Ross Hart (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to express the heartfelt pleasure that I had last month in taking part in the launch of what has become an annual event in my electorate of Bass—the Junction Arts Festival. Junction, as it is warmly referred to locally, began as part of a Regional Arts Australia national conference in 2010, brought to Tasmania by the then state minister for the arts, Michelle O'Byrne, who is also a former federal member for Bass. Junction was primarily funded by the state government until 2012, at which point it became an independent, non-profit arts organisation supported extensively by the local community.

Situated in and around Launceston in public and private spaces throughout the community, this annual five-day event is a mix of performance and visual art. The festival revenue is generated through sponsorship and government funding, with a particular focus on free audience experiences. Junction's focus on free audience experiences and events, with only a smattering of shows that are ticketed whilst being kept as cheap as possible, is designed to maximise youth participation. Accessibility to the arts has been identified as a key driver for social cohesion in communities like Bass, facilitating retention of young people in our community.

At all stages Junction encourages people to be as involved as possible. The social impacts of participation in the arts include positive self-esteem, community pride, social cohesion, educational attainment, job readiness and active citizenship. Of critical importance to me is that I have been told that events like Junction can, in many regional communities, provide the spark which engages a young person in the arts or creative industries. Now it is in its sixth year, festival creative director Greg Clarke has again placed the emphasis on involving everyone in the action, with free and ticketed events happening throughout the festival. A festival of participation is one of the important themes of Junction, and much of the artwork is immersive, exploratory and interactive. The team works hard to get local people in to take ownership through discovery and participation.

Events like this do not just happen. The vast majority of non-profit arts organisations in Bass rely on government funding for survival. Junction demonstrates how important it is to continue to invest in the arts, and how important it can be to regional communities such as Launceston and the surrounding areas that have considerable disadvantage and many barriers to participation. The contrast could not be starker between the investment that was made by the former Labor government and the current government. Now we have a government dictating to the arts community as to what arts courses can be taken on the basis that some artistic endeavours are too esoteric to lead to employment. The arts and creative communities need to be concerned and vigilant about this government which seeks to impose upon the creative arts at the higher education stage some sort of restriction based on the worth of the course. (Time expired)