Post: Manager Research
Name of Organisation: Arts Victoria
Length of service: Five years
Address: Private Bag 1, South Melbourne VIC 3121,Australia
Phone: 00 61 3 9954 5052
Fax: 00 61 3 9686 6186
Email: judy.morton@dpc.vic.gov.au
What does your organisation do?
Arts Victoria is a government agency providing support for arts and cultural development throughout the State of Victoria. Programmes include funding, forums, research and publications, and the oversight of Victoria?s major public cultural institutions.
What does your current job involve?
? Development and maintenance of databases to monitor Arts Victoria programmes and funded organisations.
? Research on cultural industry trends, including regular statistical publications.
? Investigation and measurement of economic and social impacts of the arts.
Who did you used to work for and what did you do?
? Policy Officer, Victoria Ministry for the Arts (previous incarnation of Arts Victoria),working on Australia?s first government cultural policy.
? Consultant to an independent inquiry into local government reform, investigating community consultation and neighbourhood organisation.
? Founding Executive Officer of arts and disability organisation, Arts Access.
What do you enjoy most about your present post?
The stimulation of working in partnership with talented people across a range of disciplines with the common aim of optimising arts development in Victoria.
What do you find most difficult in your present post?
Never having enough time to follow up all the interesting leads and contacts that arise from every research project.
What is your career ambition?
The development of a set of user-friendly research tools to enable small-to-medium arts organisations undertake their own studies and evaluations.
Who has influenced your career to date the most ? and why?
Professor Ronald Henderson for demonstrating the effectiveness of a combination of hard-edged intelligence, compassion and commitment in raising awareness and mobilising action on social issues.
If you could have done any job in the world, what would you like to have done?
To have been a brilliant mathematician and proven Format?s Last Theorem.
If you have three wishes for the future of the arts, what would they be?
? Financial sustainability that still allows risk taking.
? A world where creativity and diversity are recognised and rewarded.
? Greater involvement of the arts in enhancing new media ? in terms of both use and content.