Page 2859 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 17 August 2005
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brought a fascinating and stimulating array of Australia’s best new theatre to Canberra. It was an event that put Australian theatre firmly on the Canberra map and put Canberra on the Australian theatre map as well. I think that anyone who was interested in theatre and the arts would have found those couple of weeks of the national festival a really exciting time. Also growing up around that event was the engaging and broad-ranging Festival of Contemporary Arts which, despite a valiant attempt to go it alone, also has since folded.
I believe that these decisions have meant the loss of an opportunity to develop an arts practice and visibility of great significance for this city. When the Cultural Facilities Corporation, under which the Canberra Theatre Centre now operates, was set up there was some talk about how tying in the goals of the ACT’S arts strategy, ArtsCapital as it is now, would strengthen the theatre centre’s program. Given that the ACT government’s key arts advisory body is the ACT Cultural Council and given that the council’s advice is confidential, we cannot know of any dialogue that might exist on that matter.
I do not seek to be critical of the Canberra Theatre Center, nor of the ACT Cultural Council, but I would like to see a more open and robust approach to using the resources and programs of the Canberra Theatre Centre to assist in the cultural development of the city. The Canberra Theatre Centre is going to enjoy new facilities as the library and the new link are built on in the next year. Now might be a good moment to look at its role in providing a focus for Canberra’s cultural development, perhaps by adding a kind of cultural strategic plan—how about that?—which is not just about the Canberra Theatre Centre but about Canberra and performing arts more broadly.
The Canberra Theatre Centre has been an important focal point for the performing arts in Canberra and I am sure that it will continue to be. I would like to imagine, however, that it could be used a little more strategically for the whole of Canberra and that we will develop a Canberra strategic cultural plan.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Arts, Heritage and Indigenous Affairs) (5.26): I welcome the opportunity to speak to this motion in celebration of one of the city’s best-loved institutions, a place that has helped shape the cultural personality of the national capital for four decades.
As members have noted, the Canberra Theatre Centre has the distinction of being the country’s first government-initiated performing arts centre, proof that government support for the arts can have an enduring legacy. Forty years on, the special relationship between government and the arts continues through the Canberra Theatre Centre, through the government’s support for our many outstanding cultural and performing arts organisations, through expanded prizes such as the one for poetry through our public art programs, and through major new projects such as the Belconnen arts and cultural centre and the Canberra glassworks.
When the Canberra Theatre raised its curtain for the first time in 1965, Canberra had a population of just 90,000. Last financial year, the centre welcomed three times that many patrons through its doors, a reminder of the growth of our community but also a reminder that a life, to be lived fully and richly, must have a cultural dimension. You have only to cross the square outside the Assembly to know that nothing has remained static in the life of Canberra or the Canberra Theatre Centre.
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