Arena hits high notes as voice for the people

Tina Arena has no trouble making herself understood. She knows her own mind. Says what she has to say. Looks you in the eye.

Tina Arena is the new board member of the Australia Council for the Arts. Picture: Britta Campion

Tina Arena has no trouble making herself understood. She knows her own mind. Says what she has to say. Looks you in the eye.

As a plump-cheeked eight-year-old, the child of Sicilian migrants, she captured the nation’s hearts on Young Talent Time. She’s the pop star who could do both Hi-NRG and soaring power ballads. The actress who trod the boards from the West End to the Sydney Opera House, most recently as Eva Peron in Evita. After more than four decades in the public eye, her appeal cuts across generations.

That’s why she can talk about art as a kind of social glue, and as an expression of craft and discipline. When she speaks in quasi-mystical terms about the power of art and music, she somehow makes it sound believable.

“Art is something that’s an energy,” she says. “It’s a metaphysical energy and people don’t ever spend a lot of time thinking about that. I know it when I walk out on a stage.”

It’s Arena’s experience of living the creative life, coupled with her sometimes outspoken views on artists’ livelihoods and the quality of the national culture, that has brought her to the Australia Council’s headquarters in Sydney’s Pyrmont.

Back in March came the news that Arena would be joining the board of the federal arts agency, at the personal invitation of Scott Morrison. The Prime Minister is an unabashed fan, almost an obsessive. Appointing her to the Australia Council may be a captain’s pick, but it also has a touch of populist flair — similar to his installation of Ita Buttrose as chairwoman of the ABC.

Arena says Morrison has given her permission to rattle the Australia Council’s cage, to be the “feisty little one who might be some sort of an asset to the board, to bring some fresh perspective to the table”.

“That’s the premise of it for me, drawing on 44 years of a really broad foray into the arts,” she says. “I think there’s something that I can bring to the table very honestly — experience of the commercial music world, experience of the independent, artistic musical world.”

When we meet, she’s not long off the plane from Melbourne. The night before, she had been a special guest at Kate Miller-Heidke’s concert at Hamer Hall. Having landed in Sydney, she looks tired and is evidently hungry — a half-munched wrap sits on the plate in front of her. Later in the evening, she’ll give a speech at the opening of the Australia Council’s new off­ices, speaking without notes to a gathering that will include federal Arts Minister Paul Fletcher, the Australia Council’s chairman and former Rio Tinto boss Sam Walsh, and many leaders of Sydney arts companies.

This is the milieu we call “the arts”, and Arena admits it makes her slightly nervous to be mixing it with this crowd. Despite her international success, she still feels uncom­fortable to be addressing an organisation that, she says, has had airs of elitism. It’s her mission, and the Australia Council’s mission, too, to make the arts available to everyone. Part of the challenge is to recognise that the “face of this country has changed”.

“I grew up with the Italians, I grew up with the Lebanese, the Yugoslavs, the Maltese, and it was a hilarious period to grow up in,” she says. “So for me, the arts is a place of different cultures coming together — but we don’t understand that because the media and education have never really taught us about those cultures and sensibilities … that’s a real objective of the artistic community because the arts is something based on heart and feeling … it’s a responsibility. We can’t change the past; we can only change the present and hopefully change the future.”

Arena and her French partner Vincent Mancini have a 14-year-old son, Gabriel. If a love of music and the arts can be kindled in childhood, she is alert to the challenges and distractions that confront the emerging generation. The kids seem glued to their smartphones — “Thank you, Silicon Valley, for toxifying our children,” she says — and are exposed to a commercial culture that values celebrity over hard-won attainment.

“We don’t need to sell people a fantasy, which is something that’s been done,” she says. “It’s not about that. A craft is not learned overnight, a craft takes time. Through that craft, you make mistakes — because through those mistakes you learn … and it’s usually in pain that you do your greatest growing.

“Anybody’s dream is achievable, but don’t be seduced by the fantasy because reality is going to have a completely different effect on you. I don’t like selling dreams to people, I’m a realist.”

More important is participation, having a go, doing something for the love of it. When children take up music or dance classes, when teenagers and adults enjoy a creative hobby such as cooking or craft, they are contributing to what Arena calls the “grassroots” of the culture.

“It’s having a discipline, and being fascinated by that discipline — if you’re an artisan, if you’re making food, whatever it is. It’s about getting back to the old-fashioned way of understanding that a craft is a craft. And everybody’s involvement in that adds to the cultural fibre of society.

“I see my role with the Australia Council as helping them think a little bit more outside the box, and providing art for other communities and cultures, and mixing those beautiful things with music, with dance, with food, through families coming together, through celebrating art, through storytelling.”

On behalf of professional artists, Arena has been outspoken about incomes and about ensuring fair remuneration for creative labour. She has taken aim at, for example, music piracy, Australian music quotas on commercial radio that she regards as too low, and the business model of music streaming platforms that she says is opaque and stacked against creative artists.

“I’ve been banging on about it for years, to the point where people were a little bit annoyed at me,” she says of the payments system of streaming services.

“People would say, ‘You can’t back that up.’ Well yes I can, actually, because if you want to see my last royalty payment, that will prove to you very clearly what I’m talking about. I’m talking about remuneration, full stop … there’s a lot of work to do in that. But before my toes curl, I will make sure. It has to change, and it will.”

She refuses to keep quiet or avoid having difficult conversations about the subjects she is passionate about.

“I can’t be part of a people that doesn’t speak the truth,” she says. “I just cannot. And I refuse to drown in political correctness. I can’t be the best version of the woman I can be if I sit here and have to watch my Ps and Qs, if I can’t have a very honest conversation with somebody in front of me.”

Arena has already attended a meeting of the Australia Council board, which chairman Walsh says ratified the agency’s new corporate plan.

Called Creativity Connects Us, the plan sets out priorities including diversity and access, First Nations cultures, and ensuring that the arts and creativity are “thriving” and “valued”.

Arena links a healthy arts sector to the nation’s general happiness and welfare, including mental health. She wants to be part of a movement that brings more people into meaningful contact with artistic experiences. Part of that mission is to get beyond perceptions that the Australia Council is “inaccessible” or concerned only with what might be called the elite arts.

“That’s not the right image,” she says. “It’s not an image that feels accessible to everybody — and the arts is about everybody. It’s not about segregation. Our job is to think outside the politically correct box because art is not about being politically correct, art is about asking questions …

“So that sense of elite needs to go. I know that’s really where we’re going. Not an inaccessible place — to an accessible place for everyone because everyone deserves it.”