Public hearing in Brisbane
- 1 Sep 2015
Public hearings for the Senate Inquiry into the impact of the 2014 and 2015 Commonwealth Budget decisions on the arts commenced 5 August with the first hearing in Melbourne.
During this hearing, representatives from the arts and cultural sector were asked a range of questions by the committee, which required them to be familiar with impact data regarding their own creative business and the sector’s impact as a whole. Questions about employment, volunteering, funding, audiences, touring, communities of interest and practice featured alongside specific questions about the impact of Australia Council funding changes and draft guidelines for the National Programme for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA).
The second hearing is being held in Perth today and a hearing will be held in Brisbane on Friday 11 September (venue to be announced). It is important that Queensland participants prepare well using your own public value data, open data and other data on the Arts Queensland website. As Professor Mark Moore said in Brisbane last year, public value is simply ‘value for the public’ before going on to explain that the public care a great deal about value for money and then the stories behind the numbers, e.g. social benefit.
You might consider inputs, outputs and outcomes relating to volunteer hours, number of employees, audiences, visitors and touring data, percentage of government income vs earned revenue vs leveraged income, roles and relationships within the sector in terms of interdependence and partnerships, etc. You might also consider the broader sector, its issues and achievements and in particular, examples of the role that your work and your partners’ or collaborators’ work plays in a broader system that includes audiences, consumers, supporters and participants.
In a June blog post, ‘Submissions open: Senate inquiry into Commonwealth arts budget’ Arts Queensland provided collated data about the performance of small to medium organisations up to 2012 and other funding data up to 2014. Please use this if you find it helpful for building your evidence base. You might also find the following data sets and analysis useful in your preparations and considerations:
The rings of value – arguing compellingly with evidence on your side
Data piñata – new facts from the Australia Council’s Arts Nation: An overview of Australian Arts 2015
Arts in Daily Life – research published in 2014 in partnership with the Australia Council, which provides an overview of Queenslanders’ attitudes towards and participation in the arts Diversity Data – Queensland’s cultural diversity in the artist population and in cultural industries employment
A number of Queensland practitioners and organisations have made written submissions to the Inquiry, some of which are available to read on the Parliament of Australia’s Submissions page.
Arts Queensland
Image: ‘The Hearing’ by Aribert Peters, Free Images