Australian Musical Futures

The Australian Music Futures scheme began in 2008 with Australian Musical Futures: Towards 2020, a sector-wide summit that took place for a full day at Sydney Conservatorium. The title derived from the set of meetings organised by the then new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. They included a cultural summit but music sector people figured that it probably could not go very deeply into any particular aspect of culture or any particular art form. So it was decided to bring together one hundred of our musical best and brightest to do that job for music.

Towards 2020 made a large number of recommendations for action, most of which have been implemented or investigated further by the Music Council. Not everything could be followed through but the following were achieved:

• Establish a national Music in Communities Network (www.musicincommunities.org.au )

• Organise a national community music conference (September 24-25, 2010)

• Encourage provision of tertiary courses for community music workers (course established by Queensland Conservatorium)

• Build stronger links between community music and education (Sound Links research project with Queensland Conservatorium was a beginning )

• Construction of a music education portal (www.musiceducation.edu.au )

• Advocacy for early childhood music education (submissions to Commonwealth)

• Initiatives to persuade whole of government use of Australian music (advocacy, incomplete)

• Generate a large ARC Linkage Grant to build a statistical data base for the music sector (initiative just now underway, and to be led by QUT)

• Digital think tank on best practice for music organisations of all types (long session at 2009 MCA Assembly)

• Education provision for music industry professionals (planned portal)

• Address issues of Australian music content on radio (submissions concerning all sectors)

• The 2009 think tanks into digital distribution.

MCA doesn’t just talk!

Read more: Click here for the original introduction to the 2008 Australian Musical Futures: Towards 2020, the papers prepared for it and the list of recommendations.