Arts and culture for the enjoyment of all

Art and culture are a terrain of class struggle, not a neutral marketplace of ideas. Who gets to make art, whose stories get told, and which institutions receive public money are all shaped by class power, from gallery boards stacked with corporate donors to a media landscape owned by billionaires. Victorian Socialists believe art should serve working-class life and progressive politics, not the profit motive or the interests of the ruling class. Everyone should have the opportunity to make and experience art, not just those who can afford lessons, tickets and creative spaces to work. The same principle applies to sport and other shared cultural institutions that belong to the community, not to whichever broadcaster can pay the most to lock it away.

What we think

1. Art and culture should be widely available and not restricted to those who can pay for access.
2. Everyone has the right to develop and exercise their creativity and should be supported to do so.
3. Public funding should support working-class and progressive art, not reactionary politics or ruling-class propaganda. Victorian Socialists oppose censorship of proletarian, progressive and dissenting culture, while opposing public funding for reactionary content.
4. Public arts funding should be generous, widely distributed and determined by artists and communities not by governments seeking to promote particular political messages, or by commercial interests seeking a financial return.

We’ll fight to

1. Create a Victorian Artists Fund to provide a stipend of $1,500 per month to artists, writers, performers and others who produce cultural works.
2. Increase funding and grants for emerging artists, writers and performers. Simplify grant applications, centralise information about available grants and employ grants application officers to help people apply.
3. Protect artists’ livelihoods from generative AI by requiring consent, credit and payment for any use of an artist’s work to train AI models, and opposing the use of generative AI to replace human creative labour in publicly funded work.
4. Expand arts and performance programs in schools.
5. Create publicly-funded art education programs for adults.
6. Fund artist-run venues, galleries and other spaces.
7. Create low-rent or no-rent studios and working spaces for artists and performers in appropriate unused or under-used buildings.
8. Strengthen planning protections for live music venues against noise complaints or developers.
9. Increase funding for public and community cultural institutions, facilities and programs, including museums, galleries, theatres, community radio, television, film and festivals.
10. Support local pubs as community ’Third Places’: guarantee every community has access to a pub, including through state ownership; support pubs as live music and cultural venues; require cheap or subsidised meals; and use incentives and tax settings to shift pubs away from reliance on poker machines and alcohol sales toward live music, social sport, community gatherings and other low-cost social activities.
11. Abolish the corporate governance boards imposed on Victoria’s public arts institutions since the Kennett government, bringing them back under direct departmental control, and cap the salaries of institutional leaders in line with public sector pay.
12. Remove all ideological criteria for accessing public funding: the state has no place in determining the content of art and culture.
13. Oppose state and institutional attempts to defund, cancel or silence Palestinian and First Nations artists.
14. Fund working-class and independent journals, presses and media through a dedicated public grants stream.
15. Organise and fund progressive cultural festivals celebrating working-class history, culture and struggle.
16. Extend State Library Victoria’s opening hours to 24/7, and fund local libraries to remain safe, welcoming spaces for people experiencing homelessness rather than restricting their access.
17. Require that all major arts events — concerts, theatre, ballet productions — set aside 20 percent of tickets at very low cost.
18. Restore free entry to the MCG after three-quarter-time, and advocate for the federal government to strengthen anti-siphoning rules so that AFL and other major sporting broadcasts remain free-to-air rather than locked behind subscription services like Foxtel and Kayo.