A New Look at Culture – Submission to NSW’s first Arts, Culture & Creative Industries Policy

A New Approach (ANA) welcomes this opportunity to make a submission to assist New South Wales (NSW) with its first arts, culture and creative industries policy. The release of the National Cultural Policy ‘Revive’ provides a renewed opportunity for the NSW Government to work in concert with governments across Australia. ANA notes the Western Australia Government is developing a ’10 Year Vision for Culture and Arts in Western Australia’. ‘Revive’ also provides an opportunity to consider how to embed policy concerning arts, culture and creativity across portfolios and into the future.

ANA is Australia’s leading think tank focused on arts and culture. Through credible and independent public leadership, ANA helps build an ambitious and innovative policy and investment environment for arts, culture and creativity. We work to ensure Australia can be a great place for creators and audiences, whoever they are and wherever they live.

To assist NSW, we are pleased to share the following attached documents:

• ANA’s submission to the federal National Culture Policy consultation, which highlights ways for Australia to reach its potential as a cultural powerhouse.

• ANA’s recently published Insight Report ‘To Scale: Mapping financial inflows in Australian arts, culture and creativity’. This report dispels the myth that Australian cultural and creative industries are predominantly financed through government assistance. In fact, the largest proportion of income in the cultural and creative industries was from ‘sales and services’ in 2020-21. These industries earned 87% of income from sales and services, which included things like tickets sales for art and cultural events and royalties from intellectual property to cultural exports and computer software consulting fees.

Drawing on our published research with middle Australians aged 18-75, we also commend the use of the phrase ‘arts and culture’ as an inclusive and accessible phrasing and welcome the inclusion of creative industries to form a connected, contemporary policy approach to this space.Kate Fielding and Jodie-Lee Trembath, “A View from Middle Australia: Perceptions of Arts, Culture and Creativity,” Insight Series (Canberra: A New Approach and the Australian Academy of the Humanities, May 2020), https://newapproach.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/3-ANA-InsightReportThree-FullReport.pdf; JodieLee Trembath and Kate Fielding, “The next Generation of Voters: Young Middle Australians Talk Arts, Culture and Creativity,” Insight Series (Canberra: A New Approach, August 2021), https://newapproach.org.au/wpcontent/uploads/2021/08/ANA-InsightReportSix-Fullreport-6.pdf; Angela Vivian and Kate Fielding, “Lifelong: Perceptions of Arts and Culture among Baby Boomer Middle Australians’. Insight Report No. 2022-02” (Canberra: A New Approach (ANA)), accessed January 19, 2023, https://newapproach.org.au/wpcontent/uploads/2022/09/Lifelong_-Perceptions-of-Arts-and-Culture-among-Baby-Boomer-MiddleAustralians-1.pdf.

We are currently undertaking research on the theme of productivity and cultural and creative industries and can provide a briefing on this material.

In our role as a philanthropically funded, independent think tank, ANA is ready to provide further information about the response in this submission and would welcome the opportunity to discuss.

Warm regards,

Kate Fielding, CEO, A New Approach (ANA)