About the Project
Cultural diversity in Australia continues to provide a challenge for the development of public policies. One quarter of Australia's population was born overseas and 43% of people have at least one overseas-born parent. However, government funding for the arts and cultural participation does not reflect this diversity.
The Multiculturalism and Governance website presents a cultural citizenship indicator framework and an arts value-creating ecology. It also provides a current snapshot of cultural citizenship and links to other publications, resources and policies on cultural participation, diversity in the arts and cultural indicators.
The cultural citizenship indicator framework provides a resource for arts workers and cultural policymakers to evaluate cultural participation in diverse communities. It highlights how participation generates a range of capacities and belonging.
While citizenship is defined as the formal, legal frameworks that underpin belonging to a nation, cultural citizenship refers to the informal, cultural dimensions that facilitate belonging and enable one to contribute to, and shape, the dominant culture.
This is the first project to develop an indicator framework measuring the three components of cultural citizenship - cultural participation, capacity and belonging. Findings from a survey measuring each of these three components are presented in the
The Multiculturalism and Governance website was developed by researchers from the Research Unit in Public Cultures (RUPC) and the eScholarship Research Centre (ESRC) at the University of Melbourne, and was funded as part of an Australian Research Council Linkage Project 'Multiculturalism and Governance: Evaluating Arts Policies and Engaging Cultural Citizenship' (LP110100039).
The project's research team comprised Professor Nikos Papastergiadis (Lead Chief Investigator), Professor Audrey Yue (Chief Investigator) and Dr Rimi Khan (Research Fellow). Data curation and web design implementation was undertaken by Gavan McCarthy and Rachel Tropea (eScholarship Research Centre); graphic design by Brad Healy; and, writing for the entries was undertaken by Dr Rimi Khan and Adamantia Di Biase (School of Culture and Communication).
The data for the website is curated using the Online Heritage Resource Manager, a tool developed by the eScholarship Research Centre at the University of Melbourne.
The project was jointly funded by four Partner Organisations: Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Victoria, City of Whittlesea and the Office of Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship.
