Save Art in Education’s Week of 'ArtRage' Action

 By Ruth Skilbeck

No good at Art and slippery at Maths: NSW Liberal gov “loses" $1 bill

In September the Barry O’Farrell Liberal Government of NSW announced cuts of $1.7 million to public education, specifically targeting Fine Art courses in TAFE technical and further education colleges, which if carried out will result in widespread job losses and threatened closures of art schools across the state in regional and rural areas. The economic rationale given for the cuts by the NSW government was supposedly that the NSW economy is in the red. However it has recently been revealed- after the cuts were announced- that mistakes were made in the accounting figures and that the NSW economy is really $1 billion in the black.

Rather surprisingly there have been no retractions announced, or proposals for how this extra $1 billion is going to be spent.

All of this adds up to a picture of gross inefficiency, non-transparency and bungling –or even worse- on the part of the incumbent NSW Liberal Government. For a start how could they manage to “lose” I billion in their sums- where was that 1 billion going to go to when it went missing- and at the same time the government announces that to “pay for this” Art and public education is being axed and artists and art teachers are to lose their jobs and students across the state?

These questions need to be asked publicly, loudly.

The government has to be accountable.

 Friday 

PREMIER O’FARRELL’S FAILURE TO SHOW UP TO OPEN THE FRANCIS BACON EXHIBITION AT THE ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES AS HE WISHED TO AVOID THE PROTESTERS AGAINST HIS FINE ARTS EDUCATION CUTS ON THE FRONT STEPS, SHOWS A VERY VISIBLE LACK OF FACE BY THE PREMIER.

Sunday

An estimated 4,000 people turned out on Sunday at a day of family action at Tumbalong Park in Sydney’s Darling Harbour, to protest Education cuts and show support for the activism against the NSW Liberal government’s increasingly unpopular anti public Education and Art education measures.

Monday

TODAY AT 6PM AT DAMIEN MINTON GALLERY IN SYDNEY THERE WILL BE A GATHERING OF ART GALLERISTS, AND ART WRITERS WITH THE MEDIA TO PROVIDE A PHOTO OPPORTUNITY AND PRESS CONFERENCE ON THE SITUATION CREATED BY THESE PROPOSED CUTS AND THE IMPACTS ON LOCAL ART AND ARTISTS AND THE NATIONAL ART SCENES.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-31/nsw-27s-surprise-surplus-after-241bn-budget-error/4343752.  ABC NEWS, WED OCT 31

Dark Tourism and the Save Art Campaign: A week of stirring action from grassroots to high society

Photo montage illustration on Save Art in TAFE facebook page

Could this really be the last Grad Show at Newcastle Art School's Front Room Gallery?

By Ruth Skilbeck in Newcastle

Reverberations of the news that Barry O'Farrell NSW Liberal Premier's decision to cut $1.7 million funding from NSW education specifically targets Fine Arts course at TAFE NSW colleges, are spreading through social media art circles like the proverbial ripples caused by a stone thrown into a calm and peaceful pond.

In Newcastle, cutting TAFE art education funding seems nonsensical. This is a post-industrial city where after BHP pulled out of town, art and artists many who spent years at the Newcastle Art School on Hunter Street (TAFE) are instrumental in -literally and symbolically- transforming the image of the post industrial  cityscape into a vibrant alternative artscene. Into a city which is listed as a top destination for global backpackers in the Lonely Planet guide. A place where for instance, bus shelters on the largely abandoned main street, Hunter Street, are turned into shrines of contemporary artists' follies. Where artists saved the city through Renew Newcastle a scheme to "transform empty shopfronts" - on the main street and city centre after the withdrawal of BHP steel works led to the temporary collapse of the local economy. The Renew Newcastle scheme, started up and run by Marcus Westbury, a Novacastrian, who has gone on to start up Renew Australia based on Renew Newcastle's success, has proved so successful that it is being taken up as an economic and cultural model of transformation and urban regeneration not only in Australia but also overseas.

Surely it is a gross betrayal of the very artists- and their teachers- who have made this visually attractive form of urban renewal, to announce that their jobs are going to be axed and funding cut? Thus effectively stifling all creative economic-cultural growth of this kind- that tourists and locals alike appreciate?

How TAFE courses operate is on a neoliberal logic: that if sufficient numbers of students do not enrol for a course it will not run. The changes announced by Barry O'Farrell indicate that the costs will escalate for TAFE Fine Arts courses in "low economic" regions. (This includes the Hunter despite the mining in the Hunter Valley- it really does not make much sense).  Actual figures of actual cost increases for courses have not been released but the guesses are between $8,000-12,000 per year- which is beyond the means of the majority of TAFE students. Hence TAFE art schools across the state including the Newcastle Hunter Street Art School are anticipating that they will not get the enrolments their courses need to run and that this will result in many courses eliminated, staff redundancies (as all courses are taught by part time and "casual" staff to use the neoliberal terminology; in reality they are taught by well-regarded practising professional vocational artists), and art schools being closed.

To give an idea of the mood, young Newcastle artist Ben Marcus Kenning writes in the Novacastrian Arts Group (NAG) on facebook:

this coming wed at hunter st tafes front room gallery is a show exhibiting 3rd year graduates work.

due to funding cuts this will be the final exhibition hosted by this gallery which has supported and offered invaluable experience to many a young budding artist

if you have been a part of the community of newcastle art school please turn up to support the students on show and reflect on the great influence this gallery, institution and its staff have had on the newcastle art scene and those involved within it 

6-8pm, wed next week, please share this post

Ben Marcus Kenning
 Critter Weave, 2012