The Fourth Pillar Revisited - Key Questions about Cultural Sustainability

Jon Hawkes has been a vocal advocate for cultural sustainability. In this presentation he considers its potential and touches on some socio-political challenges and barriers to achieving it. He also considers the importance of culture and creativity as ends in themselves. How does the fourth pillar free culture from being shackled in service of the other pillars of sustainability?

Presenter: Jon Hawkes

Considering Cultural Imperatives

Donald Horne considers the nature of the productive life and the life of civic engagement. What are some of the difficulties, dangers, opportunities and challenges that are faced defending and strengthening national and local cultural vitality? He affirms the need to address and understand such questions. However they should not stand in the way of 'getting on with' the business of cultural management and the stewardship of government at all levels.

Presenter: Donald Horne

The Garma Festival: An Indigenous Cultural Perspective

Regarded as one of Australia's most significant Indigenous festivals, the Garma Festival attracts around 20 clan groups from north east Arnhem Land, as well as representatives from clan groups and neighbouring Indigenous peoples throughout Arnhem Land, the Northern Territory and Australia. This presentation considers Garma, its cultural significance and value as an adjunct to formal education in the communities involved.

Presenters: Mandawuy Yunupingu & Yalmay Yunupingu

Cultural Sustainability and the National Agenda

The Australia Council is Australia's peak arts organisation. How does the issue of cultural sustainability look from that perspective and how can national and local agendas be best alligned to achieve it?

Presenter: Jennifer Bott

The Fourth Pillar in Three Countries

1. Penny Eames:-Understanding what is meant by cultural well-being is a key to creating a peaceful and happy society that balances physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual well-being of its citizens. This paper will look at cultural well-being in the light of social, economic and environmental well-being and as a measure of the three other pillars of sustainable development. The paper will also note the dynamics involved in working with the arts and cultural sector, suggest ways to celebrate all your community cultures. It will draw on our New Zealand Local Government Act 2002 which includes the need to promote cultural well-being as one of the purposes of local government. The workshop will further show how this Act and the inclusion of the Fourth Pillar is impacting on local government planning and suggest ways in which it can be incorporated in other government Acts and policies, particularly urban design environmental protocols.

2. Richard Holt:-In order to understand cultural sustainability as a component of planning and policy strategies it is important to first consider how the concept of sustainability can be applied consistently across the four pillars. This allows the interconnection of each of the �four pillars� to be considered. It also allows the relationships between global, national, regional, metropolitan and local community perspectives to be better understood. In Australia the adoption of quadruple bottom line strategies is somewhat haphazard. There is a substantial level of awareness of and support for the concept but barriers appear to exist to its wide scale implementation. However state and local governments are increasingly adopting leadership positions in this regard, recognising the value of the fourth pillar as a driver of good public policy.

Presenters; Penny Eames & Richard Holt

Alive to Storied Landscapes: Storytelling, Sense of Place and Social Inclusion

Sense of place research enables us to explore how people form affective bonds that can turn spaces into places. However, certain stories can become dominant and restrictive and it is important to give voice to a diversity of place stories. This requires good storytelling skills, a commitment to social inclusion, and a willingness to negotiate complex and conflicting identities.

Presenter: Dr Martin Mulligan

Neighbourhoods Talking: Graffiti, Art and the Public Domain

This paper will reflect on the use, management and 'ownership' of public space by looking at the proliferation of graffiti in urban areas. Graffiti is a public expression of an arts subculture that is part of a municipality's diversity and contributes to its distinctive culture. Graffiti expresses a human engagement with the streets, parks and open spaces where communities meet, interact and express themselves to others.

Presenter: Dr Chris Dew

Shifting Ground: Negotiating Values in a Gentrifying Community

June Moorhouse will present the background to (and hot-off-the-press outcomes from) a project that grew out of two years research undertaken as part of a Community Cultural Development Board Fellowship. Exploring the felt sense of social and cultural change over the past 25 years in hours of interviews with members of the Fremantle community, June Moorhouse has teased out key issues, dilemmas, inconsistencies and heartfelt stories that will resonate in communities across Australia.

Presenter: June Moorhouse

Restructuring Communities: Economic and Social Policies for a 'Different' Society

We rely on our culture to give balance to our materialistic society. However, this strategy now lacks credibility as the direction of economic efforts is increasingly turning to our culture itself - cultural festivals, community events, the arts, sport and social and civic movements, are all becoming dominated by commercial enterprise. Culture increasingly means �access to commodified cultural experiences�, and this leads to questions about whether our society can survive with a much reduced government and cultural influence, and dominated by commerce as the main arbiter of our lives. New policy approaches are not likely to be evident within current systems since they largely involve us in collective solutions relying on cooperation, tolerance and sharing, difficult concepts to embrace in a society built upon individualism and competitiveness. We need to set out the conditions whereby citizens can participate in building more sustainable communities, but this means turning current policy on its head. Commitment to a different set of principles and actions directed at questioning our institutional base itself, can achieve this.

Presenter: Dr Onko Kingma

Community Singing Event: Practising What We Preach

60 minutes of guaranteed fun. You will not feel foolish, you will not feel threatened, you will feel liberated, you will be filled with joy. This we promise.

Fay White, with the assistance of Jon Hawkes, will lead a session of group sound-making that will tangibly demonstrate the compelling attraction of voices in concert. Your voices.

No matter what your peers, partners or parents have said about the quality of your attempts to sing along with your favourite anthem, you will discover this evening that you can make beautiful music, especially when you're doing it with a bunch of others who are equally tentative about their capacities.

If we are fair dinkum about our belief in the creativity of all people, the first people we have to take seriously is ourselves.

Making music together creates a crucible in which people can experience and productively channel the synergy that comes from collaborative effort. It provides an immediate and tangible manifestation of the power and joy of co-operation. It is the creative manifestation of community. It transforms the metaphor of harmony into a real life experience. It is always a creative act, in the moment, a practice of the 'everyday arts' as an integral part of ordinary people's daily lives.

Fay White's way of leading people into singing together is an object lesson in transforming reluctance into action, nervousness into confidence, fear into energy, individualisation into collective expression.

It may be that singing together is the most effective first step in developing community. This evening offers you a direct opportunity to judge for yourself.

(Fay White and Jon Hawkes are both active in Community Music Victoria, which has been co-ordinating a three year program of community singing throughout Victoria. Funded by VicHealth, the program has helped in the establishment and development of over sixty community-based independent and ongoing singing groups throughout rural and regional Victoria)

Presenters: Fay White and Jon Hawkes

The Cultural Journey

This presentation considers the transition, from a public policy point of view, through the movements and ideas that have informed the way oraganisations consider culture (community arts, cultural development, CCD, the arts business model etc) to the point where culture, broadly defined, becomes deeply embedded within the policy framework and in the psyche of public organisations. It raises the questions:- Where are we on this journey? What are the hurdles that remain? What is the prize at the end of the journey? (Or does the journey never really end?).

Presenters: Anne Dunn

The Spaces Between the Pillars of Sustainability

This paper presents a lively and informed perspective on the role cultural planning is taking in the changing landscapes of Australian culture; the neighbourhood, the city centre, the natural environment and the workplace. The realities of the triple bottom line approach are critically explored through an understanding of both the economic and planning imperatives that set the scene for cultural change. Cultural planning projects in significant cultural environments including the constructed and natural environment of Botany Bay, the reinvented neighbourhoods of Sydney's suburbs, the changing economic landscapes of industrial cities andrural towns are explored. this paper looks critically at the role of cultural planning as a driver of social, economic and environmental change. it argues that, in the real work of cultural change, it is the spaces and interactions between the 'pillars of sustainability' that articulate the capability of the cultural landscape - a landscape that is increasingly deconstructed and fluid.

Presenters: Marla Guppy

Four Pillars in Practice at the City of Port Phillip

The City of Port Phillip has embraced a four pillars approach to planning that is central to every decision the organisation makes. This has placed culture, front and centre, as a core part of the organisational philosophy. How has this integrated approach to sustainability impacted on the operation of the organisation and the Port Phillip community?

Presenters: David Brand, Sally Calder

Animating Heritage

All aspects of culture are informed by layers of heritage and by how those layers are understood and valued. How can the stories and experiences that make up the heritage of our communities be harnessed to strengthen communities today?

Presenters: Christine Burton, Malcolm McKinnon, Jared Thomas, Elaine Lally and Tiffany Lee-Shoy

The Culture of Places

Each place has its own culture, or rather mix of cultures, that contributes to its difference and to the sense its people have of themselves. Presenters involved in projects that consider the cultural importance of place discuss how the places we identify with contribute to our community well-being.

Presenters: Gay Bilson, Judy Spokes , Monir Rowshan and Susan Conroy. Facilitator: Martin Mulligan

Health and Wellbeing

The link between cultural engagement and health has been recognised and is now the basis of much public health policy. This session looks at how this critical relationship works in practice to achieve healthier communities.

Presenters: Clare Meyers, Susan Thompson, Linda Corkery, Deborah Miles and Glenda Masson. Facilitator: Deborah Mills

Arts / Culture: Nexus and Separation'

The fourth pillar discussion challenges public administrators to move beyond an arts focused view of cultural policy. Nevertheless art and creativity remain important aspects of culture and extremely useful tools for engaging people and communities. This session considers the complex relationship between art and culture.

Presenters: Marla Guppy, Matthew Ives, Suzy Stiles and Pat Zuber. Facilitator: June Moorhouse

'Artplay Site Visit / City of Melbourne Cultural Programs'

This is an offsite session. Conference delegates are invited to tour the ArtPlay facility at Birrarung Marr, Melbourne’s new riverside parkland, and to learn about this and other cultural initiatives of the City of Melbourne

Presenters: Simon Spain and Morris Bellamy

Festivals and Community Involvement

Festivals can be a fantastic way to engage communities. They can also be fraught with problems and risks. So what makes a good community festival and, when a festival really works, what are the rewards for the community involved?

Presenters: Jason Cross, Jerrill Rechter, Tricia Cooney, Richard Bladell. Facilitator: Lindy Bartholomew

Models of Inclusion (1)

Cultural policies that do not create opportunities for all people fail to acknowledge the diversity that strong and healthy cultures possess. This is the first of two workshops that considers the creative projects of people who may not have access to many ‘mainstream’ cultural opportunities.

Presenters: Rosemary Joy, Phil Heuzenroeder and Steve Payne. Facilitator: Fiona Smith

Local Government - New Thinking'

Local government, because of its direct association with communities, is uniquely placed to deliver on the challenges of cultural sustainability. This session considers ways in which local government is introducing new thinking in order to create a sustainable future.

Presenters: Jenny Merkus, Jeanine Gribbin and Nancy Duxbury. Facilitator: Anne Dunn

Models of Inclusion (2)

Cultural policies that do not create opportunities for all people fail to acknowledge the diversity that strong and healthy cultures possess. This is the second workshop looking at cultural inclusiveness and engagement.

Presenter: Angela O'Brien, Kiersten Coulter, Sharon Jacobsen and Natalia Valenzuela Chair/Facilitator: Jane Crawley