Dale Frank Nobody’s Sweetie

Why do Australians value artworks, but not artists? More Aussies go to galleries than the AFL each year, but you wouldn’t know it from our cultural cringe. We have a conflicted relationship with our under-respected creatives, and for the past 25 years Australia hasn’t had a national cultural policy strategy at all. We quietly love art, but seem to hate artists, labelling them “posers” or “bludgers” when they’re actually the workers worth $117 billion p/a to our economy, and the weavers of the “cultural fabric” underpinning our social cohesion. Culture is our shared understanding of who “we” are. Who makes art work?

Cultural work and the expression of artists and creatives is essential to a well-developed, free society. This film champions Australia’s artists. It advocates for an Australia in which artists are seen as a necessary and important part of our culture, the value of their labour is respected, and cultural work is understood as crucial to our nation’s social cohesion and creative ‘visioning’ to guide our future.

Short term: Increased awareness of Dale Frank and engagement with his work. Screenings will create opportunities for aligned advocates to promote exploration of and engagement with similar [visual] artists, and with public health topics like neurodiversity, autism, chronic pain, or end of life. Increased understanding of the relationships between creativity, business, intrinsic cultural value / wellbeing, and extrinsic monetary valuations.
Medium: increasing attendance at exhibitions by Dale Frank and other contemporary, conceptual and abstract artists. Screenings for arts & culture policymakers and funders in support of developing Australia’s next cultural strategy.
Long: Dale Frank’s story influences perceptions of Australian artists and the important role their work plays in articulating our evolving cultural identity. Increase uptake of arts education in regional Australia. Uphold the value of Dale Frank’s artworks, and personal contribution to Australian art.

Our impact producer, Felicity Blake, has existing connections with relevant organisations, educational institutions and art galleries developed over the past five years. Some of these relate to her time as impact producer for WHITELEY / cultural history researcher for FINDING THE ARCHIBALD (arts institutions and advocates), and impact producer for DYING TO LIVE (end of life; death literacy; chronic pain); other relationships have been developed as a result of Felicity’s personal advocacy for the labour of arts workers and her training & experience as a business advisor for creative professionals.

Specific campaign actions and tactics will need to be devised in partnership with sector advocates. The film is currently in production, so a “brains trust” consultation session will be convened and formal partnerships established as principal photography is completed. Advocates for arts and cultural work have spent the last decade trying to change the minds of political representatives and the funding structures they control; the recent election has changed the policymakers entirely, leading to new opportunities to drive massive participatory input into Australia’s first overarching cultural strategy since the Keating era. Dale Frank ARTIST! steps into this exciting inflection point.