Report from second meeting: October 15, 2013 in Perth, Western Australia
The Cultural Forum is a meeting of cultural policy and planning representatives from Australia’s capital cities, local government associations along with Commonwealth Ministry for the Arts and the Australia Council for the Arts.
The second meeting of the Cultural Forum endorsed its Terms of Reference that begins with the objective to increase the capacity of local government to strengthen the arts and cultural development in their communities.
More information, including the Terms of Reference on the National Local Government Cultural Forum is available at the CDN Website.
The first meeting of the Cultural Forum, June 2013, established a short list of priority areas. This second meeting considered discussion papers on each area and confirmed a work plan for the Secretariat to undertake leading up to the third meeting scheduled for March 2014, in Brisbane.
The key outcomes of the second Cultural Forum meeting are as follows.
- The Cultural Forum will work with and advise the ALGA on inter-government relationships and vertical planning where it impacts on arts and cultural development in local government. This includes the application of the National Arts and Culture Accord signed by between the three tiers of government in April 2013.
- Collect additional local government data that demonstrates the scope of local government’s contribution to the national arts and broader cultural agenda; and provides important information and knowledge that assists councils with their local arts and cultural development planning.
- Develop a system for gathering usable arts and culture information by working with a sample group of councils to help define the usability of data and based on existing work happening in local government settings.
- Analyse a small set of arts project case-studies to establish the range of measures, indicators and the dynamics that feature in local and community-based arts projects for use in informing the collection of data.
- Develop models of arts and cultural infrastructure planning in local government and engage in discussion with a range of related organisations to provide the data, information and knowledge to councils and to ALGA in the context of broader local government infrastructure planning.
A feature of the second meeting of the Cultural Forum was separate meetings held the day before the Forum meeting by the capital cities as a group and similarly a separate meeting of the local government associations. Both these meetings enhanced the exchange of information and shared planning prior to coming together as the Cultural Forum on the Tuesday.
The National Local Government Cultural Forum is an initiative assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body and managed by the Cultural Development Network in cooperation with the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA).
Communiqué – Cultural Forum Meeting 1
Further information will be posted on this web site and made available through state local government associations and capital cities.
Enquiries:
John Smithies, Director, Cultural Development Network.
E: contact@culturaldevelopment.net.au
P: +61 3 9925 0282