If we ever needed evidence that it matters what you call something, and/or theorise about it, here we have it. You bet there’s been a lot of shonky stuff going on in vocational courses and you bet there’s been a shift towards ‘marketing’ these courses as ‘soft options’ to get their numbers up and get the required number of bums on seats.
Imagining ‘cultural production’ as being a lifestyle choice and analogous to ‘entertainment’ ultimately has its consequences. In this headline once romantic imaginings and ideologies are coming home to roost – “decorative” translating as meaningless, superfluous or useless being a case in point.
SO, course designers, cultural theorists and the education/training bureaucracy alike need to look to the here-and-now of the ‘cultural realities’ in which they operate somewhat more than they are currently. Yesterday is not today. The imperatives of yesterday no longer need to be met in the way they once were. Dilettantism has much to answer for as do the interpreters who listened to the dilettantes, the wanabez, the neverwazerz, et al.
Simon Birmingham and his band of merry advisors haven’t got everything wrong albeit that they risk doing so via being blighted by their self belief and the ‘received wisdom’ of the past – its too late to retract it now. A great many stuffups ahead it would seem.
If one has a chance to tell a dilettante that they’ve stuffed it up we must take it every time – even when it was in the past. Their imagined world set in the past, of the past, is likely cost the future way too much.
This MEGA BOARD is going to be interesting in so much as it will have so many dilettantes in the one room at once spending taxpayers money for government’s political imperatives rather than 'cultural' outcomes. The Americans call it "snowing them" and the "them" here is ever likely to be the cultural producers.
Cultural producers are a dangerous lot when empowered but when disempowered they can be equally dangerous. Mind you the 'never-wasers', 'might-have-beens' and the 'backroom-dilettantes' in the cultural institutions might now get the chance to float to the top much quicker in this environment.
On the face of it NSW, and perhaps Australia later on, is about to look back and seek to become more 'Menzian'. There's good and bad in everything but the last time I looked it was 2016 but there we go.
With a bucket of cash at their disposal this cabal of culture-vultures will be able dine well on the carcasses of NSW institutions with ‘the producers’ ever likely to provide the carrion. Watch out for the precedent this is likely to set!
Regards,
Ray
Ray Norman
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The lifestyle design enterprise and research network
PH: 03-6334 2176
EMAIL 1: raynorman7250@bigpond.com
40 Delamere Crescent Trevallyn TAS. 7250
“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.” Thomas Paine
“The standard you walk past is the standard you accept ” David Morrison
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