Winter, a small grocery shop in suburban New Zealand: the opening stage direction of Jacob Rajan’s enduringly popular solo piece Krishnan’s Dairy, first performed at Bats in Wellington in 1997. A short song describes how Gobi and Zina Krishnan came to New Zealand from India and set up their quintessential Kiwi dairy. Rajan as Gobi...

There’s plenty of discussion about arts funding in Australia – but are we ready to tackle tough questions around the 'value' of the arts? That’s a challenge that will involve scrutinising the 'benefits' delivered by arts programs and rethinking some of our ideas about impact. Recently these questions have been framed in terms of measurement...

Energy efficient houses are often thought to be a promising way to reduce our environmental footprint by using less energy and producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, surprisingly, if you consider the whole life cycle of a house, it turns out that sometimes a new home designed to save energy can end up using more...

Last year the Australian Bureau of Statistics did the maths – government spends about A$7 billion annually in Australia on arts and culture. The exact dollar figure varies depending on what we count, but it includes heritage, broadcasting and botanical gardens, along with all the usual suspects: performing arts, literature, film, visual arts, and so...

The creative economy could fuel Australia's next boom By Stuart Cunningham , Queensland University of Technology Australia is richly blessed with an abundance of resources which, along with robust legal, business and political infrastructure, has allowed it to pull through tough times on several occasions. As we face a slowing of the current boom in...