The Broome Mix is useful to bear in mind when thinking on all things multicultural - cultural diversity. In Broome that's culture - a mix of Aboriginal, Asian and European.
One of the leading debates in Cultural Studies around the world deals with the issues of cultural difference or ethnicity in relation to concepts of a national culture.
If mainstream television is not our main source of accurate images, how do people gain access to programs which reflect our society in realistic and creative ways?
The ceramic work of Silvia Stansfield draws on the cultural legacy of South America. Discussion of the work of this artist with good colour photographs.
The Network links NESB, ethnic and arts organisations, sets up cross cultural and other training programs for artists, arts organisations and the media and lobbies governments and other funding bodies to reassess their policies and practices.
Looks at the 'National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia' launched by the Prime Minister in 1989 which included provision for the development of a plan for collecting institutions such as museums, art museums, libraries and archives to reflect Australia's cultural diversity in their activities and practices.
Above all we need new myths to suit the new Australian culture which is part of the Asia Pacific region. We can't live by Aboriginal myths alone, as some have suggested, in a land so changed by our coming. The unpacking of cultural baggage by writers of all cultural groups, old and new, has to continue until it gives rise to a myth which we all recognise as fitting the Australia to which we have contributed. Wrote David Malouf.
With the exception of some programming on SBS and the ABC, artists receive very little exposure on television. The limitations of television, the need to maintain a wide audience reach, the difficult question of what is 'good art' in a televisual sense, all may help to explain the absence of living artists from this, the most powerful of all media.