Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

thinking about cultural difference need to be reinvigorated. Drawing from a 5-year ARC Linkage Project this
paper examines how artistic production and cultural participation are shaped by emerging forms of localism
and translocalism. It examines the ways in which everyday, governmental and aesthetic expressions of
difference contest the national frame of the multicultural, resulting in new forms of communality and
citizenship. However, rather than signalling the “death” or “failure” of multiculturalism such findings point to
the vitality of this discourse – and the suburban attachments, transnational diasporic mediations and
informal creative networks through which multiculturalism continues to be negotiated.
Cecelia Cmielewski
and Performance 4A
Creative and Organisational Leadership for the arts in a multicultural Australia: Curiousworks
The roles of creative and organisational leadership provide insight into potential circuit breakers to address
low levels of creative cultural inclusion. In both instances issues of “trust” (how to generate it) and “friction”
(how to exploit it to gain traction) are central. Despite over thirty years of arts and cultural policy attention
there is a widespread view held by the public and artists alike that Australia’s creative production does not
reflect our culturally diverse demographic make-up (Australia Council, 2014). Despite the best intentions,
there is a lack of understanding and a mismatch between policy aims, institutional practice and the
experience of creative practitioners, suggesting that effective leadership in the arts could be key to
addressing these issues. The relationship between creative production and cultural diversity can best be
understood through the experiences and practices of artists of non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB).
Two case studies will present the ways in which companies, Curiousworks and Performance 4A, consider the
roles of creative and organisational leadership.
Phillip Mar Uses of diversity: Australian multicultural arts and the UNESCO Convention on the Diversity of
Cultural Expressions
This presentation considers the practices of multicultural arts in Australia in the light of the UNESCO
Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions 2005. Promoting Diversity of Cultural Expression in the
Arts in Australia consisted of eight case studies of arts projects considered as “good practice” in supporting
diversity in the arts. Research for this report found quite divergent notions of diversity, between those found
in Australian arts practice, and between the understandings exemplified by the DoCE Convention. This was
compounded by the fact that the case study projects had not been carried out with the Convention in mind.
Materials from the case studies – particularly Edge of Elsewhere, a collaboration of the Campbelltown Arts
Centre and the 4A Centre of Contemporary Asian Art, and the Multicultural Arts Victoria’s Visible music
mentoring program – demonstrate a range of ideas around cultural diversity we could characterise as “uses
of diversity”. Given this divergence between practical understandings of cultural diversity amongst artists
and arts organisation, and the conception of diversity in the DoCE Convention, what are the implications for
policy and for “good practice?”
1K
Drugs in Space: New Approaches to Drugs and Drug-Related Ontologies (Chair, Stephen Tomsen)
Peta Malins Drug dog assemblages: accounting for the spatiality, animality and affectivity of general drug
detection dog operations
Dogs have long been mobilised by police and customs officials to assist in the detection of illicit drugs. In
Australia, the range of contexts in which drug-detection dogs are being deployed has substantially widened
over the last decade, to include schools, workplaces, prisons, hospitals, mental health institutions, music
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