{"id":12293,"date":"2017-03-22T09:31:33","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T09:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cultureheist.com.au\/wordpress\/?p=12293"},"modified":"2017-06-05T07:24:47","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T07:24:47","slug":"blog-post-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cultureheist.com.au\/wordpress\/2017\/03\/22\/blog-post-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Defending art and science"},"content":{"rendered":"

In today\u2019s world, enlightened voices in support of the arts and sciences are needed more than ever. We need the sciences<\/strong> to understand our world and find solutions to its problems; we need the arts<\/strong> to raise our horizons and unleash creativity. Since the earliest times, this is how humanity has moved forward.<\/p>\n

Yet today art and science are under attack, not just from bigots and extremists, but from politicians and establishment bureaucrats among whom vision has been replaced by spin, electoral expediency and the soul-destroying ideology of neoliberalism. In cutting funding to public institutions such as the ABC, the Australia Council, the CSIRO, universities, museums, galleries and libraries, they are sacrificing the wellbeing of society for short-term political gain.<\/p>\n

\"\"The 1970s opened a period in which the arts and sciences flourished in Australia, and the world was the richer for it. But today, while billionaires and multinationals amass their largely untaxed wealth, the cultural gains of previous generations are being stolen from the rest of us. That\u2019s the heist.<\/p>\n

The good news is that the push back is under way. Travelling around New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT in the month since my book Culture Heist <\/em>was published, I\u2019ve found audiences everywhere to be wonderfully receptive. There\u2019s a growing sense of urgency among concerned citizens.<\/p>\n

Here are just some of the developments I\u2019ve noted in the past week alone:<\/p>\n