Reverberations of the news that Barry O'Farrell NSW Liberal Premier's decision to cut $1.7 million funding from NSW education specifically targets Fine Arts course at TAFE NSW colleges, are spreading through social media art circles like the proverbial ripples caused by a stone thrown into a calm and peaceful pond.
In Newcastle, cutting TAFE art education funding seems nonsensical. This is a post-industrial city where after BHP pulled out of town, art and artists many who spent years at the Newcastle Art School on Hunter Street (TAFE) are instrumental in -literally and symbolically- transforming the image of the post industrial cityscape into a vibrant alternative artscene. Into a city which is listed as a top destination for global backpackers in the Lonely Planet guide. A place where for instance, bus shelters on the largely abandoned main street, Hunter Street, are turned into shrines of contemporary artists' follies. Where artists saved the city through Renew Newcastle a scheme to "transform empty shopfronts" - on the main street and city centre after the withdrawal of BHP steel works led to the temporary collapse of the local economy. The Renew Newcastle scheme, started up and run by Marcus Westbury, a Novacastrian, who has gone on to start up Renew Australia based on Renew Newcastle's success, has proved so successful that it is being taken up as an economic and cultural model of transformation and urban regeneration not only in Australia but also overseas.
Surely it is a gross betrayal of the very artists- and their teachers- who have made this visually attractive form of urban renewal, to announce that their jobs are going to be axed and funding cut? Thus effectively stifling all creative economic-cultural growth of this kind- that tourists and locals alike appreciate?
How TAFE courses operate is on a neoliberal logic: that if sufficient numbers of students do not enrol for a course it will not run. The changes announced by Barry O'Farrell indicate that the costs will escalate for TAFE Fine Arts courses in "low economic" regions. (This includes the Hunter despite the mining in the Hunter Valley- it really does not make much sense). Actual figures of actual cost increases for courses have not been released but the guesses are between $8,000-12,000 per year- which is beyond the means of the majority of TAFE students. Hence TAFE art schools across the state including the Newcastle Hunter Street Art School are anticipating that they will not get the enrolments their courses need to run and that this will result in many courses eliminated, staff redundancies (as all courses are taught by part time and "casual" staff to use the neoliberal terminology; in reality they are taught by well-regarded practising professional vocational artists), and art schools being closed.
To give an idea of the mood, young Newcastle artist Ben Marcus Kenning writes in the Novacastrian Arts Group (NAG) on facebook:
this coming wed at hunter st tafes front room gallery is a show exhibiting 3rd year graduates work.
due to funding cuts this will be the final exhibition hosted by this gallery which has supported and offered invaluable experience to many a young budding artist
if you have been a part of the community of newcastle art school please turn up to support the students on show and reflect on the great influence this gallery, institution and its staff have had on the newcastle art scene and those involved within it
6-8pm, wed next week, please share this post
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| Ben Marcus Kenning Critter Weave, 2012 |
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