Hello everyone. I’m Adelaide Rief, Manager of Leadership Development Programs here at Creative Australia. 

I would like to begin by acknowledging that I’m joining today from the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, where I live and work. I pay my deep respect to the First Nations Elders of this place, past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations people watching the video today. 

I also want to acknowledge the Custodians and Elders of the lands from which you are joining us today. 

The Governance Conversations series is a collaborative project between Creative Australia and Diversity Arts Australia, also known as DARTS. This series is designed to explore critical theories in governance, showcasing ideas, perspectives and approaches that support artists and communities. 

We are grateful to DARTS for their insightful programming and for bringing some incredible guests from their extended network into this series. Our thanks go to Lena Nahlous and the DARTS team. 

You can check out the other conversations in this series on our website, creative.gov.au. You can also find recordings of past conversations on our website. 

This pre-recorded webinar will be the last session in this series, and I want to thank Lena, the DARTS team and all our past guests. 

Governance can sometimes be a dry thing to talk about, but in these conversations we have seen some exciting and critical issues come alive through the conversations we have had with our guests. 

We will soon be announcing another initiative as part of our governance program. It will bring together all the Governance Conversations in this series, as well as newly developed resources, including templates, policies and case studies to support good governance, along with a series of links and resources to other examples of governance best practice. 

You can follow Creative Australia on social media or via our newsletter to stay up to date with details for the launch of the Governance Hub. 

Now I’m going to pass over to Lena, who will be our host for the session today. 

Thanks for the warm welcome, Adelaide, and to the team. 

Before we begin, I would also like to acknowledge the First Nations peoples of the lands on which we are today, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present. I acknowledge that it always was and always will be Aboriginal land. 

I am a middle-aged Arab woman. I have light olive skin, dark brown wavy hair with some grey, and I am currently wearing a navy blue shirt and black-rimmed glasses. 

Thank you for joining us for this final Governance Conversation in the series. 

I’m the CEO of Diversity Arts Australia, and we are very pleased to be partnering with Creative Australia. This is the sixth and final conversation in the series. 

For those who may not be aware of our work, and who may be wondering why we are so interested in facilitating these important conversations, Diversity Arts Australia is Australia’s national voice for ethnocultural and migrant cultural and racial equity in the arts, screen and creative sectors. 

Our work includes research, advocacy, training, events and resources, like the Creative Equity Toolkit, which by the way has an excellent topic area on governance that you should visit. 

That is why we are so interested in these kinds of conversations. They don’t stand alone from the other work we do. They directly impact our work. 

When you think about the climate emergency and the impact on people across the globe, and how that impacts migration patterns and our own migrant and refugee-background communities in Australia, as well as future people in the region, these issues are all connected. 

I just want to introduce our wonderful speakers today. We are joined by two people with a very deep commitment to climate justice and regenerative environmental practices, who also bring very different approaches and perspectives on the strategies that organisations and institutions can take in this area. 

In this conversation, they will be inviting organisations and institutions to consider their values and their capacity to take action. 

I want to welcome Pippa Bailey and Professor James Arvanitakis. 

I will come back to them in a minute. At the very last minute, we changed the session and turned it into a pre-recorded conversation, so I am checking my notes as I go. 

I’d like to thank our wonderful Auslan interpreters, Sean Sweeney and Rebecca Ladd, and thank our captioners. Captions are also available in this video by clicking the captions button. 

Today’s session will run for 90 minutes. We will investigate what it looks like to be both economically sustainable and environmentally regenerative. How do we develop new ways of working and start to implement them? 

I would now like to introduce the first of our presenters today, Pippa Bailey. 

Pippa’s CV is much longer than the one I’m about to read out. This is the abbreviated version. 

Pippa Bailey is an independent producer, director and consultant who grew up and works on Wangal Land in Sydney. She is committed to connecting artistic practice to plans for a fairer future where climate justice leads. 

Pippa started her career as an actor and reporter-producer with SBS TV. She held leading roles in the UK, including The Museum Of on London’s South Bank, at Oxford House in Bethnal Green, The World Famous, a company of pyrotechnicians, and Total Theatre Awards at Edinburgh Festival Fringe. 

Since 2013, Pippa has worked as Senior Producer with Performing Lines, Sydney Festival and in the First Nations team at Carriageworks. As Director and Producer for ChangeFest 2019 to 2021, she worked in collaboration with Elders and communities to create events that imagine systems change and rehearse fairer futures. 

She is currently working with First Nations artists Henrietta Baird and Jacob Boehme, led by First Nations protocols. 

Pippa co-convenes the Cultural Gardeners, Australian Cultural Alliance for Climate Justice, with CLIMARTE and Arts Front. She is a coordinator with Culture Declares Emergency UK, a member of Collaborative Futures and a board director of Theatre Network NSW and IETM, the International Network for the Performing Arts. 

Over to you, Pippa. Pippa is going to talk for around 10 minutes and then will talk again. 

Hi everyone. Thanks for being here. 

This is a big topic. Before I start, I would like to acknowledge that I’m on Wangal Land today, unceded land, and that this always was and always will be Aboriginal land. 

As I start to talk about climate justice, I want to give a bit of a trigger warning. There is no sugar-coating this. It is really difficult territory. 

For the first few minutes, I’m going to give some big statistics and a bit of a sense of where we are up to in terms of climate change. Then we will move on, and I promise that by the end of the session we will have some solutions and some positivity in terms of what arts organisations and governments can do in this space. 

To start with, as I hope people are aware, the United Nations is one of the key international players in terms of gathering information from across the globe and having an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They produce IPCC reports, and that is where we get regular updates about where the world is at in the climate emergency. 

The latest one on climate change was delivered in 2023. These are the kinds of areas we need to be concerned about. 

The concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is unmatched for around two million years. We are in a state where we don’t quite know what that is going to do, although of course science has a lot of educated guesses. 

There is glacial retreat, both at the polar ice caps and at the tops of big mountains. The last decade has been warmer than any other period of recorded history. Scientists think sea level rise is faster than at any other time in more than 125,000 years. Arctic ice coverage is shrinking. The oceans are warming and there is ocean acidification. 

These are the key indicators that tell us the climate is changing really quickly. 

One of the major contributors to this climate change is the burning of fossil fuels. That is coal, oil and gas. That accounts for somewhere between 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions. 

In terms of the big picture contributors to climate change, globally and in general terms, industry is around 30 per cent, commercial and residential activity is around 30 per cent, agriculture is around 11 per cent, and transportation is around 29 per cent. That gives a big picture. 

Then, sadly, Australia is winning in ways we really don’t want to be. We lead the world in mammal species extinction. There is an estimate that we have lost 35 mammals in the last hundred years. Eighty-six per cent of Australian mammals are unique to our bioregion. We are fourth in the world in species extinction. 

We are a bit of a case study in terms of what is happening. In Australia, we have had more than 20 major weather events since the beginning of 2024. 

I think it is clear that there are big things changing in our climate, and that is having devastating impacts on communities. 

The very idea of climate justice is recognising that the people who have contributed least to these major problems, in terms of their resource use, are the ones who are going to be impacted first. That is at a global level, but we are also seeing it at a local level. 

Certainly, this year, Henrietta Baird’s community has had three flood events. The First Nations community at Lismore has been displaced or evacuated again from flooding. It is because of these major disruptions. 

To move into the arts, one of the things I am interested in exploring is that over the last 50 years, which is a relatively short time that professional arts have been developed in this country, and in other sessions we have talked about corporate governance structures and so on, it is really only 40 or 50 years that these structures have been formalised. 

Creative Australia is about 50 years old in its former incarnation as the Australia Council for the Arts. Over that time, we have known about climate change and, for a whole lot of reasons, have persistently done very little to mitigate the problem. 

In our cultural systems, we inherited the body systems that were imported and imposed. We have had a lot of influence through British and American cultural exports, and 30 years of continuous growth until 2019, until COVID hit. 

That means we have been thinking in this way that Australia can grow and grow, and that usually does not consider the resources needed for that growth. 

One of the questions I love to ask is, “What resources are you dreaming with?” This is one of the critical ways we can think about climate change and how we are thinking about our resources when we are dreaming. 

Another thing I like to say is that the climate crisis is really a cultural crisis. That is to do with the aspirations, attitudes and behaviours that we are constantly influencing. 

I am really sorry to bring the British into this conversation, but they have put it perfectly. There is a quote from the British Council that says: 

“The arts and cultural sector, through its different art forms, already engages the public and its communities, influences trends, drives interdisciplinary collaboration, sparks innovation and entices action. All of which are essential to climate change mitigation and adaptation.” 

That is one of the ways in which I think the arts are really critical in this conversation about climate change. 

Arts and cultural organisations are usually values-based, and that is another wonderful way in which we can start to think about how those values can be used in looking at a fairer world and bringing climate justice into that conversation. 

Lots of people say to me, “Actually, the arts are not the industry. We don’t use as much resource as a lot of other industries.” That is true. 

However, because we are the imaginers of the culture, because we are often leaders when it comes to attitudes and behaviours, it is important that we take the biggest crisis humanity has seen and start to engage with it. Many have started to engage with it, but we need to ramp up and accelerate our action. 

One of the sensitive areas is around travel. As I said before, at a global level, 29 per cent of emissions come from transport and travel, and about 8 per cent of the world’s emissions come from tourism. That is significant because a lot of our cultural activity is built into tourism agendas. 

One of the other things I am curious to explore is: rather than growing, how do we redistribute resources so there is greater diversity in the system? This is largely about resources, but of course people are resources as well. 

I have a very strong background in social justice, and I am very passionate about equity. How do we, in this moment where there is enormous interest in equity and inclusion, make sure that this is redistributing rather than continuing on a growth trajectory? 

Just to give you a few more stats: the average household in Australia, which is 2.6 people, uses 15 to 20 tonnes of carbon. The United Nations says that in order to keep the atmosphere from warming more than 1.5 degrees, we need to use two tonnes per person per year. Per household, that is 5.2 tonnes. So we need to move from 15 to 20 tonnes down to 5.2 tonnes. 

I think that is very salutary in terms of how we think about the enormity of this problem. 

In terms of governance, which I know is the primary reason we have gathered here today, I think, as has been said in other sessions, First Nations governance and knowledge systems are absolutely part of the solution. 

A core pillar and principle of First Nations culture is care for Country and the stewardship of the natural world, the rights of land and water. 

Some of you may have heard that in New Zealand, the Whanganui River won a court case to be given the rights of a person so it can be fought for. I think that is incredible leadership in terms of how we think of our relationship, work and responsibility towards the natural world. 

The arts offer an incredible opportunity to reimagine how we can do things more sustainably and be more regenerative. Lena used that term at the top, and I want to give a bit of a definition. 

Regenerative practices are coming into common currency. It is useful to think about them in a farming context. Rather than extractive practices, where you try and get as much crop out of the ground as possible, if you are farming in a regenerative way, you are not tilling the soil so often. You are rotating crops, cover cropping, using different kinds of compost and thinking about the health of the soil while you are using it to grow food or whatever you are growing. 

The key point is diversity. I think that is a wonderful element to bring to this conversation, because diversity in all things helps us have a rich relationship and think about the whole system. 

The other part of the arts that I think is really important in this space is that they are founded largely on low-carbon skills. It is the way we use our bodies as performers, the way of singing, for visual artists the alchemy of senses, and in the world of creating product we have moved away a bit from those skills in terms of the relationship with the audience. 

That feels like a rich place to start, and a place to think about how we invest in those skills. 

Imagining how we live with care and responsibility to the natural world, and the management of resources, are great imagination challenges. Of course, we are the sector that has imaginers, so that is a wonderful place. 

The other part I’m interested in is the machinery of the arts, how it is constructed and how it is factored into the economy. For the last 50 years, that has largely been without considering the natural world. So they are all opportunities. 

I will leave it there. Thanks, Lena. 

Thank you so much, Pippa, for really setting the scene for us about how desperate the climate emergency is, and the possibilities for artists and the roles the arts and creative sectors can play in imagining how things can look more sustainable and be more regenerative. 

I really like that idea of, “What resources are you dreaming with?” 

I would like to introduce our second presenter for today, Professor James Arvanitakis. 

James is the Director of the Forrest Research Foundation, which brings together the five Western Australian-based universities to attract world-class research to the state and confront the world’s grand challenges. 

He is an award-winning educator, cultural researcher and commentator, and he is a Fulbright alumnus, having spent 12 months at the University of Wyoming. 

In 2021, he was appointed the inaugural Patron of Diversity Arts Australia, and is a former Chair and someone we collaborate with regularly. In 2021, he founded Respectful Disagreements, a brave spaces project that promotes the lost art of civility in political disagreement, as well as the educational power of discomfort. 

He sits on the education committee of the Governance Institute of Australia and is an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. 

James also has a much longer and very accomplished CV, but I will leave it there for now and hand over to James for also setting the scene. 

Over to you, and welcome. 

Thank you so much, Lena. 

Good morning everyone, and hello from the land of the Whadjuk Noongar people here in beautiful Western Australia, Perth. It is fantastic to be speaking to you this morning about this incredibly important event. 

I am honoured to be the Patron of Diversity Arts Australia and want to acknowledge the incredible work undertaken by Lena and the team at Diversity Arts Australia, who have worked tirelessly to put this incredible panel together. I also want to acknowledge the ongoing commitment of the team at Creative Australia. 

Thank you to our Auslan interpreters. Every time I work with you, I am always blown away by your incredible work. 

Thank you, Pippa, for setting the scene. It is important that we never forget what we are dealing with, and that when we have these conversations people are confronting some of the scariest things in the world: climate change, displacement, war, and sometimes war that has been brought on by resource restrictions or scarcity. 

I want to discuss a few aspects of our role as arts organisations and the connection to climate justice. 

I bring this from a position of working for a leading science organisation, as a governance educator with the Governance Institute of Australia, and as a researcher focused on the empowerment of communities as well as arts-based research. 

That means that I work with scientists who work on the frontline and artists who work on the frontline of climate change. They balance that sense of urgency with that sense of hope that we can adapt, adjust and move forward. I think that is important. 

That was one of the great things when we had a conversation with Pippa earlier, about passion and reminding us of the emergency, but also embracing the ideas she presented. I think it is really important that we never lose hope. 

Importantly, when this conversation started a few years ago, the position of arts-based organisations or boards was no different from that of boards more generally. 

As artists and arts organisations, we often come, and I apologise for using the term, scrounging around for money. The thought is: how can we consider climate justice and other factors at a time when we are looking for money? 

But I want to make the point, and I suppose my central point today is this: we should not think about this as a cost. We should think about it as an opportunity. I want to talk about it as an opportunity not only for organisations, but for the legacy of those organisations. 

Let’s think about it as an opportunity in three ways. 

The first is that we consider clear pathways to assist us in our decision-making. Each organisation should have some sort of risk appetite profile, some sort of decision-making matrix, some values-based matrix that outlines how we make our decisions and what we stand for. 

That ensures our influence is positive beyond just the arts-based practice and sends a clear message to our supporters and potential supporters about what we think, who we are, what we want to do, and how we believe in the sustainability of the planet, the communities around us and future generations. 

The second opportunity is that we clearly state our position to our supporters, funders, potential supporters and potential funders about what we stand for. It not only helps us create an environment where we make decisions internally, inside the organisation, but also clearly sends a message externally about who we are and what we stand for. 

Third, I believe it creates a foundation for making decisions going forward. When we all leave the organisations we currently work in, no matter how much we love and care for them, we need to let go at some point. But we can set a foundation of sustainability. 

I think Pippa’s point about sustainability is so important because it is not just about the planet. It is also about us as artists and leaders, and it is about the generations going forward. 

A dear friend of mine, who I have been honoured to work with, is from the Yaqui Nation in the southern part of Arizona and the northern part of Mexico. He tells me that the philosophy of his Elders is that every decision we make today should consider at least four generations ahead, and how it will impact them. 

We want our organisations to be sustainable, and they can only be sustainable on a sustainable planet. 

But how? How do we address this and overcome that sense of despondency or being overwhelmed by the decisions? 

For scientists, sometimes the response is research. They might say, “I’m going to respond by finding a better way to move carbon around the world with no carbon impact.” That is one thing, obviously. 

But arts organisations need to think about how they will respond, or how we should be responding. 

Addressing climate change and climate justice requires proactive and strategic action across all sections of society, including corporate governance and the governance of arts organisations. 

As directors or arts leaders, we are the stewards of our organisations and the impact those organisations have on the environment. So here are five things I think we can do. 

The first is to establish climate justice as a board or organisation priority. 

This does not mean you remove the arts priority of what you want to do. It means that we, as arts-based organisations, will not only produce what we want to produce and stand for what we stand for, but will do it in a way that acknowledges climate-related issues and builds them into our strategic priorities. 

The second is to understand our circles of influence. That is, who can we impact? How can we impact them? Who should we be having conversations with, and what should we ask from them? 

We need to think about our suppliers, who we employ, how we work, and also the decisions we make around travel. This is an important one that Pippa raised. 

The opportunity of holding a discussion like this online is a fantastic opportunity for us to think about what our carbon footprint would have been if we had all decided to fly to Sydney or Melbourne to have this conversation. 

I think we can use various tools and think about our circles of influence, and how to have impact through them. 

The third is to set climate goals. I talked about climate justice as a strategic priority, but we can sit down and think about what it would look like if we reduced our carbon footprint by a certain percentage. 

The point Pippa made about going from 20 tonnes to two tonnes is overwhelming for most of us. So why not think about going from 20 tonnes to 18 tonnes, and achieving that? Then, when we have done that, how do we go to 15 tonnes, 12 tonnes, eight tonnes, and so on? 

This momentum is a process we need to go through, and it allows us to take people with us. 

One of our researchers here has looked at all these incredible environmental action plans and why they fail. The main reason they fail is that they fail to take people with them as they work through the process. 

So, as organisations, we need to take people with us. 

That takes me to my fourth point, which is about engaging and finding appropriate stakeholders, and working with them to achieve what we want to achieve. 

That is a conversation that needs to be had. Not all stakeholders will have the priorities that we have, but it is important that we have those conversations. 

If you have a key stakeholder with a different set of priorities, or they do not have this as a priority, that is a conversation worth having. If they don’t budge, then the question you need to ask as leaders, whether at board level or as artists, is: is there another stakeholder I want to work with that more closely reflects my values? Or what can I do to take this stakeholder with me? 

The final point, which I think picks up on one of Pippa’s important points, is to integrate climate change or climate conversations into our programming. 

I have just started working with an organisation called Entertainment for Change. They use documentaries and fictionalised movies to have conversations. 

The really important thing about this is that sometimes a very direct conversation, a big shock, the kind of figures Pippa noticed, is valuable to shock people into thinking about something. But sometimes we need to have more subtle conversations. 

One of the things we, as arts leaders, need to think about when we are engaging with someone is: what point along the spectrum are they at? If they are not ready to have a deeper or more full-on conversation, do we lose them in the process? How do we make sure we take them with us? 

This is one of my research areas, and I think the point Pippa made about imaginers is so powerful. 

My research has often looked at how art can act as a mirror of society, but also how art, in the broader sense of the word, can help us cross a threshold and see the world differently. It helps us see the potential of the world, that imagination that Pippa drew on. 

There is an incredible concept by the philosopher Heidegger, about the role of the arts in encouraging the will to cross threshold moments. He was writing in the 1920s and 1930s, talking about poets and musicians, but today that could be street artists, performers or the movies we make. 

How do we get people to cross that threshold moment? I think that is really important, and if we have a chance to unpack that, I would like to. 

I want to end by making a couple of points. 

The first goes back to this idea of respectful disagreement, which Lena mentioned when she introduced me. Over the years, I have come to embrace the concept of pragmatic idealism. 

There are times when we need to ensure the perfect is not the enemy of the good. We need to find ways to achieve something small that can help us create momentum. But creating momentum is not enough. We need to continue that. 

Going back to the idea of impact, we can reduce the climate footprint by 10 per cent and not rest on it, pat ourselves on the back and say, “That was 10 per cent.” We should see it as a good start. 

Pragmatic idealism is an interesting way to think about dealing with stakeholders along the spectrum, from those who want to jump in and go all in, to those who are fearful and not ready to have more complex conversations. 

The second point comes from a friend of mine, Dan Gregory, a former comedian who now works as a consultant with organisations. He has done a lot of work with scientific organisations. 

One of the things he once said to an audience of climate activists and climate scientists was, “The problem with scientists often is that you would rather be right than rich, and you have to figure out that you can be both.” 

What does this mean? This is my position, and I don’t always take the fact that it is right for everyone, but Dan said there are many examples of scientists turning back the opportunity to work with organisations where they could have had an impact, because they were uncomfortable with where the organisation currently stood. 

He said what we need to do is think about where that organisation can end up. This is not greenwashing. This is about thinking about where an organisation is willing to go, and this takes us back to the spectrum of attitudes and behaviour. 

What is important is that each of our organisations needs to find a position we are comfortable with pursuing, and we as individual decisionmakers, artists and board members need to be comfortable with that position. 

The key is that we work together to support each other with those organisations. There are times when boycotts are the right way. There are times when taking the hands of organisations and walking with them slowly is the right way. There are times when we need to be more aggressive. Each situation requires a different decision, depending on the context. 

I think that is one of the difficult conversations we need to have. If I go back to my first point, that is exactly the role of boards and leaders within organisations: to have those difficult conversations and take people with us. 

I think I am at 14 and a half minutes, so I will leave it at that. Thank you. 

Thank you so much, James. 

Thank you for that thoughtful sharing of ideas about how, at the governance level, institutions and organisations need to think about their responsibility to the climate crisis and consider what their sphere of influence is. 

Thank you for the practical and actionable steps, and for giving lots of examples of how we can get there. I love that idea of how we get people to cross the threshold. That is an important idea. 

It is always good to bring Heidegger into our conversations. I am joking. 

Now I will ask Pippa and James to turn on their cameras. I will ask you some questions about how, within our current arts governance structures, we can address climate justice. 

A lot of what you have spoken about touches on this, so I want to unpack some of the ideas you have already shared with us a little bit more. 

I might start with you, Pippa, by asking whether the arts and creative sectors can afford to ignore the climate crisis. How can we reconcile the financial realities of many of our organisations with the environmental urgency as well? 

Often, we know there are economic interests that are pitted against environmental concerns in the arts and creative sectors, as James touched on as well. People might say, “I can’t afford to do this,” or “This is too big for us as an organisation.” 

Over to you, Pippa. 

All the small questions today. 

Thank you so much to James. I really loved those practical points. I am a producer by trade and I love action. 

I would add to your point around crossing the threshold that the arts have the opportunity to rehearse the future. That is one of the things I would like to push. 

In a play space, if we can give ourselves permission to dream up solutions that seem impossible and then have a go, that is exactly what we need now. We are at this point in the crisis where we are in territory where no one really knows how the planet is going to react. We are also in great need of people who can hold experimental processes. Again, the arts are great places, with people who have skills for that. 

Can we afford to ignore the climate crisis? No, we cannot. Not in any way. 

As I was suggesting earlier, we have already done that for quite a long time, and that is partly why we are in the extreme position we are in right now. 

I want to think a little bit about what those solutions might look like, particularly at a governance level. I know, because I have sat in many board meetings, that the bottom line is the bottom line. 

I also want to throw up for people that there is a lot of exploration of alternative economic models. I think that is interesting for you to know, because one of the challenges, and James alluded to this too, is that in some ways the current economic models do not work for the arts. They also do not work for health, education or social services. 

Things that are intensely labour-focused and human-to-human have not worked so well in the idea of an extractive economy, which is pulling things out of the ground and selling them off to the highest bidder. 

Some of those alternatives are around doughnut economics, which tries to consider planetary boundaries in the way you think about resource use, modern monetary theory and circular economy. I want to throw those out there because this is an introduction for some people watching, and they are things to go and have a look at. 

In terms of our own organisations, first of all I would say that the mental health impact of ignoring this issue is enormous. 

I am not sure if any studies have particularly been done on this, but I think, and I’m stumbling because this is one of those things where I cannot believe people are still not engaging, and that is partly me racing ahead and not taking people on the journey, James, so I respect that note. 

Because there are so many big disasters going on, people are finding it too overwhelming. That in itself can cause a mental health crisis. 

So in terms of the practical solutions James was offering, just starting the journey is a really important thing to do, at whatever level you are at. It can also save you money. 

We have already found that lots of people switching their power to renewables are saving money. There are ways of reducing resource use through recycling and other things. They will get you to a certain point in your journey, but they are a fabulous place to start and really important. 

That is a great way of feeling empowered, engaged and noticing. 

Then join with others to find solutions. That is another piece I think is important. We are great at collaboration in the arts, and often we have a lot of skills in that area. Collaboration is needed. 

The last piece is that we get tipped into thinking about systems, and I will talk about that a little more later. 

Thanks for that. 

Pippa, you have touched on this, and James, you have given us some practical strategies. You have both talked about the importance of the role of the board. 

James, what is the role of the board in terms of its responsibility to climate justice and environmental sustainability? What kind of leadership do we want to see from our arts and creative-sector boards? 

The role of the board. I mentioned that I am a governance educator, and it is the most boring thing. If you want to lose friends or lose conversations with people at parties, you should say, “I am on an education advisory group for the Governance Institute of Australia.” It is not a sexy topic. 

But the reason I got into governance, and I think it is an important one for us to reflect on, is because I have seen so many good organisations go down the toilet because of bad governance structures. 

Good people, with the right intentions, could not find a way forward. It became a process of who had the loudest voice and who could get the most people on the board to agree with them. 

Ultimately, the role of the board is to ensure that, and yes, there are legal obligations, but forget all that for a moment because that goes without saying. The role of the board is to promote the sustainability of the organisation. That means the organisation runs well and runs for generations to come. 

We cannot think about sustainability in isolation. We have to think about the sustainability of the people around us. As a board member, one of the first things, and you can contradict me about this if you want, Lena, and I hope you don’t, is that one of my priorities is your wellbeing as a CEO. 

What we ask from artists and the people we work with, we need to ask in a way that takes care of them. 

Then the role of the board in this area is to set the agenda and empower the people within the organisation, be it the CEO and staff, to achieve what needs to be achieved. 

I do not believe in interventionist boards. The role of the board here is not to intervene. It is to set the agenda around climate justice and assist the organisation to get there. Not necessarily direct, but assist. That is the role. Where I see this being really valuable is when I go back to the idea of circles of influence. 

If every organisation, as it is doing its strategic planning, not only thought about what it wants to look like in one year or five years, but also drew a small circle, a larger circle and a larger circle again, it could identify multiple spheres of influence. 

Then you can think about how we influence those goals. How do we not only become a great arts-based organisation, but also achieve climate justice? 

There are people close to the influence: the people we work with directly. The next circle might be our audiences or supporters. Then there are funders. Then the bigger circle could be working with organisations like Creative Australia, Create NSW and others with broader influence. 

The board is fundamental in achieving that. Without that direction and those strategic priorities being set by the board, an organisation cannot have an impact on achieving those goals. 

How is governance? Exciting? 

It does sound exciting. I would talk to you at a party about governance. 

I want to ask a follow-on question, and I will ask it of both you and Pippa. 

We are talking about the role of governance, but are our governance structures actually capable of supporting this kind of change and these shifts in relation to environmental considerations? Are they fit for purpose? 

I might ask you first, James. 

We need to work with what we have got to a certain extent, so absolutely they are, because that is what we have got. 

Is there room to transition them as we think about transitioning our economy and society? Absolutely. 

In a previous session in this series, you addressed some of those issues around how we think about governance. 

I also go back to something Pippa said in her presentation, which is that we inherited governance structures that were imported and imposed, predominantly from Britain. They are very hierarchical. 

In the arts, because of the role culture plays in British and European culture, and because that is where those structures come from, we have inherited a whole lot of things that have never really grown here or been unpacked here. 

For me, that is why looking to First Nations governance and leadership in that space is so important, because it is rooted in this country, on this land, and care for Country is a founding principle. 

Yes, of course, you can do more in the place where you are right now. That is an important part of it. 

I will jump in again, and I think you are spot on there. 

These are the structures we have to work with, and the legal structures, so we need to operate within them. 

Twenty or 30 years ago, the only responsibility the board had was a fiduciary responsibility: to be financially sound. I think we have seen attempts, and we can criticise them and talk about them in different ways, around triple bottom line and other forms of reporting. They have been effective in different ways and depending on the leadership in the organisation they have either been really effective or a form of greenwashing. 

There is so much more that can be done. The structures we have do give us a certain level of flexibility that I think is important. That takes us back to the first point: how do we balance the fiduciary responsibilities we have in sustaining the organisation with the other important points of sustainability? 

When we think about that within those structures, as board members, Chairs or directors, we can use those positions to help influence and shape the organisation. That is the balance we need to find. 

A really simple thing, going back to sustainability, is that the board has the ability to make sure its staff are taken care of. It has the ability to make sure staff are empowered, and to ensure staff feel like they are having a positive impact. 

I think most of the people who get involved in the arts sector, as they do in the sciences, are very purpose-driven. When people have purpose, we thrive as human beings. Creating that purpose, producing great art but also thinking about future generations, gives us an incredible purpose. I think we will have thriving organisations as a result. 

I want to pick up an important point Pippa made, which is reflected in all the research I have done. When you empower people, they are healthier. 

If you work for an organisation where people feel totally disempowered, where people feel like they are being treated as if they are peons and have no thoughts, and you simply tell them what to do, or if they feel the organisation is destructive, you are not getting the best out of people, either economically or emotionally. 

There has been a lot of research to confirm that organisations that empower people to be driven by a sense of purpose have incredible benefits when it comes to mental health and the functioning of the organisation. 

Again, when you think about the structures we are in, they are limited by certain legal obligations. It may not be the best structure if we use Pippa’s word about reimagining our practice in the future, but it is what we have got, and you can embrace the position to do special things. 

I like that you are both coming from a strength-based position as well. That is important. 

James, you talked a lot about what boards can affect, what they can impact, and how they can empower people and organisations. 

That is a nice segue into a question for Pippa about the role of power in all of this. In your opinion, how can power dynamics impact efforts to address the climate crisis within creative-sector organisations and institutions? 

I think, for me, and I have been in some situations watching boards not necessarily be aware enough about their power in the situation, that is why I talk a lot about hierarchical systems. 

It is really important, as we are looking at change, and change will happen whether we are directing it or not, because that is what climate change means, that the urgency is to get on board enough to have a sense of agency in the space. 

In doing so and following on from James’s piece about spheres of influence, part of this is noticing that the way we have been trained to think is to constantly look up. We constantly look to people with more power and more privilege, and we do not always notice who is left out of that space. 

Part of it is: how do we get greater self-awareness about how our power structures work? What can we do to notice who is left out at a local level, perhaps at a national level, and then at an international level? 

In some ways, most arts organisations have some hope that their work will translate into other contexts. Again, we do a lot of touring into places where people have the money to afford Australian work, and we do not necessarily notice those who are drowning in the Pacific, for example. 

There is something in that I think arts governance needs to get better at. These are muscles that need building. 

Wherever you are on the journey, there is that piece of stepping in and going: how do we notice how we build social and cultural capital? What is the shorthand for that? How can we interrupt processes a little bit so that equity, fairness and justice are in the frame? 

The other piece about power, for me, is that it goes back to the rights of nature and our terrible track record on species extinction. There is an awful lot of disempowerment in that story. 

Another piece is responsibility and stewardship, and being self-aware about power. You can go, in my place, where my organisation is based, what are the things that are endangered? What can I look after? 

That does not have to be the whole world, because I totally respect that it can become really overwhelming quickly. 

Being local is a really great way to create boundaries that feel manageable, and then to dive in and ask: how are we using our resources? How are we managing them and using our power? 

The other part of the idea of spheres of influence is that it makes us think about the whole system. One of the challenges in the climate piece has been that we have forgotten we are reliant on the natural world around us. 

We need to be able to look at our systems and think a bit more systemically. Other sectors are a little further advanced in my experience than the arts sector, so I am really keen that we start to think about ourselves in a system and start to understand how we manoeuvre towards climate justice. 

James and Pippa, we have about 15 minutes left of the conversation, and I am going to move to the second topic, which is: how do we move to something different to really address the crisis? 

James, how do we move away from seeing this work as a burden, and instead see it as an opportunity? 

You did touch on this, and you both touched on this, but I think it is a real mindset shift. As Pippa mentioned, sometimes within the creative sector we are not doing this as well as other sectors and spaces. 

If I am going to drop the veil of secrecy, I am actually in the process of moving house. The only things here are basically the chair I am sitting on, the table where the computer is, and the two paintings behind me. The removalists are knocking on the door, so it is a sensitive time in the house at the moment. 

I am totally distracted. Can you ask the question again? 

Thank you. It is amazing you are doing this while you are moving house. That is commitment. 

People are moving things in front of me. 

How do we move away from seeing this as a burden and instead see it as an opportunity? Particularly in a context where Pippa said that sometimes within our sector, we need to look outside into other spaces to see how they are doing it, because we are not always addressing environmental justice concerns at all, or well. 

A couple of things to say about that. 

We have talked about mindset shift, but it is also a total cultural shift, and cultural change can take time. That is part of what I was emphasising: how do we take people with us? 

The way we need to do it, as I said, is to begin a conversation at board level. Just have the conversation. 

On the surface of it, and this goes back to the point of disempowerment, it is easy to say, “We are a small arts organisation. We have this tiny thing. What can we do? We can’t do anything.” 

Apart from being defeatist, that is so wrong. 

If you sit down as a board and have a conversation and say, “We need to be sustainable. We want to be economically sustainable and meet all our fiduciary responsibilities. We want to achieve all the things we want to achieve, but how do we do that within the context of a climate crisis, climate emergency or the need to achieve climate justice? What does that look like?” 

If you just begin with that conversation, you will be surprised at where a conversation can take you. 

It could be anything from thinking about the organisation’s programming, and I am not saying boards should get involved in programming directly, warning on that one, but it is a discussion about how we share this message. 

It could be thinking about the resources we use and how we use them, through to conversations with staff about what is possible. 

As weird as it sounds, one of the things we learned during the pandemic was that we do not always have to drive to work. For many people, not all, but for many, working from home is good for sustainability and for cost. It can also be good for wellbeing. People had a chance to work in their pyjamas, which can be healthy for some people. 

The problem was when you had to do it every day for three months. That is what people found challenging. 

What I am saying is that when you begin the conversation, you think about what you can do and you think about your spheres of influence. That is important. 

This is a cultural shift. Cultural shift happens slowly. It happens through conversations. It happens through leadership and in a number of ways. 

The role of the board is fundamental in achieving that. Without the board’s support and prioritisation, without the board being behind the conversation, it is going to be very hard to achieve what we want to achieve. 

So, everyone, please put that on your agenda for your board meeting at least once a year. Have this conversation and check your policies, procedures and ways of working. 

I think they are really practical and achievable ways to start the conversation, as well as implementing things. 

Pippa, I am really interested in some examples of how we could do this, what organisations are doing this or doing it well, and what new structures might look like that would truly enable us to address climate justice in the creative sector. 

I just want to add something to James’s list. 

I think we need more artists on boards. It is important that we have creative people in those spaces, and champions of climate at every level of an organisation, so they can come together. That also starts to disrupt some of the hierarchical challenges. 

The idea of collaborating and not competing, which I think certainly happens artist-to-artist a lot, is a very collegiate part of our culture. But if your primary function is to look after the health of the organisation, which is what a board is there to do, somehow that can become a competitive space. So how do we shift away from that? 

I think I said before, think local and go back to creative skills. 

One of the things I really feel like we need as a culture, at every level, is much bigger ideas. One of my challenges to boards is: how do you move faster than the speed of your comfort with this new issue? 

There are plenty of experts out there, James and me and lots of other people who have a lot of practice in this space. I think this is one time when it is useful to have help, so you can move fast. 

I agree with you, James, that generally culture moves slowly, but we need to move quickly. We have been shown, through crises like COVID, that when we have a crisis, we can move quickly. 

How do we challenge ourselves beyond our comfort zone in terms of speed? 

In terms of alternatives, I am doing work with Jacob Boehme, a First Nations man based on the Kulin Nation in Melbourne. He is from South Australia but based in Melbourne. He is setting up a company based on First Nations protocols. 

This is a really interesting experiment. We are in a new phase, working with his Elders and trying to come up with four protocols. There is lots of nuance, but in principle they are care for Country, care for kin and all living things, respect for others, responsibility for future generations, which James has already mentioned, and the restoration of songlines. 

That is a possible way we can start to think about how we tour and travel across this country. 

He had a project called Wild Dog, looking at the songline of the dingo, an endangered and persecuted mammal in this country. The songline of the dingo can also be found in the south of India, Thailand and Taiwan. 

It is really interesting to start to go back into some of that ancient knowledge. It gives lots of possibilities for different ways of doing things. 

Having Elders in the space is wonderful, absolutely wonderful, because it slows us down. It makes sure there is history present in the room. Often, as a nation and a culture, we are in love with the next thing and sometimes forget that there is past knowledge we could be learning from. 

That is one piece of work I think people should watch. I am hoping it will initiate some more conversations. 

Another example is the wonderful Antonia Seymour at Arts on Tour. She is determined to green and revolutionise touring in this country and is doing some incredible work coming up with examples. There is a report I helped her with that has a whole lot of examples of artists working in lots and lots of different ways. 

The other First Nations artist I am working with, Henrietta Baird, has a new project called Plant a Promise, sparked by the 2019 to 2020 bushfires. She is a plant specialist as well as a choreographer and dancer. The work is inspiring and encouraging people to plant a promise to take care of Country. 

We are planning a saltwater tour from where she lives in Sydney up to Cairns. We want to do it by train. We will go to Elders in community and ask if they want the work to come to them, and then we go to the local Arts Centre if they say yes. 

There are a few different ideas there, glimmers of new ways forward. I just go back to the point I made before big ideas are really what we need. 

Even if they seem ridiculous and impossible, we need to bring them into our conversations to start shifting our thinking. 

Thanks, Pippa. 

As you said, artists are the ones to bring in with the big ideas. They are needed not just across the creative sector, but across all areas and industries when thinking about these issues. 

James, you touched in your introduction on the importance of partnerships and stakeholders, and having conversations. I wanted you to talk a little bit about the possibilities for working with partners and stakeholders. What can that bring? What can healthy partnerships and relationships bring to this work and conversation? 

We cannot achieve any of this on our own. 

You can be the most sustainable and socially just organisation in the world, but unless we work with partners, and I think we can think of partners and stakeholders in three ways, we will not get where we need to be. 

The first, partly linked to the idea of circles of influence, is those we directly work with and making sure our values align. That is fundamental. 

Some organisations will be way ahead of where we are, and we can seek to learn from them. Others will not be anywhere near where we are, and we can seek to shape them. That is important. 

The second is partnerships with organisations that are also on the same path as us, but with whom we do not necessarily always agree. 

A few years ago, I used to run a human rights organisation. It was always seen as being on the more activist, radical edge of the political spectrum. 

I remember once, there was another organisation that was much more on the moderate end. We had these conversations where they would say to us, “What you do is brilliant for us, because you create an environment where we can go in and say, you can either deal with the people outside trying to blockade your conference, or you can deal with us.” 

I had no problem with them putting us forward as the crazy, scary leftists, because for me what was important was the outcome. 

That is what I think is important for the conversation. The people we work with will be in different places on the spectrum. 

What I did not like was when my fellow activists, people I was working with, would say those other organisations were sellouts. That self-policing and putting down people with the same end goals is undermining and a waste of energy. 

The people I worked with, I would always say, are on a different path, and we can create opportunities. 

I am so sorry to interrupt, but we need to wrap up in a few minutes. 

I will leave it there. I was probably going to say that one, but that doesn’t matter. 

I doubt that. This has been an amazing conversation. I think there is so much more to talk about and so much more to unpack. 

You have both given us so many practical ideas and actionable strategies we can use, and so many good ideas we can reflect on and take back to our own work and organisations. 

Thank you so much for generously giving your time and your ideas to everyone who is joining this webinar. 

I also want to remind people that we will be sharing some resources, so look in the comment section. We will include some of the resources Pippa has mentioned, so that you have some solid and concrete things to take away and do not feel, “Where do I start?” You have a place to start. 

I also want to end this by really thanking the series producer, who has done a brilliant job of pulling all of this together and is a very skilled theatre producer and skilled in many other areas. Thank you sincerely for all of your work. 

I would also like to thank the other team members at Diversity Arts Australia, and Creative Australia, particularly Adelaide, Emerald and Adam, for all of your incredible work and vision for this talk series.  

Thank you so much. 

And of course, a massive thank you to James and Pippa again for making this session so good, and also for being so adaptable, which is a very good skill to have in the arts sector. We needed to pre-record this instead of doing it live at the last minute, so thank you so much. 

I don’t know if I need to throw it over to Creative Australia, or if we just close it there. 

Thank you, Lena, for being such an incredible host. It is a hard role sometimes to hold space for all of these complex ideas and manage some passionate panellists, and it has been wonderful to work alongside you. Thank you. 

That is all we have time for today. 

Please check out the Creative Australia website for the other videos in the Governance Conversations series. Also keep an eye on the Creative Australia newsletter for further announcements about other governance resources that will be available. 

I will close it there. Thank you.