Political Economy Of The Australian Arts Sector

Power, Governance, and Funding Pathways in the Cultural and Creative Industries

An Analytical Report

by

Christopher Daly

For CIM505.1 26T2

Student No. 1016106

Master’s of Creative Industries

SAE University College Australia

28 June 2026

Abstract

Utilising a political economy framework, this report investigates the Australian arts and cultural landscape, specifically focusing on the roles of Creative Australia, GLAM Peak, and the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) in addressing persistent market failure within the cultural and creative industries (CCI). The analysis considers these entities against a backdrop of digital disruption, platformisation, and the residual effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the report provides a practical examination of funding opportunities for a potential collaborative project with artist Jeremy Kay: an immersive, interactive installation destined for Byron Bay’s Haven Gallery.

1. Introduction

Australia's cultural and creative industries are, on paper, economically significant. The ABS estimated their value at over $99.6 billion in 2012-13 (Meeting of Cultural Ministers Statistics Working Group [MCM SWG], 2018, p. 5). Whilst that figure is real, it sits oddly alongside what actually happened to the sector during COVID-19. Pennington and Eltham (2021) documented 80,000 job losses and $24 billion in income wiped out across arts and entertainment, concluding that government policy had been 'insufficient in guaranteeing its long-term stability' (p. 5). The pandemic did not produce this fragility, but rather exposed it. This report is written from inside that tension, as a practising artist and the Operations Manager of Haven Gallery, Byron Bay. From this position, understanding how arts funding works is both a scholarly exercise and a professional necessity, with the final goal of producing art installations that entertain, provoke thought and positively contribute to Australian culture.

2. Statement of Objectives

This report intends to:

•  Apply a political economy framework to the structural conditions of the Australian arts sector.

•  Examine the problems Creative Australia, NAVA, and GLAM Peak are each intended to address.

•  Compare their governance models, accountability systems, and practical scope.

•  Situate these organisations within the wider context of platformisation and digital disruption.

•  Identify funding and coordinated pathways for a proposed installation at Haven Gallery.

3. Political Economy Framework

Political economy asks who controls what, and why. In the arts, this matters because cultural production is not the neutral outcome of talent matching market demand. As opposed to being a meritocracy, it is determined by government decisions, funding architectures, peak bodies, and, increasingly, platform corporations whose interests rarely align with those of artists or communities.

Hardy (2021) argues that critical political economy approaches to culture must keep pace with structural change, particularly the convergence of media and marketing and the rise of platform corporations as de facto cultural gatekeepers. A regional gallery promoting an exhibition now navigates Instagram's algorithm, platform-dependent ticketing systems like Humanitix, and social commerce dynamics that extract value from cultural producers in exchange for reach. Bhargava and Velasquez (2021) describe the ethical problem plainly: the attention-economy model 'strongly incentivises' platforms to prioritise engagement over anything else. Cultural institutions must therefore play the game dictated by the algorithm in order to get their message out there.

Nwaoboli (2023) argues that digital platforms have shifted from being distribution channels to structural conditions of cultural production itself, determining what gets made and who sees it. Poell, Nieborg and Duffy (2021) call this platformisation: the penetration of platform logic into creative industries, reshaping labour, creativity, and governance in ways that compound prevalent inequalities. For a regional gallery with a tight marketing budget and limited local press, platform dependency is merely a reality of the post-modern economic environment.

The CCI has a further problem at the market level: as MCM SWG (2018, p. 7) puts it, these industries are 'complex to define and the economic value remains difficult to measure.' Not all private markets can have the financial backing that, for example MONA (Manning, 2025), allows the production of outspoken, experimental community arts. This creates a dependency on public funding, leaving the sector exposed whenever government priorities shift. Loots et al. (2022) identify a new funding paradigm emerging in response, one that 'steps away from a clear demarcation between public and private in terms of interests and financing modes' (p. 226), incorporating crowdfunding, tokenised assets, and digital patronage alongside traditional grants. Vlassis (2021) shows how COVID-19 accelerated the underlying pressure, concentrating power in global streaming services platforms while weakening independent local producers. Bakhshi and Cunningham (2016) had already warned that cultural policy risked being subsumed by an economic development agenda; that risk has grown sharper as platform metrics become the dominant measure of cultural standing. McCrindle (2025) grounds all of this in Australian consumer data: cash transactions fell from 69% in 2007 to 13% in 2022, and 74% of Gen Z and Millennials browse and purchase via social media. These are the conditions in which the arts funding environment now has to operate.

4. The Problem These Organisations Seek to Solve

Loots et al. (2022) describe CCI markets as characterised by 'suboptimal resource allocation, uncertain demand behaviour, and market failure' (p. 206). Creative workers face labour conditions that are 'notoriously competitive and poorly paid' (p. 212), and creative firms struggle to access external finance because their outputs cannot be validated through patents or prototypes. Pennington and Eltham (2021) put the scale of the problem in blunt terms: Australia's arts and entertainment sector employs over 350,000 people, more than aviation and coal mining combined, yet the policy support it receives matches neither its economic contribution nor its structural vulnerabilities.

What that means at the level of a single gallery is concrete. Producing technology-intensive work requires capital that ticket sales and commissions cannot cover. Without structural support, ambitious programming is available only to artists affiliated with major public institutions. The exclusion of regional galleries is not an accident of geography, but is what happens when markets systematically undervalue public goods. Creative Australia, NAVA, and GLAM Peak each represent a different response to that structural failure.

5. Creative Australia

5.1 Structure and Governance

Creative Australia was established under the Creative Australia Act 2023 and is a statutory authority accountable to Parliament through the Minister for the Arts, but insulated, in principle, from direct ministerial direction over individual funding decisions. That insulation has a history worth knowing. In 2015, the then Minister redirected $105 million from the Australia Council to a fund under direct ministerial control. The sector response was significant, the reversal eventually followed, but the incident illustrated how contingent arm's-length independence actually is on political will.

The 2023 restructure introduced a First Nations Board, with funding decisions for First Nations arts made by First Nations peoples. Music Australia and Writing Australia sit within the structure as sub-sector bodies. Radbourne (2023) argues that effective arts governance requires holding artistic vision and institutional accountability simultaneously; Creative Australia's architecture is a structural attempt to do so across a sector too varied for any single model to satisfy.

5.2 Funding Programs

The most relevant stream for independent galleries is the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy (VACS), a joint Commonwealth and state initiative covering both project and operational funding. Project Grants under the Visual Arts category fund new work development, production costs, artist fees, and audience engagement. These are exactly the line items that an immersive installation proposal would need to state.

The work of Professor Gavin Sade at QUT offers a useful reference point for understanding the kind of practice this stream can support, having won a $49942 grant in November 2025 (Creative Australia., 2026) Sade is a practitioner in interactive computational media whose paper 'Aesthetics of urban media facades' (2014) develops a framework for thinking about ambient, participatory installations in public space, drawing on theories of computational aesthetics and urban environment. His practice spans interactive media installation exhibited nationally and internationally, and his scholarship delivers a theoretical vocabulary for situating technology-responsive, immersive work within a wider tradition of media art practice. A proposed installation exploring perception, the body, and digital mediation would sit within that lineage, and framing it in those terms strengthens its legibility to peer assessors with backgrounds in media arts and experimental practice.

6. NAVA

NAVA is the peak body for the visual arts, craft, and design sector. It is a membership organisation governed by a Board elected by its members, with separate Artist and Organisation Representative categories elected in each state. Where Creative Australia answers to Parliament, NAVA answers to practitioners: it can critique government policy and advocate for sector interests in ways a statutory body cannot.

Its most significant instrument is the Code of Practice for the Professional Australian Visual Arts, Craft and Design Sector, which sets standards for artist payments, exhibition fees, commission splits, and reproduction rights. Bakhshi and Cunningham (2016) argue that cultural policy works best when it supports the conditions of production rather than just funding individual projects. The Code is exactly that kind of instrument: it does not fund artworks, but shapes the professional environment in which funded artworks get made.

For an artist, NAVA membership provides access to legal templates and exhibition contracts that reduce the information asymmetries that Loots et al. (2022) identify as persistent barriers to artists' income. For a gallery operations manager, demonstrating NAVA compliance signals to grant assessors and visiting artists that the institution operates to recognised professional standards. In the context of a grant application, that is both an ethical and a practical position.

7. GLAM Peak

GLAM Peak is a voluntary coalition of twenty-one peak bodies representing galleries, libraries, archives, and museums; it acts by consensus, with no chief executive and no hierarchical structure. The model gives it breadth: twenty-one organisations speaking together can put arguments to Cultural Ministers that individual bodies cannot. It also limits it: consensus takes time, and positions can be softened in the process of building agreement.

For Haven Gallery, GLAM Peak's value lies primarily in strategic positioning. Its advocacy around equitable digital infrastructure for regional cultural institutions and the public value of participatory programming provides policy language that strengthens grant applications beyond what the application itself can claim. Vlassis (2021) shows how COVID-19 accelerated platform concentration in the cultural sector, benefiting large streaming services at the expense of local and independent producers. GLAM Peak's advocacy for regional equity in cultural funding is a structural counter to that dynamic. For a gallery proposing technology-intensive work outside a major city, framing that proposal within GLAM Peak's policy language makes the case legible to a wider set of decision-makers.

8. Comparative Analysis

Creative Australia, NAVA, and GLAM Peak hold different kinds of power and answer to different constituencies. Understanding those differences is more useful than treating them as interchangeable funding sources.

Creative Australia holds the most direct financial power and the most constrained accountability structure. Its arm's-length independence from ministerial direction is real but, as 2015 demonstrated, conditional. NAVA holds no financial power but considerable normative authority through the Code of Practice, which shapes the professional conditions under which public funding operates. GLAM Peak's power lies in amplification: it can put sector-wide arguments to the government that individual organisations cannot make on their own.

Hardy (2021) claims that understanding governance is essential to understanding how institutional arrangements determine cultural practice. Creative Australia tends toward procedural caution because it is accountable to Parliament. NAVA is more willing to take strong advocacy positions because it is accountable outward to practitioners. GLAM Peak must build consensus before it can act, which makes it broad-based but sometimes slow.

Loots et al. (2022) observe that innovation in CCI financing has been 'more the result of new modalities (i.e., technology-driven) than of fundamental shifts in thoughts about how the cultural economy could be approached' (p. 215), which applies to all three organisations. Creative Australia has adapted its programs but remains committed to the grant model. NAVA has begun engaging with NFT regulation and digital art sales, but its core instrument predates the platform era. GLAM Peak advocates for digital infrastructure without yet fully addressing the structural power of platform corporations over cultural distribution. The new funding paradigm that Loots et al. describe is emerging alongside these organisations, not yet within them.

9. Application: Haven Gallery, Byron Bay

9.1 Context

Haven Gallery operates in Byron Bay, a regional centre defined by tourism, independent creative practice, environmental matters, and a significant Indigenous cultural presence. There is a genuine local appetite for experiential, ambitious programming; but there are also real organisational constraints: distance from major funding centres, a seasonal visitor economy, and limited philanthropic infrastructure. Technology-intensive installations address the first condition directly. An installation that engages with the body and digital perception draws destination visitors, creates social media documentation that extends a regional gallery's national profile, and positions the space as a site of serious contemporary practice rather than a regional outpost of it.

The challenge is making that case legible to grant assessors who may not share the same starting assumptions about what regional venues can produce. Poell, Nieborg and Duffy (2021) show that platformisation reshapes not only distribution but the practices of creativity and governance at an institutional level. A gallery that can articulate those dynamics, rather than simply citing geography as a constraint, is making a more sophisticated argument.

9.2 My Position

My dualistic role as an artist and operations manager is the foundation of the application, not a complication. As an artist, I have a direct stake in the creative outcome; and as operations manager, I bring institutional capacity and the organisational credibility that comes from running an active gallery space. Grant assessors evaluate artistic ambition and the demonstrated capacity to deliver. The convergence of those two things in one applicant is an asset, but only when it is clearly articulated. Radbourne (2023) notes that effective arts administration requires holding artistic insight and institutional accountability at once. 

9.3 A Potential Installation

A potential interactive and immersive installation at Haven Gallery might take technology, perception, and the body as its territory: what it means to be physically present within a world increasingly mediated by digital systems, and what happens to sensory experience when those systems become the environment rather than the interface. This thematic space is well-suited to Byron Bay, a place where the relationship between embodied presence and digital life is felt acutely and often discussed explicitly.

Such an installation might take the form of a responsive environment that visitors both move through and shape, in which the work changes with bodily presence, movement, or choice, and in which the boundary between audience and artwork remains unstable throughout. It would likely involve sound, light, and projection alongside interactive systems and sensors, giving participants genuine agency within the space. The work of Gavin Sade (2014) is relevant here: his framework for ambient media installations emphasises how computational responsiveness and urban aesthetics can be brought together to create spaces that are simultaneously public and intimate, legible and open-ended. A gallery installation working at that intersection, responsive to bodies rather than facades, could productively extend that concept into a more intimate spatial context.

A collaboration with local artist Jeremy Kay would bring complementary creative and technical capabilities to this. A co-authorship model, where both conceptual development and production are shared, also strengthens a grant application by demonstrating the kind of sector collaboration that peer-reviewed arts funding values. The intended audience would span local communities in Byron Bay and national visitors, with documentation strategies designed to extend the work's reach beyond the physical exhibition period.

9.4 Funding Strategy

The primary pathway is a Creative Australia Project Grant. To meet assessment criteria, the application would need to address four things directly. First, artistic merit: a specific conceptual premise, co-authored with collaborator Jeremy Kay, making the case for why this thematic territory matters now rather than gesturing at general interest. Second, audience development: a concrete plan for reaching local and national audiences, including participatory programming and documentation that extends reach without deepening platform dependency. Third, sector development: how the project builds regional capacity through NAVA-rated artist fees, collaborative production, and documentation that contributes to sector knowledge of immersive practice in non-metropolitan contexts. Fourth, feasibility: a detailed budget, a realistic timeline, and evidence that the gallery can manage a technically complex project. NAVA membership and Code compliance act as relevant signals here.

Alongside Creative Australia, Create NSW Regional Arts Development funding directly addresses geographic equity arguments and can complement federal project funding. Supplementary crowdfunding, drawing on Byron Bay's tourism profile and the gallery's existing audience, serves as both a revenue stream and an audience-development tool. GLAM Peak alignment provides the policy language through which the installation's public value becomes legible to decision-makers across the cultural portfolio.

10. Conclusions

Creative Australia, NAVA, and GLAM Peak are not three versions of the same thing. They hold different kinds of power, answer to different constituencies, and address the structural problem of arts funding from different angles. Using them well requires understanding those differences rather than treating each as an interchangeable resource.

The conditions they operate in have shifted considerably: platformisation has concentrated power in ways that disadvantage independent operators (Poell, Nieborg & Duffy, 2021). COVID-19 accelerated that process (Vlassis, 2021) and Australian arts workers felt the consequences directly (Pennington & Eltham, 2021). Hardy (2021) argues that critical political economy analysis has to keep pace with these changes; the organisations examined here are adapting but not quickly enough, and the gap between the new funding paradigm described by Loots et al. (2022) and the existing institutional apparatus is real.

A potential installation at Haven Gallery exploring technology, perception, and the body, developed with Jeremy Kay, sits well within the demonstrated scope of what Creative Australia funds and what the wider sector currently needs. The Sade (2014) framework for ambient and responsive media environments provides scholarly grounding for the work's conceptual ambitions. NAVA membership provides the professional infrastructure for an ethical collaboration. GLAM Peak's advocacy connects the proposal to a policy argument about regional cultural infrastructure that reaches beyond the arts portfolio. None of this resolves the structural conditions described in this report, but reading those conditions clearly, and positioning practice within them deliberately, is where the work begins.

11. Glossary

Arm's-length principle: The governance principle by which a funding body makes decisions independent of direct government instruction, protecting artistic freedom from political interference.

Attention economy: An economic model in which user attention is the primary commodity sold to advertisers. Bhargava and Velasquez (2021) argue this creates structural incentives for platforms to prioritise engagement over user wellbeing.

CCI (Cultural and Creative Industries): Industries requiring creativity as a key production input: visual arts, performing arts, music, film, gaming, design, publishing, and cultural heritage.

GLAM: Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums: the collective term for cultural memory and heritage institutions.

Market failure: A condition where the private market allocates goods inefficiently because producers cannot capture the full social value of their output. Common in experimental arts practice and cultural heritage.

NAVA: National Association for the Visual Arts: the peak membership body for the visual arts, craft, and design sector in Australia.

Platformisation: The penetration of platform logic into cultural industries, reshaping conditions of production, distribution, and labour (Poell, Nieborg & Duffy, 2021).

Political economy: An analytical framework examining how power shapes the distribution of resources between social actors.

Statutory authority: A government body established by legislation, accountable to Parliament but operating with some degree of independence from direct ministerial direction.

VACS (Visual Arts and Craft Strategy): A joint Commonwealth-state funding initiative administered through Creative Australia, providing project and operational support to the visual arts and craft sector.

12. Reference List

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2014). Australian National Accounts: Cultural and Creative Activity Satellite Accounts, Experimental 2008-09 (Cat. No. 5271.0). ABS.

Awarded grants. (2026). Creative Australia. https://creative.gov.au/investments-opportunities/awarded-grants

Bakhshi, H., & Cunningham, S. (2016). Cultural policy in the time of the creative industries. NESTA.

Bhargava, V. R., & Velasquez, M. (2021). Ethics of the attention economy: The problem of social media addiction. Business Ethics Quarterly, 31(3), 321-359. https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2020.32

Creative Australia. (2023). About Creative Australia. https://creative.gov.au/about/

GLAM Peak. (2023). About GLAM Peak. https://glampeakaustralia.org/about/

Hardy, J. (2021). Meeting the challenges of media and marketing convergence: Revising critical political economy approaches. In P. McDonald (Ed.), The Routledge companion to media industries (pp. 55-65). Routledge.

Loots, E., Betzler, D., Bille, T., Borowiecki, K. J., & Lee, B. (2022). New forms of finance and funding in the cultural and creative industries: Introduction to the special issue. Journal of Cultural Economics, 46, 205-230. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-022-09450-x

Manning, P. (2025, November 14). Mona has lost $408 million since it opened in Tasmania but founder David Walsh doesn’t mind. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-15/mona-founder-david-walsh-on-future-of-tasmanian-museum/105982838

McCrindle Research. (2025). The consumer landscape then and now: 20 years of change 2005-2025. McCrindle. https://mccrindle.com.au

Meeting of Cultural Ministers Statistics Working Group. (2018). Measuring the economic value of cultural and creative industries. Commonwealth of Australia.

National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA). (2023). Code of practice for the professional Australian visual arts, craft and design sector (5th ed.). NAVA. https://visualarts.net.au/code-of-practice/

Nwaoboli, E. P. (2023). An appraisal of the political economy of the new media. International Journal of Arts, Humanities and Management Studies, 9(1), 38-47.

Pennington, A., & Eltham, B. (2021). Creativity in crisis: Rebooting Australia's arts and entertainment sector after COVID. The Australia Institute / Centre for Future Work.

Poell, T., Nieborg, D. B., & Duffy, B. E. (2021). Platforms and cultural production. Polity Press.

Radbourne, J. (2023). Arts management: A practical guide. Routledge.

Sade, G. (2014). Aesthetics of urban media facades. Proceedings of the 2nd Media Architecture Biennale Conference: World Cities, 59-68. https://doi.org/10.1145/2682884.2682887

van Haaften-Schick, L., & Whitaker, A. (2022). From the artist's contract to the blockchain ledger: New forms of artists' funding using equity and resale royalties. Journal of Cultural Economics, 46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-022-09445-8

Vlassis, A. (2021). Global online platforms, COVID-19, and culture: The global pandemic, an accelerator towards which direction? Media, Culture & Society, 43(5), 957-969. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443721994537