Three Businessmen Who Brought Their Own Lunch: Batman, Swanston and Hoddle - One of the many great pieces of public art in Melbourne.
Creative Scotland’s ten year vision talks of Scotland being one of the top ten places in the world to visit for festivals. I was asked what the other 9 places might be? I’ve recently been to one of them. Melbourne, Australia.
I was attending the 5th World Summit on Arts and Culture where the key themes included the contribution of the arts to place and the arts and climate change. In 2006 I was the Programme Director for the 3rd World Summit. This time I was a speaker and participant along with 500 delegates from 80 countries.
At the summit I spoke about culture and digital technology and gave a presentation on the Inspiring Change Project in Scottish prisons. But equally as importantly, it gave me the opportunity to meet colleagues from around the world.
The Wheeler Centre Entrance
Melbourne may not look like Edinburgh but it is a striking cultural mirror of our capital in many ways. The city has its own International Festival and Melbourne Fringe, as well as a National Gallery, centre for the moving image, concert hall and a university with major cultural programmes.
There were also some impressive things that we could learn from…
The Wheeler Centre was set-up to promote Melbourne’s status as a UNESCO City of Literature. It hosts a poetry library and writers centre as well as a year round programme of events around literature and ideas.
The city has an extensive public art programme – temporary and permanent – that helps create modest landmarks and meeting places, as well as provide creative animation of Melbourne’s streets, public squares and corporate buildings. I also liked the coherent city dressing they use to celebrate their festivals.
It probably cost approximately £2,000 for me to attend the Melbourne summit but the benefits are significant. Promoting projects from Scotland, talking to venues about companies from Scotland, learning how other countries approached culture for the Commonwealth Games, discovering potential international partners & investors, and discussing the potential of bidding to host the Arts & Culture Summit in Edinburgh in 2017 – which could be worth millions in future cultural tourism to Scotland.
The Sun newspaper may have a cheap go at such trips but they involve serious work and we can’t expect to welcome the world in Scotland if we don’t occasionally make the effort to meet others abroad.
The challenges facing other nations include, budget cuts, no budgets in the first place, natural disasters, repressive regimes and Government interference.
On balance, I returned from Melbourne reflecting on the strengths of what we have in Scotland. There was great interest in the Creative Scotland model from across the world and we shouldn’t underestimate how fortunate we are to have such a progressive Government.
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