WHEN the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra played in Milan in February, it was,
apparently, doing more than showing an audience interested in classical music what
Australian musicians can do. It was engaging in what's called public diplomacy, supporting
government and private business efforts to win friends and influence people.
Part of a City of Melbourne marketing push into Italy, called Melbourne a Milano, the
orchestra's visit "provided the consulate-general with very high-level access into the city of
Milan that they were not able to get by just struggling through the normal diplomatic
channels", according to Jane Sharwood, manager of the city's international marketing arm,
Melbourne International.
Sharwood's remarks were contained in Hansard's report of the Senate Inquiry into the
Nature and Conduct of Public Diplomacy. Dozens of arts organisations - including the
Australia Council, Asialink, Museums Australia, the Australian Film Commission and the
Australian Major Performing Arts Group - have submitted reports to the inquiry, which has
held follow-up hearings in the past couple of weeks in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.
Karilyn Brown, executive director of market development at the Australia Council, says the
inquiry came as a surprise to arts organisations, unlike the concurrent inquiry into
indigenous art, which is examining issues that have caused concern for years.
But public diplomacy? For many cultural organisations, it was a matter of: Is that what we
do? In the US, where the concept is well-entrenched, there is still a debate about whether
the term is simply a euphemism for propaganda that is true (as distinct from the untrue
kind disseminated by other countries).
The phrase was reported widely in January 2005, when George W. Bush said the US
needed to improve its public diplomacy efforts in Iraq, designating the task to Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice.
He wasn't talking about touring dance companies but about making Muslims in, say,
Indonesia aware that the American soldiers were in Iraq "not to fight but to provide help
and comfort".
Russell Trood, a Liberal Party senator from Brisbane, is part of the committee assessing
submissions for the Senate report, due to be delivered in July. He says the term,
increasingly familiar in foreign affairs circles, describes "efforts to try to influence foreign
publics to think favourably, to form favourable images" of a country. The arts fulfil an
important role in that image creation.
"One of the things we've discovered is there's a lot of activity but not yet a lot of coordination,"
Trood says.
The rhetoric is unlikely to develop the hard numerical edge required by economic
rationalists: there is already a swing away from describing the dollar value of arts exports
towards analysing the role of culture in promoting national image, values and identity. The
"soft power" wielded by image-making, is "incremental, subtle and long-term", according to
the submission to the Senate made by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The Images of Australia branch of DFAT was established in 1999 to co-ordinate the
department's public affairs and cultural relations activities.
Cultural projects, according to DFAT's website, provide a "neutral platform for projecting
an image of Australia and generating a better understanding of our values".
The evolution of government linking of culture and export markets has led to the abolition
of the cultural attache.
In select embassies, such as Paris and Washington, the attache's job was to provide
information about, and opportunities for, Australian artists, an apparently enormous task
that seems to have come down to providing an interesting guest list for embassy
functions. Such functions do have their role; Alexander Downer has said he introduced
Nicole Kidman to Keith Urban at one such cultural do.
But, in this postmodern era, the stakes have become much higher than diplomatic
networking. Politicians are coming to believe that soft power is as important as the usual
bilateral economic and political negotiations that go on at government-to-government
level. Cultural attaches may be a thing of the past, but cultural diplomacy is so important
that DFAT identifies 87 overseas posts that have at least partial responsibility in that area.
According to its submission, DFAT has 229 staff "dedicated to PD work".
Trood says that the inquiry is not aimed at getting artists to "march out there in Australia's
interests".
"The arts shouldn't be about the national interest. You don't want to commandeer the arts
for the purpose of propaganda," he says. "The arts already exist as a reflection of
Australian society, of our creativity. Most countries are realising it can serve to raise their
profile and to cause people to take greater notice."
Trood was an associate professor in international relations at Griffith University before
entering politics and also served on the advisory committee for the Asia-Pacific Triennial
of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery during the 1990s.
While not wanting to pre-empt the results of the inquiry, he says the Senate committee
has been impressed by the amount of "furious activity" happening overseas.
The question is how best to harness it to public diplomacy objectives.
The Australia Council doesn't usually describe its goals or functions in terms of public or
cultural diplomacy. It has learned to use the term interchangeably with market
development, the focus of much of the council's overseas activity for years. The Australia
Council wants to see more arts market development officers based in embassies
overseas. In the past few years, project officers have been posted to Japan, Britain and
Germany.
Brown singles out the Berlin appointment, the only one that has ongoing funding, as an
example of how the council would like to develop its marketing capacity.
Addressing one of the inquiry's four terms of reference - the "need and opportunities for
expanding levels of funding for Australia's public diplomacy programs" - the Australia
Council recommends significantly increasing funding to DFAT's Images of Australia
branch. But Brown cautions against thinking in terms of the British Council or the Goethe
Institute, which teach language as well as culture in target countries.
The British Council has set up an office in China in the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing
Olympics, something Australia would not be in a position to do, Brown says.
"We have to be smarter, leaner and more flexible," she says.
"The Australia Council's focus is very much on market development opportunities and we
engage primarily through partnerships, where there are shared objectives."
Trood says people in the arts are doing pretty well at cultural diplomacy.
"Maybe it needs a bit of tweaking here and there to draw the issues forward, and a bit
more money," he says of exporting Australian culture. "But we're anxious not to create
more hurdles unless there's a clear and compelling case."
Source: The Australian