COOL.

That's inspiring. Perhaps change is coming...

That two sides of the pliticakl spectrum have joined voice- wonderful!Let's hope Glyn Davis and The University of Melbourne hear the call of the people and the back up from arts ministers of both sides. There is no loss of face in changing one's mind concerning the direction being taken for the school. The City of Moreland backed down on its plans to reduce its 8 lane outdoor pool to four and is lauded for listening to public opinion.
In a time when Melbourne University could do with some positive spin, a commitment to retaining training based education at the VCA(M) could only be a good thing
J

I just have a quick question:

Who is the Save the VCA organisation actually wanting to fund the VCA? I have heard completely different requests over the last week. Some have said they want vca to be taken from melb uni control and funded as an independent institution by the Australia Council (as NIDA is). Then others have said that the vca should remain a department of, and be funded by, melb uni but with the traditional course structure returned and maintained without the Melbourne model. Then kennet has come out today saying the state goverment should fund the vca.

I'm not having a go, I fully support the vca, but I'm just confused as to what the student body is requesting happen. Could anyone confirm?

Oh and also, does anyone have a figure for the total funding requirements for the vca? As in how much money the australia council would need to provide if they took over funding?

Gillian,

NIDA is not funded by the Australia Council. It is funded by the Australian Goverment through the Department of Environment,
Water, Heritage and the Arts. In 2008, this funding was $5,578,500. Total revenue for 2008 was $14,331,634. ($4,853,949 came from the Open and Corporate programs).

The profit for the financial year was $260,428 (2007: $362,049). The Open and Corporate Programs
provided a profit of $1,088,305 (2007: $983,458). Without these Programs NIDA would have incurred a loss of $827,877 (2007: $621,409).

Sarah

Thanks Sarah,

interesting to see those figures. Although they didn't answer either of my questions regarding vca.

Interesting too that there has been no response. I extremely doubt none of them saw the questions, given how many of them have been commenting recently. Perhaps they don't actually know what they're after...

Gillligan, I think that your confusion is because it depends who's speaking. A number of those who object have different ideas about how preserving the VCA ethos might be best brought about, but all agree that they want to preserve the intensity of practice-based training that is at the core of the VCA. SaveVCA is asking that it be funded by the Federal Government (like NIDA) - as Sarah pointed out, not by the Australia Council, but through the Arts Ministry. Naturally, a bunch of Victorian Arts Ministers would think that it ought to be a state affair, and it was Kennett (I think) who brought up the question of its institutional autonomy - I don't think that was one of Save VCA's briefs, since it could certainly be an autonomous part of Melbourne Uni. Though I might be wrong on that.

The Age is running very strongly on this, so kudos to them. An oped piece by Sharman Pretty today, which is very light on detail and strong on assertion, and a thundering editorial. Gosh!

Also, the published running costs are around $5 million a year, plus the question of a $1.5 million debt, which mainly accrues from the school losing its federal funding under the review of tertiary funding that cut out small institutions. And the rent, of course, which is still a source of puzzlement to me.

So is the rent on top of the $5 million in running costs?

The article by Sharman Pretty and the letter by a UniM academic in the Age today are just astounding - thanks Alison for pointing out the Pretty article which I'd missed in the online edition. Those writers are deluded in denying the reality which is that the Melbourne Model just doesn't fit vocational courses and vocationally driven people (which funnily is what the HECS model has been pushing us all towards for decades now) and the VCA runs vocational courses for people who have made sometimes quite challenging decisions to train in a profession that is not exactly lucrative. The two institutions just don't fit - Melb Uni never wanted the VCA and only accepted it because it wanted to affirm its claim on St Kilda Road. The best, the only solution is for the VCA to divorce from MU, for the State and Fed govs to cough up for both the running and the land (which Melb Uni will fight bitterly for), and for Melb Uni to go back to imploding in a cloud of dusty irrelevance, and for the VCA to return to what it does best - making art and artists.

Disclaimer- I studied at both Melb Uni and VCA - and find that even though I don't work directly in the arts these days (only indirectly), the training and skills I got at the VCA are what I call on much more regularly than my Melb Uni subjects

Alison, Do you know what Kristy Edmond's take on all this is? Why has she been so silent? Or should that read silenced?
J

I've no idea. As she was appointed under Andrea Hull as Head of Performing Arts, which merged three schools, I guess one should assume she is by no means hostile to the general idea of change, and certainly she's up for interdisciplinary actiyities. But whether she's behind what has transpired since is anybody's guess.

I'd suggest there will be a Kristy Edmunds interview in The Age shortly, where I'd expect her to be exceedingly diplomatic, and most likely a better spokesperson for curriculum change than Sharman Pretty.