Yesterday, I gave the final session of the lecture series I’ve been doing at Melbourne Uni. Normally, Kat McFerran and I co-deliver, but as she was off doing another gig, we decided to use the last session to show the students the recent pbs(US) doco, The Music Instinct because, as well as being well made, [...]

It’s way too late at night for me to be thinking clearly, but I have to put this stuff up, if only because of its synchronicity. On the western side of the Pacific, we have Oz Arts Minister Peter Garrett announcing a ten point framework that may lead to a national cultural policy. And, on [...]

I’ve had a series of overhead projections (being unwilling to engage with PowerPoint) for some years now that I’ve been using as summaries of various aspects of my post Four Pillar thinking. Viewed sequentially, they read a bit like a guide through the rooms of the virtual building for which the pillars are the facade.  [...]

This morning I received Circular 33 from the Agenda 21 for Culture crew in Barcelona. It announces the online publication of a report by Jordi Pascual entitled ‘Culture and sustainable development: examples of institutional innovation and proposal of a new cultural policy profile’. Jordi has been pushing a ‘fourth pillar’ perspective for some years now [...]

I’ve just added two more charts to the library: Lives of Artists and Money isn’t everything. The first is my attempt to describe some of the ways that those who must make art find to survive; the second is an attempt to outline the resources that would enable communities to realise their full creative capacities.

I’ve just finished listening to Mark Knopfler’s new CD, Get Lucky.  His guitar work, voice and lyrics have always resonated with me.  And this one as much as any since Sultans of Swing (was it really 32 years – half a lifetime – ago). I suspect my softest spot has always been for the folk [...]

Another of the constant questions that’s been put to me since The Fourth Pillar has been for suggestions about how one might go about creating an effective way of ‘planning for culture’ (thank you Charles Landry) within local government. I believe that the crucial issues are attitudinal (see Challenges for local cultural development) but they [...]

I guess not surprisingly, I keep being asked for real-life examples of local governments applying ‘four pillar thinking’ in their planning practices. To me, that would mean applying a cultural perspective in the development and assessment of ALL their policies and programs. And the sad news is that I’m unaware of ANY local government that [...]

Much as I’m used to writing without a direct sense of an audience – the occasional essay at uni, editorials in Go-Set, grant applications and acquitals, press releases – I’m finding it weirdly difficult to write in the blog context. I have begun reading other peoples’ with great interest, and I presume I’m just one [...]