Background and objectives
Community relevance is at the core of artistic vibrancy
‘Organisations cannot be granted relevance in perpetuity based on their laurels. To exist, to thrive, in the 21st century, arts organisations need to be willing to adapt in order to attain, maintain, or regain, their relevance’.
The community relevance project speaks to one of the most important challenges of the arts – demonstrating our relevance as a sector to the community. Once the domain of ‘community arts’ organisations there are increasing calls for the broader arts sector to define its relevance to today’s communities. Some of the key factors include:
- Economic climate and financial pressures on subsidised arts organisations
- Trends in audience behaviours, fuelled by technological developments
- Widespread understanding of ‘democratisation’ and ‘public value’ concepts
- Well established and articulate multicultural communities.
Background
The Australia Council’s artistic vibrancy project aims to develop:
- A shared language to talk about artistic vibrancy, including what artistic vibrancy means, how to measure it and a vision for the future artistic vibrancy of Australian performing arts
- Forums where the sector can honestly and openly talk about the current state of their artistic vibrancy, with each other and with funders.
Community relevance is a key element of the artistic vibrancy – alongside artistic quality and excellence of craft, audience engagement and stimulation, curation and development of the artform, and development of artists. Strong community relevance is closely intertwined with the other elements of vibrancy.
Read more about the artistic vibrancy program, or the artistic reflection kit.
Project objectives
The objectives of the community relevance project are to:
- Define what community relevance means for a diverse group of organisations
- Promote a shared language to talk about relevance
- Raise the profile of relevant work in the performing arts sector
- Develop practical and flexible resources for reflecting on community relevance
- Inspire arts organisations to reflect on relevance and how it relates to their work.
Desired outcomes
This project is concerned with Australians’ engagement with the performing arts, their understanding of the impacts of the arts in communities, and the value that they place on arts and culture. It's also about the exchange and value that communities bring to the arts.
We will know we’ve been successful when:
- Reflection on community relevance is a part of normal practice of arts organisations.
- As a whole, the performing arts sector is relevant to a diverse range of communities.
- Australian communities perceive the performing arts as relevant to their lives.
Your views
We're interested in your views about community relevance. Please share your thoughts on the discussion page.
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