We are witnessing a cultural bloodbath in Australia that has been years in the making
“It’s a bit strange. I’ve been here 25 years, 10 of them in intensive care. This is like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Michelle Spence says.
“I’ve described it as like preparing for a war. There’s no doubt about it.”
Spence is the nurse unit manager of Royal Melbourne Hospital’s As any performer or comedian will tell you, timing is everything.
The cliché was never more painful than last Friday, when the Australia Council for the Arts handed down the results of its four year funding round for smaller cultural organisations.
The results were heartbreaking. Some of Australia’s most important and innovative arts organisations have lost their federal funding: the lifeline that they had counted on to try and ride out these extraordinary times. The list of organisations being “transitioned out” of Australia Council funding includes the Sydney Writers’ festival; many of the nation’s literary magazines, including Australian Book Review, Overland and the Sydney Review of Books, and a long string of theatre and dance companies, such as Sydney’s Australian Theatre for Young People, Adelaide’s Restless Dance Theatre, Perth’s Blue Room and Melbourne’s famous small theatre La Mama.intensive care unit, a 32-bed operation staffed by teams of highly-trained clinicians.
