Cultural Diversity Dance Policy

The traditional owners and custodians of Australia and its territories are the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

There are now over 200 cultures represented in Australia, with 43 per cent of Australians either born overseas or having at least one parent born overseas.

The Australia Council for the Arts' vision is that Australia's dynamic cultural life and practices are embraced, celebrated and created by our diversity of cultures.

This vision underpins the Australia Council’s dance board’s commitment to supporting and promoting a diverse dance sector that effectively reflects and celebrates Australia's cultural diversity.

The Australia Council’s dance board would like to see a future in which:

• It no longer needs to positively affect culturally diverse dance applications, infrastructure or artists
• The dance sector will be visibly diverse with participants, audiences and communities engaged in artistic enjoyment, appreciation and production
• Culturally diverse people will tell the breadth of Australian stories in diverse forms
• Culturally diverse artists will have equal access to funding, services and training
• Australian dance continues its strong artistic development as a result of diverse vocabulary, training, presentation, distribution, exchange and collaboration with diverse artists and communities
• Australian dance will continue to represent the Australian population as it changes over time.
  

To move towards this future the Australia Council’s dance board is finalising a Cultural Diversity Dance Action Plan for 2008-2010 to support, promote and develop a culturally diverse dance sector in Australia.