The Australian Bureau of Statistics tells us that in musingplaces in 2003-04, Australians spent about $61 million on art gallery and museum fees and charges. The total income for art museums in 2007-08 was $396 million. Government funding provided $257.5 million of income. The remainder consisted of $19.6 million from admissions; $65.3 million from fundraising; and $53.6 million from other sources. Make of that what you will.
In a way, that was another time, and what is more, it is looking back to a time of presumed 'entitlement' for musingplaces. Arguably, besides relying upon ‘tax dollars’ musingplaces need to ‘learn to earn’. Indeed the Australian Museum in Sydney reports that it earns something in the order of 30% of its recurrent budget – but its trying to learn how to earn more. The mid 2000s was a time when institutions could, and did, argue that their institution were there for the public good. They could trot out the statistics to demonstrate it but the pendulum has swung the other way to the outermost stretch of its arc.
In small to larger towns and cities throughout Australia one way or another their Local Govts support a local art gallery and/or a museum. Typically, the funding will come from Local Govt's consolidated revenue, as a percentage typically, given that the amounts are typically modest. For Federal and State Govts, if these musingplaces are lucky, they might win State or Federal funding. If State or Federal funding is sought and won usually it would be for a one-off project or capital funding for infrastructure. If it's near election time success is more likely. It’s a time honored but dysfunctional process.
Typically in Local Govt areas there are separate levies for water, sewerage, waste management, sometimes ambulance and other times for some aspirational amenity like curbing & guttering. Cultural development usually runs a poor second or third or fourth in the ‘nice to have’ money bucket.
People pay Local Govt. rates because they are levied and they are obliged to pay them and because if they
do not, Councils have the power to confiscate their property or impose some other unavoidable penalty. When accountability becomes an issue it’s because the outcomes do not match the inputs. When people are paying for a service they believe they are
not receiving, or even think that they are not getting, there’ll be disquiet. That's what accountability is all about, and all things being equal, it gets resolved at election time -
otherwise the need to build better robots grows expdedentialy.
Openness and transparency is also to do with engagement and the marketing of service provision. If communities know what they are contributing towards the services they want, and they know by what means, they are more likely to become both engaged and cooperative. In the end the purpose of a community musingplace is largely to do with engaging with ‘the community’ towards making sense of the world and hopefully better sense – or any other random purpose an individual may be engaged with via a musingplace.
Rather than the typical levy/tax and forget method of fundraising it might be interesting to establish a model that allows rate and tax payers became ‘overt investors in musing’. For example they could say:
- Be levied their standard investment annually; and
- Annually each household/business paying the levy/rate could be eligible to be in the draw for say a $100K payout out of a $4million pool;
- As for the $100,000, well it would come out of the musingplace’s operating budget as a cost against the contributor’s inputs – rather investments – like the lighting bill – it would be the cost of the money.
This way the investment would carry the chance of three kinds of dividend
– social, cultural & fiscal. Such a dividend, it’d be a fiscal dividend to consider alongside the social and cultural dividends the institution was established to provide via the investment provided by the levy. Moreover, all the dividends together would be underpinning the musingplace's
Community of Ownership & Interest that in turn would be
'the crowd' that
Crowdfunding relies so heavily upon.
Yes the institution would probably need to generate the $100K of additional income from other sources. Then it would arguably be a case of "welcome to the real world" – and more importantly the world of entrepreneurship!
Clearly there is a gambling cum risk element in all this but that is as it is with entrepreneurship . In the end, you actually need to break few eggs in order to make an omelette.
However, it might be noted that the suggestion here would also allow investors (levy payers) to sell their ‘investment bond’ to almost anyone or give it to almost anyone – family members, lovers, et al. This would allow them to recover their original investment if needed recovering an unwelcomed investment – if that’s how they see it. If the investment is totally worthless why make it?
There is case to be put, that State and Local Govts. should be facilitating the funding of all regional musingplaces on the premise that their collections are the cultural property of 'the State' and by extension 'the Nation' – Federal funding being emergency funding and infrastructure based. The question that arises in places like Tasmania “out of which bucket of money”? It could be 'The Gambling Bucket' but its more likely to be an admix of various funding sources with Crowdfunding likely to be an increasingly important component.
The nudgelbah institute is advocating that musingplace be re-imagined and ideally undergo a root and branch revision in Tasmania given their contribution to cultural tourism – actual & potential – and community cultural development.
In a way the Sydney Opera House Lottery could be seen as being Crowdfuning in a kind of way. There are other lottery arts funding models too. It worked for the Sydney Opera House, why not in Tasmania? In fact its already working at MONA if you actually think about it.
IF cultural tourism, cultural development and the local outcomes that musingplaces can deliver –
directly & indirectly – are valued some serious consideration needs to be given to new funding paradigms for musingplaces.
Clearly the status quo, on the evidence, is hardly likely to be sustainable in the long-term. That is mostly because it has to do with the mysterious process of tickling money trees.
