WHAT FUTURE FOR THE ARTS IN A POST-PANDEMIC WORLD?

What Future for the Arts in a post-Pandemic World? 

Australia’s leading journal for the performing arts has defied two years of disruption – and an  apparent hostility towards the arts – to launch a newly expanded series under a new editor, and a new annual volume of essays on how the arts can shape our future by bringing the creative  imagination and economics together.  

This first issue of the New Platform Papers – authored by philosopher Richard Bronk,  economist John Quiggin, satirist Jonathan Biggins, Pub Choir director Astrid Jorgensen and others  – draws on a Convention of former Platform Paper authors hosted last July by Currency House  and the University of Sydney.  

The Authors Convention and its concluding publication in December will become an annual event.  

This volume also includes the final essay in the original series, No.63, by its founder and patron  Katharine Brisbane. On the Lessons of History looks back over two decades to review outcomes  envisaged by 62 past Papers since 2004, and asks why the arts and humanities have become so  marginalised in government planning.  

“The times demand a radical change in our way of thinking, particularly about what the  economy and creativity mean in a plan for national recovery,” says the new NPP General  Editor, Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts at Griffith University.  

What Future for the Arts in a post-Pandemic World? demands we take up the opportunity  for social and cultural transformation that lies beyond the COVID pandemic.” 

Currency House also announces a major increase in fees to the writers of its two annual NPPs, at  $14,250 for each 15,000-word essay. Proposals for the July 2022 issue are now invited.  Following the retirement of Katharine Brisbane in 2018, the new Director of Currency House is Dr  Harriet Parsons, her daughter.  

“Both Harriet and I are concerned with the connections between art forms and the bigger  policy picture in which arts and culture are immersed – an enlarged perspective perfectly  expressed in the vision, lateral thinking, and wit and whimsy of the contributions to this our  first New Platform Paper,” says Meyrick.  

“Rethinking the Papers, making the series anew, is essential as artists and companies face the  digital, social, financial, ethical and personal challenges of the post-pandemic world.”  

Richard Bronk is a leading academic and author, best known for The Romantic Economist: Imagination  in Economics; John Quiggin is Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland; actor and  director Jonathan Biggins is well known as a satirist; and Astrid Jorgenson is founding director of  the Pub Choir and, during lockdown, the online Couch Choir.  

New Platform Paper Vol. 1 in shops and on sale ($32) from December 1  at https://www.currency.com.au/ (click Currency House Callout in menu)