Join our campaign to win respect for our cultural workforce and communities

Join our campaign to win respect for our cultural workforce and communities

A new vision of leadership is needed to drive our cultural sectors forward in the 21st century.The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA), the union of Australia's cultural workforce, is calling for a new and comprehensive cultural agenda, effectively and sustainably funded.

Australia Needs A Comprehensive
Cultural Agenda

Over the past decade or so, we have seen the community value of arts and culture diminished.Falling investments, technological change, new business models and managerial ideology have caused wholesale work insecurity.This threatens all forms of cultural participation and the principle of arts, culture and civic action as a public good.A thriving civil society can only be sustained through cultural activity and social participation; and for that we need a strong, confident and respected workforce.Australians need a new and comprehensive cultural agenda, effectively and sustainably funded, to help build a better society.And we need to build community leadership and power to shape and deliver it.

Our Challenge

Over the past decade or so, we have seen the community value of arts and culture diminished.In this environment, it is little wonder that the majority of arts and cultural workers are impoverished, stuck on the treadmill of insecure and low-paying work.

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“Artistic and cultural activity is a way of expressing yourself. It doesn’t have to be drawing, dancing, playing music or painting. It can be anything. It can be conservation - we teach children to recycle all their milk bottle tops and make something out of it. It also enables diversity. It allows us to acknowledge and accept that we are different, but we are also the same.”— Claire, Indigenous Student Counsellor, Central QLD University

“I am a low-income earner, on a pension, and I have a hard time accessing anything. There is lots of stuff I’d like to go and see but I just can’t afford it. I love musical theatre, that's been the area I have worked most in, but I can’t access it at all at the moment. If you are in the lower end of the income stream, you’ve just got no chance.”—Ian, Dancer & Choreographer, WA

Our Plan

Australians need a new and comprehensive arts and cultural agenda, effectively and sustainably funded, to help build a better society. And we need to build community leadership and power to shape and deliver it.

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Let's Get Creative

The case for a comprehensive cultural agenda.Read the full strategy below.

• READ OUR STRATEGY

Get Involved

Whether your participation in cultural activity is as a creator, technician, arts worker, student, citizen or audience member, we invite you to join us in our campaign for a national cultural agenda.

• JOIN OUR CAMPAIGN

A Crisis in Participation

Over the past decade or so, we have seen the community value of arts and culture diminished.As access and availability decline, fewer Australian children are learning music, singing, acting, painting and doing other forms of cultural activity.In this environment, it is little wonder that the majority of cultural workers are impoverished, stuck on the treadmill of insecure and low-paying work.Only one-quarter of cultural workers are employees. For the other three-quarters, there are no minimum rates of pay; superannuation is almost non-existent; and payment for work is often late.During the COVID-19 crisis, hundreds and thousands of workers were forced out of the sector, neglected by workforce wage subsidies, and forced to rely on welfare and charity.This is a symptom of rampant marketisation and declining recognition of the public interest value of this work.It is not just a factor of reduced funding and disrupted business models, but of a failure to develop and maintain a cultural agenda that recognises the fundamental role of arts, media and culture in sustaining the health and wellbeing of our society.We need a new and comprehensive cultural agenda, effectively and sustainably funded, to help build a better society. And we need to build community leadership and power to shape and deliver it.

• READ OUR STRATEGY

Our Plan

As the union of Australia’s cultural workforce, MEAA’s history is one of organising and advocacy to improve the lives of workers, the industries they make and the society and economy they enable.Our Let’s Get Creative platform is a continuation of this work, our articulation of what is wrong, what needs to change, and a start on our plan to improve things.It aims to restore and build better jobs, create sustained sector investment and build dignity and respect for the workforce.The objective is to renew active participation in cultural and civic activity. There is ample research showing that participation and engagement in cultural activity is an intrinsic good and that it will generate the demand necessary to recognise, develop and sustain good jobs.Unconstrained by economic insecurity, workers in our cultural sectors will thrive and play a vital part in strengthening our civil society.There is a role for government to support both participation and employment in cultural and civic activity, but public funding is only one part of the solution.Australians need a new and comprehensive cultural agenda, effectively and sustainably funded, to help build a better society. And we need to build community leadership and power to shape and deliver it.It is only through the collective voice of our members and communities that we can begin to broker alternatives to Australia’s current approach.Whether your participation in cultural activity is as a creator, technician, arts worker, student, citizen or audience member, we invite you to join us in our campaign for a national cultural agenda.Let’s get creative.

• READ OUR STRATEGY

• JOIN OUR CAMPAIGN