Tuesday, 28 October 2008

By Esmeralda Rocha, Ph.D candidate at the School of Music, UWA:

Last week Peter Garrett announced that the Rudd government intended 
to axe $2.6 million funding it gives to the Austalian National 
Academy of Music (ANAM). For $2.6 million ANAM trains 55 full-time 
elite young musicians, encourages international talent to visit 
Australia to give masterclasses etc., employs respected musicians and 
pedagogues, and offers over 170 public concerts a year. Yes, for $2.6 
million. The cessation of funding means that ANAM will close in 2009.

ANAM was set up by the Keating Government in 1994 as part of Creative 
Nation. The aim was to give young talented musicians the opportunity 
to train at an elite level without having to travel to Europe or 
America. It has slowed Australia's brain drain by creating a stepping 
stone to professional orchestral appointments (all the elite symphony 
and chamber orchestras in Australia boast a healthy proportion of 
ANAM alumni).

Likewise it creates appointments for our best musicians. Brett Dean, 
who runs ANAM at the moment, is a world-renowned composer and ex-
viola player with some of the principal orchestras of Europe. If ANAM 
were to cease Australia's musicians will be forced to go overseas 
again, and most likely stay there.

ANAM is the musical equivalent of AIS. If the AIS were to close there 
would be uproar. A conservative estimate is that every gold medal 
Australia has won at the Olympics over the past 20 years has cost 
Australian taxpayers $40 million. Elitism is obviously admissable in 
Australia, but only for sport.

The decision was not only poorly thought out but horrendously 
managed. ANAM staff were notified by a perfunctory fax. The decision 
has occurred too late in the Academic intake year to allow students 
to find alternative training for 2009. The reason Garrett has given 
for the decision is that ANAM is no longer the best model to train 
our young Classical musicians, but has given no alternative model, 
nor a promise of one.

It is also the more insulting for having come in the wake of the 2020 
summit, in which the arts were seen as one of the 10 important areas 
of Australia's future. It all looks like a lot of hot air now.

The ALP needs to remember that a vociferous and effective proportion 
of its supporters for the Kevin07 election campaign were from the 
arts community. The promise for the arts was improvement, not 
decommissioning of major arts training institutes. If this continues, 
Australia's national landmark, the Sydney Opera House, if going to 
end up an empty, silent monolith -- a testament to a time when Labor 
governments cared about culture