Resources

Reset Publications

September 2024
Australian Cultural Employment: An Analysis of the Australian Census and Labour Force Survey Data
Ben Eltham and Justin O’Connor

This report is an analysis of employment in Australian cultural industries, using Australian Bureau of Statistics definitions and census data from 2006-2020. It shows a sector with slow growth relative to other sectors, and increasing indications of a precarious workforce. It shows that Melbourne, Sydney and the Greater Brisbane-Gold Coast have grown fastest, with Adelaide and South Australia losing cultural workforce. Overall cultural employment is overwhelmingly concentrated in the inner core of the capital cities.

Statement

April 2022
For a Progressive Arts and Cultural Policy Agenda in Australia

Submissions and Speeches

August 2022
Submisson to the National Cultural Policy consultation

Justin O’Connor’s address to the United Nation’s Senior Management Group

Readings

Three short articles by Tully Barnett, Julian Meyrick and Justin O’Connor

‘A New ‘Policy Imaginary’ for Australian Art and Culture’, Artshub 12 August 2021
‘Exit Strategy: A New Vision for Art and Culture’? Artshub 10 July 2021
‘The Limits of Advocacy’ The Conversation 18 June 2021, reprinted Artshub 21 June 2021.

Reset Ideas

Justin O’Connor, ‘Music as Industry’, in Loudmouth: Music Trust e-Magazine, 1 May 2021
Justin O’Connor, ‘The Great Deflation: Arts and Culture after the Creative Industries’ in Making and Breaking, Issue 2: The Post-Contemporary, 2021
Justin O’Connor, ‘Art and Culture After Covid-19’ in RESHAPE Journal, 14 Dec 2020
Justin O’Connor, ‘Art as Industry’ in Wake in Fright blog, 20 June 2020
Justin O’Connor and Mark Banks, ‘Remake/Remodel: Arts and Culture after Covid’ in Tribune Magazine, 8 Nov 2020
Justin O’Connor, ‘Blue Wedge: Art, Culture and ‘the Elite’’, Griffith Review 73 ‘Hey Utopia!’, 55-69, July 2021

Precarity and the Pandemic

Doris Ruth Eikhof (2020) ‘COVID-19, inclusion and workforce diversity in the cultural economy: what now, what next?’, Cultural Trends, 29:3: 234-250
Ben Eltham “Creative industries inquiry demonstrates need for national cultural policy as hearings continue” (ArtsHub)
Mark Banks & Justin O’Connor (2021) Editorial: Art and Culture in the Viral Emergency, Cultural Trends, 30:1, 1-2
Banks, M and O’Connor, J (2020) ‘”A Plague on your Howling”. Art and Culture in the Viral Emergency’, Cultural Trends, 30:1, 3-18
Banks, M. and O’Connor, J. (2021) ‘Sowing in Dark Times: Art and Culture in the Interregnum’, TEME Magazine (Magazine published by the Trade Union for Theatre and Media Finland), 16 June 2021
Pacella, J, Luckman, S and O’Connor, Justin (2020) ‘Fire, Pestilence and the Extractive Economy: Cultural Policy after Cultural Policy’, Cultural Trends 30:1: 40-51

WPA and Public Employment

Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso (2020) The Arts and the State in Times of Crisis: The Prospect of a New WPA. A discussion of direct support schemes for artists since the New Deal.
See more of Arlene’s writing on this here:
- The Prospect of a New WPA Wrap-up: Working for The Common Good
- It’s About Time: We Can Help Create A New WPA
See also Hakim Bishara (2021) ‘NYC Launches a $25M WPA-style Recovery Program for the Arts’
In response: Arlene Goldbard (2021), ‘One and One-Half Cheers for NYC’s City Artist Corps‘

Co-Ops

Kate Oakley and David Boyle (2018) Co-operatives in the Creative Industries
Greig de Peuter, Bianca C. Dreyer, Marisol Sandoval, and Aleksandra Szaflarska. 2020. Sharing Like We Mean It: Working Co-operatively in the Cultural and Tech Sectors. Cultural Workers Organize.
Bianca C. Dreyer, Greig de Peuter, Marisol Sandoval, and Aleksandra Szaflarska. 2020. The Co-operative Alternative and the Creative Industries: A Technical Report on a Survey of Cooperatives in the cultural and technology sectors in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Cultural Workers Organize.
Simon Borkin/ NESTA (2018) Platform Co-operatives – Solving the Capital Conundrum
New Economics Foundation (2018) Co-operatives Unleashed
On Precarity and co-operatives, using SMART as example: Annalisa Murgia , Sarah de Heusch (2020) “It Started with the Arts and Now It Concerns All Sectors: The Case of Smart, a Cooperative of ‘Salaried Autonomous Workers’” in Stephanie Taylor and Susan Luckman (eds) Pathways into Creative Working Lives. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Local Thinker in Residence: Guy Turnbull (2018) Towards a Co-operative State: Securing the Social and Economic Prosperity of South Australia through Corporate Diversity.
The Green Institute ran a seminar on co-ops: Talking Cooperatives For A Democratic Covid Recovery