Wesley Enoch keeps kicking goals for the arts
Wesley Enoch, a much loved and admired stalwart of the arts in Queensland, is the new chair of the Australia Council Board of Creative Australia.
Internationally renowned playwright and artistic director Wesley Enoch has scored a major Queensland coup in his appointment as the new chair of the Australia Council Board of Creative Australia.
A Quandamooka man from Stradbroke Island (Minjeribah), he is the first Indigenous Australian to chair the nation’s main arts investment and advisory body, and the first practicing artist to take the helm in more than two decades. Enoch, who takes up a four-year term as chair, says both of these perspectives will be crucial to the role.
“There have been practising artists in the past,” he explains. “I go back to Rodney Hall, who was a novelist, a writer in the ’80s and early ’90s. There were (also) academics who were once musicians … but someone who’s currently making their living as an artist still – that’s me at the moment.
“I think Creative Australia is at a pivotal point. What is the organisational culture of that particular body? How is it relating to artists? How is the ecology of the arts? How is it operating at the moment? And how are artists central to that? So there’s a big conversation to be had, and I’m glad to be in the chair at this point in time.”
Enoch has been deputy chair of the body since August 2023 and has led the board as acting chair since Robert Morgan’s retirement in May. He’s also the professor of Indigenous practice at QUT’s Creative Industries.
With the announcement of his elevation to chair, Enoch reflects on recent Creative Australia crises and says he looks forward to bringing a more collaborative leadership model to the organisation to improve decision-making.
“How do we become more transparent?” he states, before adding that since The Voice referendum in 2023 – “and maybe before then – it’s a very different environment out there now, and we as a society need to engage with what we think is right.
“We, as arts organisations, arts companies, are not just in a transactional relationship with our community. We are now in an educative one. We are in a transparent conversation … and we’ll fall down at times, because we’re human. But we also need to make sure we put in place things that rebuild that confidence in our decisions in our organisations and in the powerful relationships arts have with communities.”
Enoch believes his experience as a practising director and artist will help in that decision-making.
“We (as practicing artists) are actually uniquely positioned to understand how different organisations are working. Whereas, if you’re fulltime in an organisation, sometimes you don’t see how other organisations are working, so you don’t know how to question your own. As freelance artists, we get to say, ‘have you seen that someone did that differently over there? How about this?’ And we get to feel in an empowered position.”
He hopes to continue directing productions alongside his new role.
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“I’ve already got a sense from certain potential employers (who think) my sitting in the chair scares them. Because how can you be an employee or contractor but also the chair of their funding body? So, I want to say very clearly that Creative Australia has very strict conflict of interest rules. The chair does not influence the final decisions of any grants that are made.”
With his director’s cap on, Enoch reflects on his creative achievements.
“The work I love doing is telling stories like The Visitors (opening at QPAC on July 23), which is really informing, engaging with debates and discussions and pushing us as a community. So I’d hate to not do that.
“It gives me purpose and that’s the one thing all artists want – to have purpose. And that purpose can be to make beautiful art or to inform discussion and debate. But I think the biggest thing is that I’m here because a community wants me here.”