This month, Artery features choreographer and dancer Antony Hamilton. Lovely guy who introduced me to yet another groovy little cafe, this time in Northcote.
Read all what Antony’s doing here: artery.australiacouncil.gov.au
It’s the second in the series of articles commissioned for Artery magazine profiling each of the 11 Creative Australia Fellowship recipients.
Can also watch some of what Antony does on Vimeo:
Last week I had coffee with the lovely Gian Slater down at North Island in North Fitzroy. She’d only got back from New York a few days ago and was preparing for a gig with her group Invenio on the weekend. 
She was the subject of my first article in a series of 11 over the next 12 months for the Australia Council’s Artery magazine, now a wholly online “source of news and information about artists, events, projects and trends that shape the Australian arts landscape.”
Gian was one of the recipients of a inaugural Creative Australia Fellowship in May this year, which will provide her with $60,000 over the next two years to develop her career.
The article is now up online – you can read it at artery.australiacouncil.gov.au
Watch her performing for ABC RN: ‘Gone, without saying’ – Gian Slater and Invenio [HD] Music Show, ABC Radio National
I have definitely spent this afternoon procrastinating. Procrastinating is bad.
To make this an edifying post I should share some words of wisdom on why all writers procrastinate from time to time and motivational learnings on how to overcome it. But I haven’t got any and can’t because the enemy won today. Even writing a blog post about procrastinating is procrastinating. Continue reading
This could have just been a tweet but I felt compelled to argue in my own way with this article from the other day in the Sydney Morning Herald Heckler by guest columnist Lynn Van Der Wagen, ‘I want out of Generation I’.
Obviously given the title Heckler it’s meant to get people a bit heated up and its quite the generalised rant so it is a column easy to object to. However, it was this bit that I particularly took umbrage to:
TODAY’S teenagers are shaped by a multitude of weighty issues – high levels of teenage obesity, a heavy binge drinking culture and a social media landscape with hefty consequences. Continue reading
With so many editorial redundancies in the news at the moment the market may well soon be awash with talented writers touting their skills. Doesn’t bode well for the rest of us, does it? Like many people out there I have handy emails that come in from time to time when job ads meet the criteria I plugged in to some online form yonks ago. On the one hand I’m heartened at how often they come in. On the other they do make me feel so very tired.
What was probably my last piece for artsHub went up online on Friday 15 June 2012, ‘Gamification: the only way to get attention’.
My ears perked up to this topic when I found I had read it or heard people talk about three or four times in a week – what was this all about I thought? It does seem people have very differing ideas about it. Some are scathing some far to optimistic and excited. I’m inclined to see it as a new outfit for an old idea with some tech-tweaks that make it a bit exciting. Continue reading
It’s getting a bit depressing out there. It seems there’s articles being written daily on how hard it is to get paid as a writer, let alone get a job. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if writing about how impossible it is to get paid to be a writer might be a valid career move as it seems a pretty popular genre.
Bethanie Blanchard in her Lit-icism column on Crikey did a great piece on the writer’s dilemma this week, ‘Why don’t you know what you’ll get paid?’. It’s so true that how much you’re going to be paid for a piece of writing is left off the table or not even discussed, unless you specifically bring it up. Continue reading
Last week I got to go along to the Australia Council for the Arts Marketing Summit 2012. There was a lot of great speakers and a fabulous amount of twittering going on.
Of course it was all in aid of keeping artsHub readers across what’s happening in arts marketing, and it was published in this week’s artsHub News Bulletin – Hashtag Msummit – talking arts marketing.
Thanks to the Australia Council team for letting me come along and being such great hosts, as were the Recital Centre and the ABC who filmed the proceeding soon to be available on the Australia Council’s website.
Note: Video of the all the presenters is now available at the Australia Council website – it’s almost like you were there! See the Resources page at marketingsummit.australiacouncil.gov.au.
My latest piece for artsHub has gone online today: A step closer to the National Cultural Policy?
I was quite surprised when QUT @CreativeIndust tweeted ‘A step closer to the #NationalCulturalPolicy?’ http://ow.ly/aZevm op ed by @McFifi @artsHub. I guess it was ‘op ed’ I’m just unused to people noting that it is. A proper analysis of the Australia Council Review would be better given events this week but I’ve been at a funeral in Newcastle for the past few days and had to finish this piece late Monday night. Someone else will write about it I’m sure.
I highly recommend to anyone interested in the field of cultural policy to revisit Creative Nation, if for no other reason than to remind themselves that a government document can be definitive and enlightening and even a little inspiring, at least in the intro.
My take on the budget is up at artsHub: Small lift for the arts in Federal Budget 2012.
Some good stuff has also been written over at the Sydney Morning Herald by Joyce Morgan and Adam Fulton:
Galleries and museums welcome budget windfall, Tamara, Marcus and Jane are all quoted.
There’s a bit in the Oz too, from Matthew Westwood, definitely the lack of National Cultural Policy is what people are raising eyebrows about: No national vision yet but $64m for arts, museums.
and Ben Eltham’s piece is an interesting read too at Crikey: The arts: divided squeeze, but cash for Wolverine and galleries.