Stop Treating Art Like a Hobby if You Want to Survive

Let's just say it: Australian culture doesn't value the arts.

We consume it. We binge it. We use it to cope.

But we don't fund it, we don't back it, and we sure as hell don't treat it like the serious industry it is.

This isn't just a government problem. It runs deeper than that, into the bones of how we're raised, trained, and told to operate. As a result, too many artists internalise the message that their work isn't real unless someone gives them a grant. And that mindset is killing us.

The Arts Isn't a Charity Case, It's a Business

Ask most early-career creatives how they plan to fund their next project, and you'll hear one answer:

"I'm applying for a grant."

And if they don't get it?

That's it. Game over. Try again next round.

This dependency cycle breeds an entire industry of talented people stuck in survival mode, building short films and theatre shows as if they were Powerball tickets, praying that if this one wins, maybe someone will fund the next.

It doesn't work. It never did.

We've Built a Culture of Scarcity (and It Shows)

Everyone's buddy-buddy… until the funding rounds open.

Then it's a bare-knuckle knife fight in the mud, and the winners suddenly go silent, guarding their pile like it's the last loaf of bread in a famine.

The longer someone's in the game, the more isolated they become. You can see it in their eyes at networking events, worn down, quietly competitive, always scanning for a shortcut to the next bucket of money.

No Wonder Private Investment Doesn't Want In

If you're a private investor, looking in from the outside, what do you see?

• Artists who don't know how to invoice correctly (yes, I've had to tell more than one young creative to remove GST from their invoice because they weren't registered, which could get them fined).

• Zero business plans.

• No discussion of ROI or IP value.

• Entire industries are built on wishful thinking and one-off subsidies.

Would you invest your money in that? Neither would I.

Compare this to the tech world: every broke startup founder still walks into a pitch meeting with a budget, a growth model, and a revenue forecast, even if it's all on a napkin. But in the arts? We're too often just begging for permission to make the thing we love.

I Know This Will Piss People Off... Good

I've always played outside the system. I've found funding through reinvestment, left-field grants, commercial clients, and building businesses that fuel my creative work. And because of that, I see this whole landscape differently.

This isn't coming from a place of superiority; it's frustration. Because I know too many talented people stuck at square one, doing all the "right" things, and still getting nowhere. Not because they're not good but because the system is broken, and they've been trained to think like applicants, not operators.

So, How Do We Fix It?

Start with education. Not in schools in the industry. At festivals, at forums, in Facebook groups where people talk more about what camera to buy than how to price their work.

Let's teach young artists:

• How to operate as a sole trader.

• How to budget and pitch.

• How to treat themselves like a business without selling their soul.

• How to ask: What's the return on this project, not just creatively, but commercially, so I can fund the next one?

We need to stop worshipping the grant win and start celebrating sustainability.

The Bottom Line

You're not just an artist. You're a business.

You're not just making a short film, you're building a pipeline.

You're not just telling stories, you're creating IP with long-term value.

And if that scares you, good.

Because that fear means you've got skin in the game, and it means you're ready to stop waiting for someone else to fund your future.

Let's stop begging.

Let's start building.