Arts Front Compact

Arts Front Compact + 2030 Action Plan

Arts Front Compact and the first stage of the 2030 Action Plan will be launched in 2021.

The Compact is a distillation of the ideas, principles and priorities identified through the Arts Front Visioning into a shared statement on the future of arts and culture in Australia in 2030. It will be an agreement grounded on international human rights that the whole arts sector is invited to help shape it. The Compact will provide a platform for collective action on priorities determined by the sector.

• First Peoples First
• artist-centred / artist-led
• local action / global connections

As the result of extensive national consultations with artists, communities, educationalists, health workers and our partners, the Compact will set out our shared vision and guiding principles, along with an initial suite of actions. It is part of a repositioning of the arts from the margins to centre stage, and is aimed at sparking a new era of consciousness, connectedness and collective action.

The Compact looks beyond the national realm to directly connect local actions with an emerging globalism. The Compact is derived from, and aligned with key international human rights agreements and conventions. This starts with the Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, the Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expression and extends to include a host of agreements and conventions (both ratified and in development) relating to areas including women, accessibility, children and young people, education, technology, LGBTIQ+, health, climate and the environment.

Compact Consultation Workshops

With the advent of COVID-19, Arts Front’s program of artist-led workshops and future focused conversations in 2020 shifted to a fully online format. The Little Lunch Project delivered a program of over 50 accessible, livestreamed sessions covering a huge range of topics and priorities. Some of the specialist events include:

• Field Trip Symposium
• Artist* Led Economy Symposium
• Festival… the impact, current approaches and planning for a post COVID future

Arts Front is supporting members to organise online events as opportunities arise.

As well as contributing to the Compact draft, participants in each of these events is helping identify the actions for the arts sector to undertake.