interview with Crikey after finding a question comparing This Is Not Art to fringe festivals in Sydney and Adelaide “extremely offensive”.”
Can you please publish the question as it was asked?