Australia Council Review Released

Arts Minister Simon Crean today released the report on the Review of the Australia Council at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

The Review, conducted by Mr Angus James and Ms Gabrielle Trainor, outlines a total of eighteen recommendations for change. One recommendation is that the Australia Council's purpose be updated to ensure that the Council focuses on funding and promoting artistic excellence in all its forms, leaving the primary work of policy development and programs supporting broad access to the arts to the department of state – the Office for the Arts. 

The Review also recommends the Council focus on four areas of activity in pursuing its purpose: providing funding to promote and sustain excellence in the arts sector, promoting a sector that is distinctly Australian, ensuring there are audiences and markets for the work it funds and promotes, and working to maximise the social and economic contribution made by the arts sector to Australia. 

In addition the Review outlines a new model for grant allocation that allows the Governing Board to remove consideration of funding applications along artform lines and to establish and change the way in which applications are received, depending on needs in the sector. 

Click here to read the Review in full

Click here to read a media release on the Review from Arts Minister Simon Crean

Click here to read the transcript of the doorstop interview with Simon Crean

Responses to the review report are due by Friday 8 June. These will be considered as part of the development of the Government Response. Please forward responses via email to artspolicy@pmc.gov.au.

Arts Minister Simon Crean announced an independent review of the Australia Council was to be conducted in December 2011. It is the first major review of the work of the Council and other agencies since the 1980s

Angus James is a Principal Partner of Aquasia, an independent corporate advisory partnership which he founded in late 2009.

Gabrielle Trainor is a company director and former lawyer, journalist and public sector executive. She was a founding partner in John Connolly and Partners, a firm which advises large listed companies on the management of difficult issues.