Born-Again Diva: from Phuck-You to Philosophy to Phixing the Arts Problem

How do we thrive as artists, when it's so hard to even survive? Born Again Diva is a personalised treatise by one arts practitioner, feeling her way through the thoughts of other arts practitioners, who're feeling their way through the Australian Arts Industry, and examining its status within broader economic systems. In the wake of Australia's 2023 new National Cultural Policy, it laments the Covid-19/pandemic experience as a lost opportunity for social re-visioning. It defines problems specific to individual artists' experience, critiques existing arts funding models such as the predominant competitive grants system, and examines the concept of Hope Labour as the problematic foundation of an arts practitioner's professional rationale.Searching for clues to social survival buried in the history of economic theory, the essay builds upon existing discussion/discourse and programs, and proposes solutions that enable the re-visioning of capitalist frameworks to better accommodate artists and allow them to thrive. This begins with the concept of the Artist's Living Wage, and the integration of arts practitioner presence into urban infrastructure, in the interests of community well-being.