Many Players Many Parts Keynote addresss

Scroll down for each keynote:

Day 1. Welsey Enoch
Day 2. Rose Hiscock
Day 3. Anthony Jackson

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Day One Keynote: Wesley Enoch

Good Morning. I must say that 9.30 in the morning is not my favourite time to be speaking. I’m a Theatre person and as such am usually the kind of person who likes to sleep in and dream about what the day has in store rather than getting up into it but here we are….and I’m glad not to be here alone. Thanks for turning up.

I’d like to add my acknowledgement of the local people, the custodians of this Land we call home and acknowledge that my feet stand in the footprints of those who have gone before us. As a murri from Stradbroke Island I know I’m a visitor here and an grateful for the invitation to be here and also today to be given this space to speak to you.

Just a bit of context.

My family come from Minjerriba or Stradbroke island just off the coast of Brisbane…when I say my family I should qualify that by saying it’s my Father’s father’s country and even that is contentious in that there are so many stories that link us to the island and so many stories that feed in from other places….there’s my great great grandfather who was a Filipino fisherman, the great grandfather who was a man from Rotumah island in the Sth Pacific, there’s the Scottish, Irish, English connections and the 3 Aboriginal clans…let alone the family on my mother’s side who are Spanish, Danish, English, Irish and a little bit of German. Well, you can see that it’s not that easy to say where you come from but I say my family come from Straddie.

I remember being asked a question about being involved in Indigenous performance and they said “why do you focus on your Aboriginal family and not your Danish family?’ The answer for me is simple – it’s about purpose…. about the why I do what I do. All around me I can see my mother’s family story being enacted…in the media, in books, in the cinemas, in magazines but my father’s family story I see shrinking or being limited. This gives me a purpose and a focus….a reason to be an artist, a performer. It forms the rationale for my decisions and provides me with a moral and cultural framework from which to talk. It energises my work and allows me to express myself in the medium of performance with conviction and meaning.

Being part of the ‘other’ means I have been forced to analyse where I come from and the motivations for my art.

It’s a fundamental question for everyone I reckon. Why do we do what we do? We know it’s good to do it….we know we feel good doing it….but why do we do it? And why does it matter? It’s become a fascination of mine and unfortunately for you….well it’s going to be what I talk about for a while.

But this form of questioning is not just a personal search for meaning it’s about how we look beyond ourselves and start to see the web on connections in society and the role performance plays in knitting that fabric….how artists and the fundamentals of what we do fits into a bigger picture. Though I will defend the right for artists to be protected from the rationalised world of the economic rationalist….I do believe in the democratic principles that the market can espouse. The people must value artists. They are the audiences and reason an artist asks them to participate and/or observe their work.

I don’t know about you but I look around and see so much I disagree with. How our public storytelling has been taken out of the realms of connection and placed into the hands of spin doctors and marketeers. How debate is being squashed and controlled like it’s more dangerous than nuclear waste (well we can deal with nuclear waste cause we want to make money out of selling uranium) ……we’ve commodified thinking and learning and demanded that it come with key performance indicators, measurable outcomes and be vocationally driven. We’ve demonised our teachers as ideologues out there attempting to corrupt children with useless skills and stupid ideas. I scoff at the idea that a litre of petrol is cheaper than buying a litre of water and yet the national crisis over oil and petrol seems to dwarf the environmental issues of drought and climate change. That economics have become the measure of a successful society and it’s people and behaviour is a slave to the task.

I remember reading Ian MacFarlane – the outgoing Governor of the Reserve bank saying that Australians spend too much time talking about the economy and that anomalies and small fluctuations are blown out of proportion by a people fixated on the minutiae of economic management rather than the big picture. A people working together to raise an adolescent economy rather than raising a family.

That interest rates and the size of the national surplus command more respect than delivery of services and the building blocks of our society….that things can be branded as UN-Australian but somehow evade establishing a criteria for what is Australian. We as a country wish to find the reasons to exclude rather than find the reason to include.

WHY ARE WE SO SCARED?

This is not the relaxed and comfortable world that I was promised?

I’m going to talk about the shrinking of our creative and performative environment. I’m going to suggest that the more you try to control the public storytelling, control debate, centralise decision making, squash dissent and reject the role of the arts in the life of a society …the more that society suffers from a creative paralysis…..a shrinking of the collective imagination and the creative life of a society. This then shrinks the cultural capital that binds us and mob rule reigns based on lowest common denominators, pollsters and wedge politics.

That sounds a little dramatic but you know what I getting at. I am preaching to the converted I fear. But even we are in the process of forgetting what we are about and why we do what we do. We have accepted our position in society and as our position shrinks in the public consciousness as the purse strings get pulled even tighter we must reinvigorate our arguments and articulate our purpose to a society who has grown economically weary and issue fatigued. A society who has shrunk down to the smallest, leanest, most manoeuvrable economic unit…the family unit of one.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

STORY – Imbala

THE ELEMENTS OF PERFORMANCE

I love this story…..there’s something about it that places performance central to our understanding of the world. It talks about using performance to engage in a public storytelling and making meaning of the world around us. I like to think that performance has some key characteristics that are unique and community building.

In it’s barest form performance requires nothing more than a human being…I’d argue it needs at least two….a performer and an audience….it is about communicating between these two people the creator and the receiver in a temporal form. Time is not frozen like in visual arts….. nor is meaning formally coded as in Literature requiring an intellectual decoding. Performance is about at least two people in time and space trying to understand each other. Add to this the concept of role ‘taking on role’ and the process takes on a transformative element….the idea of becoming another, understanding another’s position to the point that you convey their world view to an audience.

Dance, Music, Theatre, storytelling….they share these basics.

It’s why they are the basis of ritual and ceremony…why artists have been considered shamans and mystics for eons.

Performance is the building block of social engagement and human interaction it gives us a medium through which we can understand others, to walk in the shoes of another for a period of time, to experience emotions and ideas which are not really within our scope of lived experience.

In the Greek world performance was said to have the power to transport an audience into another world where they experienced the pain, anguish, triumph, joys of a hero in a play and then they would be returned changed forever…having been taken to the extremes of the human condition through the safety of a performer’s actions and story. This is Catharsis.

It is the ultimate act of imagination, the suspension of disbelief, the wilful engaging of a collective creative leap to buy into a group of symbols, narratives, actions, emotions and conventions. I love it. There is a feeling of community. Be it on a one on one basis telling a story or a collective experience of a concert or play……the transformative experience of performance is magical.

You get to learn about the human condition….you develop skills of empathy as the performer takes you on a journey of discovery. That journey is internal….through your humanity….and through the specifics of the story being told you discover the universals. Or like in ideas of carnivale you get to invert the status quo to see things afresh.

It is the continuation of play…..the thing we do so naturally as children to learn about the world….performance can create places for play which has at it’s heart the need to communicate and the willingness to listen. Learning, listening and transforming in a constant feedback loop.


THE ROLE OF THE ARTISTS

The role of the artist has always been to transform…to be the storytellers and commentators on society.

STORY – Chelsea Rep

Like in the story of the Imbala…the artist is about creating a language for understanding the world.

I agree with Stephen Sewell who argues that the artist is central to a society not on the fringes of it. That the future is artist driven as we create new ways of seeing the world, of taking audiences to places they have never been before.

The role of the artist is both to reflect the society as it is but also to critique it. To hold up the mirror but also the magnifying glass. Artists explain the world around us but also create a vocabulary for change…to imagine the world we want to live in and to criticise the world we do.

To this end artists must be at the forefront of change and debate……the creators must be finding the centre and the edge, risk offence. An artist is both a part of a society and apart from it. Soaking up through osmosis the ideas and themes of a community and bringing to the fore in unexpected ways. Acting as a touchstone for underlying issues and themes that have been waiting to find a voice.

STORY - Stolen

Artists work in ways that lead a society rather than follow it. The structures do not always reflect democratic principles. It is a gut and an instinct driven environment. It is not about lowest common denominator

This is where it gets tricky. Though I will argue for the right of an artist to have their vision expressed fully…it is that fundamental relationship with the audience that should be considered at all times. The ivory tower is not our traditional role. The anarchic role of artists ( I use anarchy in it’s true meaning…that is the self management of small groups) is one in which it is connected to a community and that osmotic relationship is felt keenly.

The interconnectedness of the arts and culture, of politics and landscape, of genealogy and law is a fundamental in Aboriginal societies.

STORY – Aunty Kath Walker and the 1967 referendum, artists and sporting figures as role models and agents for change.


THE HISTORY OF SUPPORT FOR PERFORMANCE

I think all societies started off like this. Where a community would choose their most talented artists to paint for the whole clan or village. That a community would value their function so that they would carry them….hunt for them, provide them with food and in return marvel at their skills as a painter or a dancer or musician. Though everyone would participate as a singer or dancer they were led by a person who showed exceptional skill and insight and dedication. The exchange was seen as equal and as a sign of their civilisation.

I think we’ve forgotten this arrangement a bit in our modern society. As the arts have increasingly become commodified we have forgotten the arguments for our own existence.

In 1972 when Whitlam established the Australia Council the arguments were clear…it was about getting our accent and our world view on the stages, screens and what ever mongrel spaces could be found. A way of getting our stories told. To influence the public storytelling of our culture. And in so many ways that has been a success…so much so that we have forgotten that it’s an ongoing process….having won that battle we have started to trade it away in the name of free trade……we’ve started to strangle it with funding cuts.

I challenge us all to ask a politician to re-iterate the reason why we support the arts. Cause I think that’s what we need now. We need to say this is the power of performance….this is what we can do….this is what we do all the time and this is why it’s supported. Does that mythic being ‘the average Australian’, know why the arts should be supported….or why we have an army? Or why we have a health care system…..

We no longer talk about what motivates us and what builds our society.


THE CURRENT SENSE OF CONTROL

Quite the opposite. There is a lack of conversation and debate and attempts to lock down the critical functions of our society – the arts, academia, the church, trade unions, the public broadcaster. There is a culture of control. In some ways you can take it as a compliment that successive governments have recognised the power in performance and storytelling…harnessing it to their own aims and attempting to channel that power to shape a society. The propagandist engaging of artists is as old as art itself, those who control the storytelling get to write the history. Limiting or starving certain aspects of storytelling can lead to disenfranchisement. Closing down the creative elements of our society, the critiquing elements, the people and the functions in a society who live and work with a clear purpose

Trying to control these functions in our society is dangerous

STORY – John Oxley….LA Riots. Cronulla, Redfern Riots…acts of terrorism

The democratic aims of a society often claim a mob rules mentality. Democracy is best when it is anarchic – centrally organised government is antithetical to democratic principles. How big can a representative democracy get before it becomes undemocratic?

Does the creation of a single narrative of history serve the greater good? Does it reflect the truth of our society? Does it engage in the debate and the process of becoming that is an ongoing process for any society?

I am not naive enough to suggest that performance can solve all the woes of the world but if you re-examine the strengths and purpose of performance and storytelling I begin to wonder if it hasn’t got more to offer to the world.

The encouraging of debate, of opposite and new views of the world, concepts of empathy and universal human connections, being in the shoes of someone else…….developing new symbols and vocabulary for a new world….the belief in the need for a community to have transformative and collective experiences which define them and developing codes of behaviour and debate….two people in time and space one wanting to communicate, the other wanting to understand.

What can we do?

I think it’s time to break some complex issues down to simple questions so that complex answers can come forward. It’s time to re-iterate what it is we believe in rather than trying to be the smallest target possible, time to talk about values, time to look at what includes us rather than excludes……..and ultimately it’s time to see the history of our role as storytellers, as the keepers of the elements of performance, of the shamans of our tribes and acknowledge our strengths in creating the society we want to be a part of.

Thank you.

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Day Two Keynote: Rose Hiscock

I’VE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN

This may be a controversial statement at a performance conference but with the exception of the performing arts, performance is often considered a secondary aspect in Cultural Institutions. Particularly large ones. Attention and marketing campaigns tend to centre around the big exhibitions. So I’d like to “out” performance and unpack what it can do from a marketers perspective. I’d also like to follow the thread of Wesley’s presentation yesterday talking particularly about community, engagement and identity.

Coming back to Sovereign Hill makes me feel nostalgic. This is a slide of my sister aged 6 visiting Sovereign Hill, circa 1974. How many people have a similar photo at home, or one of you at a museum, a puppet show or a pantomime? How do those images make you feel? I’d like to draw your attention to the title of my paper - I’ve got you under my skin, because this presentation is about love.

So let’s get loved up.

As cultural institutions our business, is as good as our audience. To be successful we need to know how to reach audiences and how to engage them.

I don’t want to run down my profession but reaching audiences is the easy part. The rise of advertising or propaganda is largely credited to the first Roman Emperor Augustus who was born in 63 BC – 14 AD. He was emperor at the time Pompeii was in its hey day.

This is propaganda on a wall in Pompeii. It refers to a baker who was running for parliament. His campaign was basically: vote for me and I’ll give you bread. This particular propaganda is from a brothel owner Asellina promising her vote to the baker. (I’m not sure what else she promised as the baker asked her to remove the sign) In my view the baker’s campaign is fabulous, vote for me and I’ll give you bread. It is up front and to the point. We are about to head into an election in Victoria, and I wonder hat kind of promises we will given. But more on promises later.

So working out what to say is relatively easy (as long as you are straight forward.) Reaching people is easy as well. Walls
Are still used for propaganda but we have an extraordinary range of media choices now. Although changing quickly, Australia is an easier media environment to work in than other countries around the world.
We have fewer media outlets and they are relatively affordable. Museum Victoria is running an advertisement on the front of the Melbourne Age. It costs $12 000, It would cost $36 000 on the front of the Daily Telegraph, and inside the NY Times $44 000. So as you can see by comparison Australian advertising rates are cheap, based on what we know about audiences, we can make pretty good assessments about how many people we can reach.

Filtered by people with tertiary qualifications bracket
· 60% of males and 57 % of females aged 18-39 are medium to heavy readers
· 63% of Females and 70% of males aged 40-59 are medium to heavy newspaper readers (3-7 per week), and in the.

Added to affordable advertising rates the rise of electronic marketing is seeing the rise of very low cost marketing through databases and on line subscriptions.

There is a reason however why media in Australia is cheap- rates are distribution based and Australia’s population is small: Australia’s population is 21 million. In comparison the population of France is 63 million, United Kingdom 61 million, USA 299 million.

Added to this Australia receives just 5 million tourists a year, in comparison France receives 76 million, USA 45 million. UK 22 million.

In Australia, and many regional cities around the world, there are simply less bums to go on seats.

Added to this
· 13.3% of the Australian population were born in non-English speaking countries;
· 16.7% of Victorians were born in non-English speaking countries, representing nearly 800,000 Victorians;
· 36.4% of Victorians have a least one parent born in non-English speaking country;
· less than 49% of all Victorian residents can claim all four grandparents being born in English speaking countries.

Australia’s communities are diverse and this ads an element of complexity.

For Cultural institutions to survive in Australia they must build loyal local audiences. With such a diverse population we must build trust. And this means learning how to engage audiences in a way that gets them talking, wanting more and coming back for more. We need to consider audiences as our most powerful marketers.

So how do you engage audiences? And how do you convert them to promote you.

I was in Europe in July this year presenting at a conference called Communicating the Museum. I took the opportunity to visit a number of cultural institutions. Knowing that I was presenting at this conference I was looking out for performance and programming. But public programming in large institutions was hard to find. I found busy museums and of course stunning exhibitions, objects, and collections. But I was surprised at the lack of human – human action.

With the exception of the National Museum of Australia, each Australian institution draws well over 50% of its audience for its local area. In comparison this figure is 30% for the large institutions in Britain and US. The National Museums of Liverpool is perhaps a closer match.

With such high populations and tourist numbers large institutions can perhaps rely on a new pool of audiences for their markets.

They are however interested in loyalty -most organizations large and small are putting considerable energies into building databases, loyalty and membership programs. The Tate Modern has an entire floor that only members can access and employs someone to walk the queue to subscribe people to the program

So loyalty clearly matters. Exclusivity such as membership programs is one way of achieving loyalty however it does not deal with the masses.

I have suggested that performance is often considered secondary aspect in Cultural Institutions. An exhibition may draw people in and the performance keeps them happy. This of course does not need to be the case - performance can lead visits - however I am interested in the role of performance where it has been traditionally considered second fiddle. Because in a small town, keeping people happy is in fact the main game-

People come to the grand final to see the footy, not the pre-show entertainment. But what if there was no pre-show? No second rate clapped out performer crackling through the national anthem to football players fudging the words? Or what if Melbourne Cup day was just about racing? No fashions on the field and boozed-up shoeless fillies dressed in handkerchiefs and hats running for a train. Most large events- particularly sporting have recognised the power of performance as an important ingredient in satisfying audiences. The Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games was a great example of a perceived secondary element - the cultural Festival, having higher attendance than the sporting events. At Museum Victoria the language we use is delight and attractor, or base an signature programs to describe the role of performance.

So what is it then, that performance can do, what is its role in building loyalty?

To answer this question we need to get into the minds of our audiences. And to do this I’d like to share with you the results of a Museum Victoria market research project.

Melbourne Museum opened in 2000. It had a high attendance projections, a high admission charge and suffered the fate of many new venues after the first year visitation dropped. Compounding this problem, budgets were set on unrealistic projections and the museum was spending beyond its means. Analysing the data, we found one audience segment significantly below its target - the local metropolitan Melbourne market. A significant issue, given the reliance on local audience. To determine the problem, the Museum conducted barrier and driver research. This qualitative research aimed to find what was stopping people from visiting and what would motivate them. The research found three key problems- product, price and promotion (that’s pretty much everything that could go wrong) I’ll deal first with price. In 2003 the Victorian Government provided funding to enable MV to reduce prices across all of its museums. This has had a different impact at each of our venues. SW noticed little increase in visitors and MM about 17% increase. Whilst price points can be blamed for problems I believe that if the product delivers, price is usually not a significant issue. Interactive museums tend to be less price sensitive as they offer clear value for money. I suspect that the Sovereign Hill entry price is not a barrier, instead it is the additional charges such as petrol and food along the way.

The problems with both promotion and product pointed to a lack of engagement.

The research found that for people who had not yet visited, Melbourne Museum had not carved out a strong position or brand essence in the market place and consumers were therefore falling back to traditional views of museums as:
Historic, archival, stuffy, boring, traditional, staid, not for them
The museum lacked , a sense of urgency, perceived suitability. It was perceived as time consuming, daunting, regimented, expensive and potentially short (value for money), not social.

So what was the experience for visitors, Melbourne Museum was an enjoyable experience BUT lacked stand out features. This caused two problems for growing loyalty-
1. There was no real take away attribute And importantly
2. It did not create discussion after the event

It was described by our researcher as: A facade without a soul

Contrasting this attitude were people's spontaneous responses to Scienceworks which they spoke of with passion and a sense of ownership. This is due to the highly interactive nature of SW where our research shows that audiences don’t differentiate between staff or object, it is all part of the experience.

Melbourne Museum's challenge in reaching audiences and converting visits comes down to Engagement. And this would apply to any cultural institution.

An engagement is an intention to be married. To be engaged you are in a relationship. For Cultural institutions to achieve sustained success, particularly in small markets, they need to form lasting and beautiful relationships with their visitors. So what is the best way to engage with another person? The most effective way is through person to person contact and this is where the love comes in.

The MV research revealed four audience segments each inspired by different motivational characteristics. The axis represent stimulate and absorb, for me and for others.

The interesting thing about these segments is that people are not placed definitively in one or other segment- they may move between them based on your needs at the time. For example I may have an inspirer reaction to one exhibition and emotional, duty bound reaction to another. I’m clearly having a nostalgic and emotional reaction to being back at Sovereign Hill. This is a relationship.

The emotional segment is one of the most interesting to work with. Most likely to be visiting with children and looking for an emotional connection. Personalising an experience can make an enormous difference to this segment. Performance can do this is a very direct way. It is immediate and personable. It is emotional. And that is what makes a difference.

Last year Museum Victoria conducted similar barrier and driver research to identify the perceived gaps in the Immigration Museum experience. A range of exhibitions were analysed with interesting results. We asked respondents what they expected from a visit to the Immigration Museum and found that the experience over-delivered. We then asked what should we do to improve- expecting them to focus on developing new exhibitions.

They basically said- forget exhibitions, it will be more of the same. To capture our interest and create urgency you need to do something different. And each group suggested to use performance to bring the museum to life.

Of the four museum segments, the Immigration Museum appeals most to the Duty Bound. This is the group looking for an emotional connection. Of course we use programming heavily within the Immigration Museum. However to turn the organization from an exhibition lead approach to a performance lead approach, is an interesting challenge and one that would require significant cultural change. We are not there yet but it is a clear message if we wish to follow.

The power of performance is the ability to create urgency and personal connection, but also to get people talking. In a small market where return visitation is vital…this should not be underestimated. In 2002 MM staged a performance rather than a touring exhibition in its touring hall. Our visitor research demonstrated that the show inspired 66% of visitors to come to the Museum 60% were new visitors and 86% said they’d come back to see a similar show in the future. Word of Mouth prompted 20% of visits. Compared with 8% Word of mouth prompt to visit for a dinosaur exhibition and 11% for Mummies.

Word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tool available. And with the exponential rise of electronic marketing it has extended into a whole new world- Word of Mouse.

Most cultural institutions have some areas with unrestricted photography policies. This combined with 3D objects and best still people provides a fabulous backdrop for photography. Whether captured on mobile phones or cameras, digital photography is a powerful and immediate way to enable word of mouse. This is the T-Rex room at the Natural History Museum London. The room was not created with photography in mind, however has become a non stop flash affair with parents propping children on railings to click the moment, before T-Rex snaps their heads off.

It is not unusual for people to photograph their love ones. However our opportunity, and a competitive advantage over many attractions such as Zoos is to shape this moment so that our venue and messages are clearly identified and audiences become an army of marketers. Why not stage or build these opportunities into performances. Find the show stopper moment and literally stop the show to ask people to take a photo. Sovereign Hill have been on to this concept for a while although I’m not sure if it has moved digital yet.

So performance is a great tool to reach and engage audiences. But I’d like to go a step further to show what this means for a healthy brand.

So to start with what is this thing called brand? A brand is described as many things - most often a promise, The baker in Pompeii’s promise is clear and you get a sense of what he stands for. But there are more sophisticated definitions of brands - words like personality, image or identity. The main thing is that it includes the perceptions that someone may have around a product or service. These perceptions may be shaped by personal experience, but also advertising, PR, spin, hype, word of mouth or any other range of influences. So a brand is not just a logo, or a building or a venue. It is an all encompassing concept and includes the total audience experience.

The concept is powerful because it centres on the audience not the product. Take Sovereign Hill. It’s a large complex- some 26 hectares. But it is the audience that brings it to life, day or night. So, what’s their experience? Who do they meet, what do they find out? What do they leave with? Who do they leave with? Did anyone read an article in the syndicated weekend papers a few weeks ago (September 17 ). Titled Wooing to win: Would you date these men?, The article states “whatever happened to romance? While French champagne and roses are as winning as ever, the real tools of seduction are honesty and imagination, say five men who know how to make the ladies swoon” The article went on to describe one of the men who is a well known Sydney Advertising agency guru, and his account of “the most extravagant encounter he ever created, guaranteed to make even the most resistant women swoon” The article states: “ I once had a girl picked up in a limousine -the back seat was covered in petals- and taken to a warf where there was a table for two with Mc Donald’s and champagne, he recalls proudly. About 20 minutes later, a yacht arrived with crew and the real dinner began. It was cooked on board as we sailed around the harbour”. This man lives and breaths brands and from this one date you get a very clear understanding of his personality/promise or identity (I just hope the woman did not pig out on the Mc Donalds and left a little room)

There is however another definition of a brand and one that I think is more powerful and relevant to our world: a brand is a relationship. Professor of Brand Marketing and Director for Research in the Brand Marketing Department at the Birmingham University Business school has the following to say about Brands as relationships.

“Relationships are purposive and enable both parties to provide meanings. Customers choose brands in part because they seek to understand themselves and to communicate aspects of their selves to others. Through engaging in a relationship, albeit briefly, customers are able to resolve ideas about their self….”

In my view this is useful definition of a brand because it is not about spin and promise. It goes deeper to touch on engagement and visitors making their own judgement based on experience. And it is something that our sector can own- where commercial operators can only promise, we can develop relationships that are based on the product itself rather than a promotional gimmick.

To articulate our brand, Museum Victoria has developed a number of brand values. They govern what we do how we want our visitors to think about us. Over time we will test them to check in on our brand health. We are just starting this work but over time these values should govern all that we do including recruitment of staff as well as exhibointions and public programs. If we are consistent it will help our audiences feel trust, and ownership in the same way that they currently do with SW.

Our overall aim is to build our profile and in so doing build the profile of our sector.

I believe that cultural institutions need to wise up to loyalty. We need more than an just an offer – we need an ongoing relationship with our audience. One of the themes for this conference is partnerships. The most important partnership we have is with our audience. Like any relationship it needs nurturing and love. And performance has the ability to provide the personal connection and emotional link required for love.

But before this can happen we need to address a concept that Wesley introduced yesterday- value. How do we value artists, in a politically conservative climate where funding is being reduced for small companies. And how do we value performance in a large organizations where the dominant culture is centered in other disciplines?

I have the privilege to Chair of Back to Back Theatre Company. It is a small professional theatre company creatively driven by a full-time ensemble of actors with intellectual disabilities – the company is known for its unconventional, idiosyncratic, challenging, often comic but always humanistic work. The company’s recent work SMO sold out at the 2005 Melbourne International Festival and will travel nationally and internationally next year

Last year the company won the 2005 Sydney Myer performing arts awards

I’d like o quote from the judges citation:


“Back to Back has drawn upon the intelligence, craft and creativity of its actors and other artistic collaborators to create some forty original works in theatre, film and community projects.


With … superb dramaturgy, … sound technology permitted small metal objects to play in the potentially anarchic space of the Flinders Street Station Concourse, where police, railway and security officers, passengers, drifters, baristas and the actors mingled in random moves before the perplexed audience sitting in tiered rows on one side. The combination of plotted action, improvisation and unpredictability in a public space created endless frissons for actors and audiences alike, creating a rare bond that will be hard to forget by anyone privileged to see this exceptional work.”

I have two observations to make here regarding small metal objects -
The show was about value, and the perceived value of a person with a disability. Conceived and acted by people with disabilities, the work challenged what it means to be normal, and our perception of value.

Back to back is a Theatre company with an Artistic Director General Manager, part time administration and 5 actors. Every board meeting I am humbled by the work that this extraordinary team deliver and I can’t help comparing this to larger well resourced organisations. As seen over the past few days it’s a sure fire way to rip through the crap and make a lasting connection with people.

So for me it’s a question of value. Do we value the role of performance within our spaces? are we encouraging it to live and breath for itself, are we prepared to be gutsy with it and have it drive rather than be recessive? And do we value its role as a providing the love?

So where from here? I have discussed something today that is intangible- if our audiences at SW can’t differentiate between the experiences on offer- from staff to exhibitions, how can we measure it? I don’t know the answer to this but I do think the future for venues in is relationships and we need to spend time and attention learning how to love up our audiences as much as we can.



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Day Three Keynote: Anthony Jackson

Is available as a PDF document and can be obtained on request from Patrick Watt
pwatt@museum.vic.gov.au
ask for Tony Jackson paper