Please don't cut ABC Arts programming
board@your.abc.net.au
To the ABC Board,
I never beg. But I’m begging you to reconsider the decision to cut ABC arts programming.
The media landscape in Australia has never looked so grim – there is so little quality, interesting, thoughtful or relevant content on most of the commercial/SBS bandwidth and the ABC makes that just a little brighter.
The arts division of ABC is such a core part of the ABC and as an artist I need it to continue. Its features, documentaries, mini-series and news support our art production and inform our audiences so that we’re not having to dumb down to Murdoch-reading standards.
When John Howard was fixing to scrap the ABC, it was the arts community who really got behind the cause – playing gigs, making works, organising articulate public argument and designing those beautiful “I <3 the ABC and I vote” stickers that harrangued the politicians.
Please. Don’t forsake Australia’s right to have intelligent, interesting and relevant content about beauty, creativity, innovation and collaboration. The encroachment of trite, mindless, commercially sullied content is already overwhelming and ABC Arts has been the last line of defence against a nation of imbeciles.
Kind Regards,
Lauren Brown
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lauren brown
http://sheseesred.com
http://sheseesred.blogspot.com
thinker-in-residence at CIA studios || http://facebook.com/CIAStudios
artist-in-resident at AURA project || http://auraprojectresidents.blogspot.com
electrofringe listener-in-resident || http://electrofringe.net
4 comments:
Damn right. I actually thought part of the ABC - like the BBC - mandate was to promote culture and arts, so by doing this, doesn't it breach one of its fundamental roles in Australian society?
This should never be about 'return of investment' in purely financial terms, and given the crimes and myopic and prejudiced attitudes that seem to be becoming ever more prevalent in Australian society, they need this sort of thing more than ever.
and here's what my mum wrote - bless her:
Dear Board Members,
As an avid watcher and supporter of ABC arts programs and informed documentaries that elevate knowledge and understanding to so many....I implore you to defend and righteously protect this, and oh so many more, discerning patron's sanity and joy. PLEASE? Don't cut arts funding......please don't go backwards and leave so many of us reduced to the drone of commercial piffery and ultimate death by cultural deprivation and art dehydration.....that's just unkind and our world seems already too full of unkindness. We only have one Aunty, and she's the only one we can turn to to fill our coffers and nurture us with cultural roast dinners.. I'm not one to beg....but here I am belying that with contrary evidence.
I remain your loyal ABC patron and will tie myself to the tracks in uproar to the bitter end .......if it has to come.
GB
rob, you're right. although i'm guessing that they're argument is not that there will be no arts programming, that it will be outsourced. but the privatisation of public intellect and services just doesn't work. it doesn't make people accountable and doesn't give people a sense of ownership about the content either.
God bless Mummy Lauren.
Outsourced has become a nice way of saying purely for profit and the thing is, that is the barrier to the creation of things that made the ABC as important as it once was to culture and the arts. Tragic.
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