Our Geoffrey Plugs for the Arts

If you have not heard, Geoffrey Rush accepted the AFI Ray Longford award on August 1st. His accpetance speech is naturally just fantasic. he speaks of an attitude in this country to Arts which artists continue to fight against and just keep on with their vocation in the strivng for recognition and approval. 

After listening to his speech I searched on line for some reviews and saw what he did, and that which many of us already know.

That arts in this country when reported in the media pages is diffused down to celebrity and village gossip, bundeled together under the heading of "entertainment". Sport is indeed entertainment but has managed to rise above the shackles that arts still wears. Perhaps it is the competition aspect of sport that makes the difference. Through competition the need for support of sport has grown, via vehicles like the Olympics, Australia has chosen to step up to the podium and invest in excellence, encourage focus and training and meet the rest of the world every 4 years in an amazing arena of competition.

Although the arts cannot be boiled down to simply a competitive challenge (which sport often can, perhaps making it easier to give focus to developing excellence) we have no Institute of the performing arts such that we have for sport. Yes we have NIDA, but our institutions are often focussed to one aspect of the arts not the training across many arts.

The closest that may come to that is the Victorian College of the Arts, which offers schools of music, dance, drama and the country's only practical puppetry course. As we know all too well, Melbourne University saved the VCA in the 90's when the tech institutes and schools were in danger and now is planning to recuce the offerings of the VCA bringing them more in line with the academia of the University. Poof, there goes the centralised practical training for artists in this state and country. It seems what might be on the cards is a general university degree for 2 years before specialising in the practical arts.

As Rush says, some people don't wnat to study. They want to train.