martyn coutts

This blog has always been primarily for me – a space to gather my thoughts so that they are all in one place. This is a rare time that this is not for me. This entry is for others.

VCA was crucial in my artistic career, it opened me to a peer group, a new way of thinking and to this great city of Melbourne. I did the Animateuring course at the Drama school, a diabolically intense experience which i am still reverberating from today.

If i were to take a survey of the works i am currently engaged in then it is clear the role that VCA has played in my life;

Deadpan
Willoh (Performance Making), I met at VCA

Gameshow
Tristan (Acting) and Olivia (Performance Making) are VCA alumni I met them at VCA

Blood Policy
Sam Routledge (Puppetry) and I met them at VCA

Apocalypse Bear (for the Melbourne Festival)
Mel Page (production)
Luke Mullins (acting)
Brian Lipson (sessional teaching)
Jethro Woodward (music)

Reverb (for Melbourne Fringe)
Brooke Stamp

One of the first things that was said to me during Animateuring was by now Head of School, Richard Murphett which was that the VCA was unique, not just in Australia, but in the world. In very few places was there a dedicated training institution which had all major artforms in the one school, on the one campus, in an arts precinct, in the middle of a major city.

I think the other thing that is unique is the focus on practice based training and this is where the current changes are not just abhorrent but are shortsighted and destructive. The VCA is the engine room for all creative practice in the city and deserves recognition for its role in Melbourne having the tag as being the ‘arts capital’ of Australia.

I was absolutely astonished at the open letter by all living Victorian state arts ministers to save the VCA. it spoke so deeply (although i have never seen the words) that these men and women who were leading the arts in the state see this institution as being key, as the foundation stone for all other artistic endeavour. Never have I been more proud to have Jeff Kennett as a Premier than yesterday.

I am not so blind that I can’t see that the funding for universities is woeful and that rationalisation is the only way for some uni’s to survive, but i would like to see a comparative study on the funding for the Victorian Institute of Sport compared to the VCA. As I don’t think that VCA should really be a part of a University it needs to be its own entity, a funded school of excellence, like an Institute of Sports for example.

I know that one voice in cyberspace is not going to make a lot of difference, but i have to believe that one more blog, one more conversation, one more body at a protest and one more signature on a petition can change something that is so fundamental to the future of culture in Australia.

SAVE THE VCA.