Sustainability and Performing Arts in Australia (2021) PDF

Poetics 89 (2021) 101580 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Poetics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locat...

Poetics 89 (2021) 101580 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Poetics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/poetic ‘Sustainability’ and the performing arts: Discourse analytic evidence from Australia Kate Power a, * a University of Queensland, Colin Clark, 39 Blair Dr, St Lucia QLD 4067 AUSTRALIA A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Keywords: This article analyses conceptualisations of ‘sustainability’ within Australia’s subsidised per­ Sustainability forming arts sector, demonstrating how keyword analysis sheds light on questions of cultural Performing arts policy. It reports on a study of 564 Annual Reports produced between 2010 and 2018 by Aus­ Culture tralia’s federal arts funding body, as well as leading subsidised performing arts companies. Keywords Annual reports Identifying three main relationships between sustainability and the arts (sustainability through, in, and of the arts), I argue that Australia’s performing arts sector is chiefly concerned with ‘sus­ tainability of the arts.’ This concern focuses on the financial and organisational viability of arts companies, the ability of artists to make a living from their art, and the ongoing relevance and vibrancy of individual art forms. However, scant attention is paid to the environment, except as required under government legislation and in select performing arts companies. I discuss these findings in relation to Australia’s recent history of arts funding and the argument that ‘culture’ should be recognised as a ‘fourth bottom line’ of sustainability. 1. Introduction The current widespread interest in ‘sustainability’ is often traced to the publication of the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987), which defined ‘sustainable development’ as “meet[ing] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (p. 8). Today, however, sustainability has become a hotly contested term (Agyeman & Evans, 2004), put to diverse and competing uses in different contexts. Given its widespread usage, the term sustainability has arguably achieved the status of a “cultural” or “socio-political keyword” (Jeffries & Walker, 2012, p. 210) – that is, a term that informs and underpins “society’s major cultural debates” (Durant, 2008, p. 134). While some discourse analytic studies seek to establish empirically the keyword status of particular lexical items1, this article follows Jeffries and Walker (2019) by working with an a priori assumption that sustainability is a sociocultural keyword and by focusing on identifying its “use and emergent meaning” within the performing arts (p. 54). This study examines 564 public-facing documents produced by key stakeholders in Australia’s subsidised performing arts sector, analysing conceptualisations of ‘sustainability’ as encoded in the noun sustainability, and corresponding adjective (sustainable), verb (sustain), and adverb (sustainably) forms. I locate the meanings derivable from these words’ co-text, and compare conceptualisations both between stakeholders and over time. In doing so, I argue that – although sustainability is demonstrably important to the per­ forming arts – the dominant understanding of this term within the performing arts concerns the financial and organisational viability of * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 Lexical item is the technical term for words or phrases that have their own dictionary entry. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2021.101580 Received 5 June 2020; Received in revised form 1 November 2020; Accepted 1 June 2021 Available online 16 June 2021 0304-422X/© 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. K. Power Poetics 89 (2021) 101580 performing arts companies, individual artists’ ability to make a living from their art, and the maintenance of specific – particularly heritage – art forms. Environmental issues, by contrast, appear tangential to the sector’s conceptualisation of sustainability. This article models a linguistically-informed approach to close reading known as ‘keyword analysis,’ which holds considerable promise for researchers wishing to use textual analysis as one of their methodological tools. I begin by sketching a recent history of public arts funding in Australia. Next, I briefly review key definitions of sustainability and its cognate forms, along with salient uses of these terms drawn from scholarly and grey literature. I then define “cultural keywords” (Jeffries & Walker, 2012, p. 10) and explain my methodology. Finally, I present and discuss my findings in relation to Australia’s cultural policy debates and the argument that ‘culture’ should be recognised as sustainability’s “fourth bottom line” (Hawkes, 2001). 2. Australia’s subsidised performing arts sector Since 1975, Australia’s federal arts funding has been managed by the Australia Council for the Arts (hereafter OzCo) – an inde­ pendent, peer-review-based statutory body. OzCo in turn has come under the aegis of numerous Arts Ministers, whose portfolios and levels of seniority vary considerably. Throughout this time, Australia’s cultural policy framework has been both ‘thin on the ground’ and largely informed by economic considerations. For example, its inaugural cultural policy Creative Nation (1994), produced by the then Federal Labor Government, stated: “This cultural policy is also an economic policy. Culture creates wealth” (p. 7). Australia’s subsequent Conservative Coalition government (1996 – 2007) substantially restructured arts funding, following a national review informed more by business than artistic principles (Nugent, 1999). Previously regarded as “‘not-for-profit’ entities, with an overall objective of producing good art” (Caust, 2010, p. 32), performing arts companies were now expected to perform like businesses. Public funding was also refocused towards the so-called “major” (larger and more profitable) companies (MPAs), to the detriment of independent artists and small-to-medium companies (S2Ms) (Caust, 2017). Made in a policy vacuum, these changes reflect an “‘instrumentalist’ approach” that values the arts chiefly in economic terms (Craik, 2007, p. 50). However, popular calls for an updated cultural policy had begun in 2005 and the new Labor Prime Minister (2007 – 2010) consulted cultural leaders about such a policy in 2008. Three years and two leadership spills passed, however, before Creative Australia was published in 2013 (Common­ wealth of Australia, 2013) – and it quickly became redundant when a Conservative Coalition government returned to office six months later (Caust, 2015). Historically, Australia’s public arts funding has been lower than in “almost all other advanced Western countries” (Gardi­ ner-Garden, 2009, p. 15), and this support has fallen consistently in real terms since the 1990s irrespective of party politics (MacNeill, Lye, & Caulfield, 2013). Indeed, federal arts funding decreased by 19% in real terms between 2013 and 2019 (Eltham, 2019). Yet, the most egregious blow to the sector came in 2015: then Minister for the Arts, George Brandis, stripped OzCo of 16% of its total budget (Meyrick, Barnett, & Phiddian, 2019), cancelled its six-year funding round mid-cycle (Eltham, 2015), and redirected $104.7 million to a newly-founded National Programme for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA) under own his control (McKenzie-Murray, 2015). Brandis justified these moves using a double-barrelled rhetoric of “‘competition’ in government arts funding” and a commitment to ‘excellence’ in the performing arts (Caust, 2017, p. 9). There ensued a grassroots-led protest prompting Australia’s first-ever Senate Inquiry into arts funding. Brandis’s claims that MPAs attract larger audiences and tour more than S2Ms were shown to be spurious (Eltham & Verhoeven, 2020); Brandis was replaced and the NPEA abandoned; and “most (but not all) of the money” sequestered from OzCo was returned (Meyrick, 2019). Importantly, S2Ms bore the brunt of this debacle while MPAs were “protected and in some cases rewarded, despite their existing dominance of the arts funding cake” (Caust, 2017, p. 1). Trust between the arts sector and the federal government (as well as between MPAs and S2Ms) was “severely damaged” (Meyrick, Barnett, & Phiddian, 2018, p. 10). Table 1 Key operational definitions. Source Term Definition Brundtland Report sustainable development “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED, 1987, p. 8) Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainable development / “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of sustainability future generations to meet their own needs Note 1: Sustainable development encompasses three dimensions: economic, environmental and social. Note 2: Sustainable development refers to broader environmental and societal interests, rather than to the interests of specific organizations. Note 3: In the GRI Standards, the terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ are used interchangeably.” (Global Reporting Initiative, 2020, p. 22) International Organization for Sustainability “state of the global system, which includes environmental, social and economic subsystems, in Standardization (ISO) which the needs of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (ISO Central Secretariat, n.d., p. 4) United Nations Global Compact corporate sustainability “a company’s delivery of long-term value in financial, environmental, social and ethical terms” (United Nations Global Compact, 2014, p. 9) 2 K. Power Poetics 89 (2021) 101580 3. Sustainability and the performing arts 3.1. Defining sustainability Sustainability has been described as “the first genuine cosmopolitan term of humankind” because its semantic invention “is of global historic reach and weight” (Busch & Möller-Kiero, 2017, p. 218). Yet, sustainability discourse operates “on many planes,” such that, “although the language intersects …, the meanings often do not” (McManus, 1996, p. 54). It is important, therefore, to begin by identifying key definitions and uses of sustainability, the most salient of which are listed in Table 1. As the bold font in this table highlights, the Brundtland definition has been adopted by both the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). By contrast, the United Nations Global Compact definition of (corporate) sustainability more closely resembles Elkington’s (1997) “triple bottom line” of “economic, social and environmental” considerations (p. 37). Taken together, these two broad definitions suggest that sustainability is best understood both synchronically (as simulta­ neously involving multiple elements) and diachronically (as observable only over time). However, a growing number of commentators are also calling for the inclusion of culture (Hawkes, 2001; Kagan, 2014; Walters & Takamura, 2015) as sustainability’s fourth ‘bottom line’ (cf. Isar, 2017, p. 149). A specific “cultural goal” (Duxbury, Kangas, & de Beukelaer, 2017, p. 215) is not yet listed among the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, despite years of advocacy (Loach, Rowley, & Griffiths, 2017; Throsby & Petetskaya, 2016). Nevertheless, cultural sustainability is increasingly attracting concern, particularly in Australia (IFACCA, 2013; Soini & Bir­ keland, 2014; Throsby, 2005, 2008, 2017). Finally, it is worth briefly considering the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) definition of sustainability. Given the cultural authority afforded to prestige dictionaries, OED entries arguably both “create knowledge and shape culture” (Nossem, 2018, p. 172). They also reveal popular “cultural assumptions,” as well as the extent to which specialist conceptualisations of lexical items have entered “areas of linguistic scholarship and the culture at large” (Curzan, 2000, p. 91). The online OED lists two senses for sustainability (noun), the most pertinent of which for this study states: “The property of being environmentally sustainable; the degree to which a process or enterprise is able to be maintained or continued while avoiding the long-term depletion of natural resources” ("Oxford English Dic­ tionary," 2019). Importantly, economic, social, and cultural sustainability are not listed. The OED’s entry for sustainable (adjective) features a similar range of senses, including one that links economic and environmental considerations: “forms of human activity (esp. of an economic nature) in which environmental degradation is minimized” ("Oxford English Dictionary," 2019). Separate listings are provided for “some of the more established uses” of this sense ("Oxford English Dictionary," 2019), including: sustainable development (1972). Once again, however, social and cultural sustainability are not included. Finally, the OED lists 15 senses for sustain (verb): none of these address environmental, economic, social or cultural sustainability, but some do refer to the satisfaction of present (but not future) needs. The OED includes no separate listing for sustainably (adverb). This brief review of key definitions and uses suggests that environmental and economic considerations prevail in both specialist and popular conceptualisations of sustainability. It also corroborates previous findings that, although social and cultural sustainability are of interest to (some) specialists, these conceptualisations have yet to be established in either the global sustainability reporting envi­ ronment or the popular vernacular (Vifell & Soneryd, 2012). 3.2. Sustainability through, in, and of the arts Sustainability discourse has been studied extensively in industries with heavy environmental footprints, but communication by and about the arts has attracted considerably less attention. A review of scholarly and grey literature addressing the relationship between ‘sustainability’ and the arts reveals three main approaches. The first of these, which I call ‘sustainability through the arts,’ recognises and recruits the arts for their role in achieving ‘sustainable development’ goals. This approach is clear in UNESCO’s 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (Throsby, 2012; UNESCO, 2013, 2015), and reflected in a growing body of research that shows artistic activities facilitating the rehabilitation of degraded landscapes, as well as both economic development and positive social outcomes (e.g., Lopes, Farinha, & Amado, 2017). Also important here is the communicative potential of the arts to promote environmental awareness and behaviour (Curtis, Reid, & Ballard, 2012; Curtis, Reid, & Reeve, 2014). For example, educators are increasingly using the arts to enhance children’s learning about the natural world and social justice themes (O’Gorman, 2014). The second approach – ‘sustainability in the arts’ – involves gauging the arts’ environmental footprint and embedding environ­ mental responsibility within arts policy and practice (Maxwell & Miller, 2017). This approach is less developed than the first, perhaps because the arts are not stereotypically implicated in environmental degradation. However, awareness is growing that the environ­ mental footprint of touring and other aspects of arts practice warrant attention. UK-based charity Julie’s Bicycle, for example, pro­ motes environmentally sustainable practices within arts-based organisations and has published three studies with this focus (Moving Table 2 Data set. Organisation type Total organisations Total possible reports Total available reports % of total possible reports OzCo 1 9 9 100 MPAs 26 234 227 97 KOs 50 450 327 73 TOTAL 77 693 564 81 3 K. Power Poetics 89 (2021) 101580 arts: Managing the carbon impacts of our touring, 2010a; Moving arts: Managing the carbon impacts of our touring, 2010b; Moving arts: Managing the carbon impacts of our touring, 2010c). The final approach – ‘sustainability of the performing arts’ – recognises similarities between natural and cultural capital: both nature and culture “have been inherited from the past, both yield use and non-use benefits, and both impose a duty of care” (Throsby, 2011, p. 144). From this viewpoint, “the stock of cultural capital available to a community or a nation” is treated as “a valued resource that has somehow to be managed… within a sustainability framework” (Throsby, 2017, p. 136). This requires choices to be made about what can and should be preserved, taking into account future generations’ expected priorities and the current generation’s willingness to subordinate present decision-making to future well-being. Aligning with the argument that culture is sustainability’s fourth pillar, this approach is particularly salient for indigenous communities (Throsby & Petetskaya, 2016), although its relevance is in fact much wider. Among arts practitioners and managers, the arts sector is often described as an “ecology,” comprising “cultural workers, especially artists, and leaders of public, non-profit, and unincorporated community groups that produce, present, organise, guide, regulate, and serve the cultural economy” (Markusen, 2010, p. 814). From this perspective, the main focus of ‘sustainability’ tends to be the capacity of arts organisations to operate successfully over time (Finley, Gralen, & Fichtner, 2006). A second focus involves the health of the sector as a whole, and of subsidised arts in particular (Hunt & Shaw, 2008). Career sustainability presents a third concern – that is, the ability of individuals to make a living from their art (Throsby & Zednik, 2010), and to maintain that career over the long term (Jeffri & Throsby, 2006). Within each of these foci, securing support from “the market” – rather than relying solely on public funding – is seen as critically important (Gilfillan & Morrow, 2018, p. 200). While ‘sustainability through the arts’ and ‘sustainability in the arts’ are both concerned with “triple bottom line” sustainability, ‘sustainability of the arts’ involves no direct or necessary connection with the environment. Rather, ‘ecological’ language is used metaphorically, with organisational, sectoral, artistic, and career sustainability predicated upon – and, thus, at risk of being reduced to – financial sustainability (Hunt & Shaw, 2008). The aim of this study is to identify which of these three approaches is most salient for Australia’s performing arts sector by answering the following questions: 1 How is ‘sustainability’ conceptualised by Australia’s subsidised performing arts sector, as depicted in annual reports produced by key stakeholders? 2 What differences, if any, are discernible in these conceptualisations, across time and between stakeholders? 4. Methodology 4.1. Keywords This study draws on Williams’s (1983 ) notion of keywords, which holds that some lexical items are culturally significant, insofar as they “appear to reflect a value-system of the time” (Jeffries & Walker, 2012, p. 210). Williams created his own list of keywords, based on his understanding of post-war culture. More recently, scholars have used corpus linguistic methods to demonstrate empirically that certain lexical items should be recognised as “cultural keywords” (Jeffries & Walker, 2012, p. 211). However, other researchers follow Williams in making a priori assumptions that specific lexical items are cultural keywords – not only because they reflect contemporary “political interests” and enact “real social conflicts” (Durant, 2006, p. 9), but also because they are polysemous, controversial, and likely to “lead to cross purposes and confusion in public debate” (Durant, 2006, p. 4). Following Jeffries and Walker (2019), I adopt the latter approach – treating sustainability as a cultural keyword and seeking to identify its “use and emergent meaning” in public-facing documents produced by Australian arts organisations (p. 54). 4.2. Data Annual reports are complex documents serving multiple purposes and audiences. Combining financial information with a narrative section interpreting the organisation’s performance, they inform funding bodies (where applicable), as well as existing and potential investors (David, 2001). Annual reports are also a promotional genre through which organisations seek to construct positive public-facing identities (Grove Ditlevsen, 2012). As such, they signal the organisation’s “conception of audience and the types of appeal that [the organisation] considers most persuasive for that audience” (Hyland, 1998, p. 225). Designed to “evoke positive Table 3 MPA and KO art forms. Art form MPAs KOs COMBINED % of total Circus 1 1 2 2.6 Community Arts & Cultural Development 0 4 4 5.3 Dance 5 9 14 18.4 Multidisciplinary 0 4 4 5.3 Music 9 6 15 19.7 Opera 3 0 3 3.9 Peak Body 0 6 6 7.9 Theatre 8 16 24 31.6 Other 0 4 4 5.3 TOTAL 26 50 76 100 4 K. Power Poetics 89 (2021) 101580 cultural myths” about the organisation (David, 2001, p. 195), annual reports cannot be read as transparent representations of sus­ tainability practices. However, they do signal how organisations wish to be seen – and, in the case of this study, which con­ ceptualisation(s) of ‘sustainability’ organisations choose to highlight. This study analyses 564 annual reports produced between 2010 and 2018 by OzCo, as well as both MPAs and so-called “Key Organisations” (KOs), which are S2Ms in receipt of multi-year OzCo funding. Where possible, electronic reports were downloaded from organisational websites, with others sought directly from each company. At the time of this study, there were 28 MPAs, 26 of which reported independently. There were also 144 Key Organisations, of which 79 focus on the performing arts. Companies that did not provide at least one report were excluded, resulting in the dataset outlined below. Collectively, OzCo, MPAs and KOs are arguably the key stakeholders in Australia’s subsidised performing arts sector. Consequently, this dataset carries public policy interest (Caust, 2017) while allowing for comparisons to be made across the sector. As shown in Table 3, the MPAs and KOs in this study also afford an opportunity to analyse whether – and, if so, how – conceptualisations of ‘sustainability’ vary by art form and/or individual company. 4.3. Analysis All sections of each report were analysed qualitatively, mapping both the grammatical realisations of ‘sustainability’ (syntactic analysis) and the range of meanings produced by sustainability and its cognate forms (sustainable, sustain, sustainably) within their co- textual environments (semantic analysis). This twofold approach documented how Australia’s performing arts sector conceptualises ‘sustainability,’ including what it depicts as needing to be sustained, and by whom – as well as the behaviours depicted as being or needing to be done sustainably. First, I uploaded every report to NVIVO and produced a concordance featuring every occurrence of sustainability, sustainable, sustain, and sustainably, along with their respective co-text. Although many keyword studies generate concordances using specialised software, I worked with NVIVO because it allows for greater variation in the amount of co-text retrieved and is therefore better suited to the multimodal design of annual reports. NVIVO is also a widely-used qualitative data analysis tool with which non-linguists are more likely to be familiar, making the keyword analysis modelled here more readily adoptable by scholars from diverse disciplines. I then coded every search term occurrence syntactically, identifying the part of speech used (i.e., noun, verb, adjective, adverb), as well as how each term combined with other words in its immediate co-text. For example, noun phrases often comprise a single ‘head noun’ (e.g., sustainability), but they can include other words (e.g., adjectives) that govern the head noun’s meaning. These ‘modifiers’ may be positioned before (pre-modifiers) and/or after (post-modifiers) the head noun, with the former tending to carry more emphasis. When used, however, post-modifying prepositional phrases are integral to a head noun’s meaning, making them similarly important. I Table 4 Sustainability conceptualisations. Conceptualisation Description Examples Artistic The maintenance of a particular art form. (1) Mission To present opera that excites audiences and sustains and develops the art form. (Opera Australia, 2010) Career The capacity of individual artists to make a living from their art (2) The program is a three year strategic initiative focused on form (incl. remuneration, physicality, performance opportunities, building essential professional development skills and professional development). opportunities to create work and sustain a professional career. (Bangarra, 2013) Environmental Concern for and/or practices to protect the environment. (3) All these assets have been purchased to provide investment in the latest sustainability infrastructure; new green theatre technology and up to date energy efficiencies that will ultimately save the Company money and reduce our carbon footprint. (Sydney Theatre Company, 2011) Financial Financial viability and/or targeted efforts to increase the same. (4) Whilst this is manageable within our reserves base, Circus Oz remains focused on financial sustainability in 2018 and beyond. (Circus Oz, 2017) Organisational The ongoing operation of specific arts organisations (includes (5) Ensuring a secure and sustainable ballet company that can governance practices). play its full part in achieving a vibrant, diverse, and civilised society for the benefit of future generations of Western Australians. (WA Ballet, 2015) Sectoral The ongoing viability and/or health of the arts sector. (6) Support of and investment in the local performing arts sector yields a sustainable, viable, thriving creative industry which is critical to the Company’s success. (State Theatre of South Australia, 2018). Socio-cultural Social / cultural wellbeing (includes arts-based community (7) QSO’s partnership with Australia Pacific LNG is endeavouring outreach and education activities, and general references to to provide sustainable regional community engagement culture). and education programs …. (Queensland Symphony Orchestra, 2012) Unspecified No specific referent or clear conceptualisation. (8) TOWARD A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE (Opera Queensland, 2015) 5 K. Power Poetics 89 (2021) 101580 also examined all words modified by sustainable and sustainably, as well as all grammatical subjects and objects of the verb sustain. Lastly, because textual equivalences can be created through the collocation and coordination of lexical items (Jeffries & Walker, 2019), I identified every lexical item associated with my search terms through collocation in lists and/or coordination via the conjunction and. I thus determined how ‘sustainability’ keywords interact with other words in their co-text and what those patterns suggest about arts organisations’ conceptualisations of ‘sustainability.’ While this kind of highly detailed analysis is of interest to linguists, its minutiae may test the patience of readers more focused on how sustainability is conceptualised by the performing arts. I therefore present it in summary form below, discussing in detail only those excerpts that add directly to the bigger picture. Finally, I coded every search term occurrence semantically, iteratively generating and revising category labels to represent the diverse conceptualisations of ‘sustainability’ found in my dataset. This process involved three stages: first, I inductively generated a preliminary set of categories based on a close-reading of every report. Second, a research assistant with experience in the performing arts independently repeated this process. Third, after comparing and discussing these results, I completed a final round of coding using the revised category labels listed in Table 4. To facilitate comparisons across the sector, I also coded all mentions of ‘sustainability’ in MPA and KO reports for both the company that produced the report and the art form represented (i.e., Circus, Community Arts & Cultural Development, Dance, Multidisciplinary, Music, Opera, Peak Body, Theatre, Other). As often happens in inductive qualitative analysis (Thomas, 2006), several search term occurrences were categorised using more than one label because more than one conceptualisation was suggested by the immediate co-text. In most cases, this co-text was limited to the sentence within which each search term occurrence appeared. However, when search terms occurred in section headings, tables, or other nonlinear text, the smallest relevant unit (e.g., table cell or diagram) was analysed. 5. Results 5.1. Overview In combining syntactic and semantic analyses, my aim was to identify qualitatively the conceptualisations of ‘sustainability’ found across Australia’s performing arts sector. However, these qualitative results are also displayed numerically to highlight both “patterns in the data and deviations from those patterns” (Sandelowski, 2001, p. 231). First, Table 5 summarises the relative importance of the seven ‘sustainability’ conceptualisations that emerged from my analysis. Second, Table 6 illustrates how those conceptualisations map onto the three ways of understanding the relationship between ‘sustainability’ and ‘the arts’ (outlined in Section 3.2 above). Sections 5.2 and 5.3 expand on these results: Section 5.2 presents my syntactic and semantic analyses of OzCo reports; Section 5.3 discusses MPA and KO reports. In the interests of brevity, illustrative examples are drawn only from MPA reports. 5.2. ‘Sustainability’ and Australia’s federal arts funding body Sustainability keywords are mentioned 97 times in OzCo’s annual reports, with an average of 10.7 mentions per report. As illustrated in Table 7, these mentions include 51 occurrences of sustainability (52.5%), 45 of sustainable (46.4%), one of sustain (1.03%), and no occurrences of sustainably. Nominal style is characteristic of formal written documents, but this grammatical distribution Table 5 Sustainability conceptualisations. Conceptualisations OzCo (n=9) MPAs (n=227) KOs (n=327) # average per document % of total # average per document % of total # average per document % of total Artistic 18 2.0 17.1 85 0.4 8.6 67 0.2 8.7 Career 12 1.3 11.4 47 0.2 4.7 45 0.1 5.8 Environmental 26 2.9 24.8 145 0.6 14.8 100 0.3 13 Financial 5 0.6 4.8 355 1.6 36 153 0.5 19.8 Organisational 9 1.0 8.6 217 1.0 22 197 0.6 25.6 Sectoral 30 3.3 28.6 13 0.1 1.3 22 0.1 2.9 Socio-cultural 0 0 0 50 0.2 5.1 68 0.2 8.8 Unspecified 5 0.6 4.7 74 0.3 7.5 119 0.4 15.4 TOTAL 105 11.8 100 986 4.3 100 771 2.3 100 Table 6 Sustainability – through, in and/or of the performing arts. Sustainability… OzCo MPAs KOs # % of total # % of total # % of total … through the arts sociocultural 0 0 50 5.5 68 10.4 … in the arts environmental 26 26 145 15.9 100 15.3 … of the arts artistic career financial organisational sectoral 74 74 717 78.6 484 74.3 TOTAL† 100 100 912 100 652 100 † Unspecified conceptualisations of ‘sustainability’ are not included in this table. 6 K. Power Poetics 89 (2021) 101580 Table 7 Sustainability syntax in OzCo reports (2010 – 2018). Grammatical realisation # of % of total Examples occurrences occurrences Noun unmodified sustainability 16 16.5 (9) The Council manages funding relationships with 145 Key Organisations and two Territory Orchestras to promote the highest level of artistic achievement and sustainability. (Australia Council, 2015) pre-modifier + 6 6.2 (10) Support is focused on excellence, participation, distribution and artistic sustainability sustainability. (Australia Council, 2014) [pre-modifier +] 29 29.9 (11) We are very conscious that a healthy ecology is a necessary pre-condition for the sustainability + post- long term sustainability of the arts. (Australia Council, 2014) modifier (12) … sustainability in Indigenous arts (Australia Council, 2010) Adjective sustainable 45 46.4 (13) Ecologically Sustainable Development (Australia Council, 2017) Verb sustain 1 1.0 (14) In 2009 the Government announced the continuation of its support of the Melba Foundation with a grant of $2.25 million … in order to sustain the organisation while it builds income from non-government sources… (Australia Council, 2012) TOTAL 97 100 suggests that OzCO conceptualises ‘sustainability’ chiefly as an abstract entity or characteristic, rather than a type of behaviour or way of behaving. Unmodified nouns (Excerpt 9) provide no syntactic clues about a word’s meaning; rather, they signal that meaning is “transparent and [that] readers/listeners are assumed to know” it (Jeffries & Walker, 2019, p. 64). However, with two-thirds of its mentions (35/51) pre- and/or post-modified in some way, OzCo provides readers with numerous clues as to its conceptualisation of sustainability (Excerpt 11). These mentions point overwhelmingly to Australia’s arts sector (23/29) as needing to be sustained – in its entirety (of the arts ecology), as well as specific industries (of the MPA sector). Artistic practice (5/29) is also mentioned, albeit at a lower rate. In Excerpt 10, for example, the pre-modifier artistic reflects the Council’s mandate to “support Australian arts practice” ("Australia Council Act," 2013). Strikingly however – given OzCo’s mandate to “support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts practice” ("Australia Council Act," 2013) – Excerpt 12 is the only mention of sustainability in connection with indigenous arts. Further pre-modifiers link sustainability to the environment (x3), and highlight its temporal location (future) (x1) and/or duration (ongoing, long-term) (x6). These patterns suggest a concern on OzCo’s part that, although the performing arts in Australia may currently be (synchronically) ‘sustainable,’ its future as such (diachronic sustainability) is in question. Nearly half of OzCo’s ‘sustainability’ mentions (46.4%) take the form of adjectives. As exemplified in Excerpt 13, the prevalence of references to ecologically sustainable development (23/45) can be explained by the legal requirement that Commonwealth Statutory Authorities report on how their annual activities “accorded with the principles of ecologically sustainable development” ("Environ­ ment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act," 1999). Other nouns modified by sustainable include careers/pathways (8/45), arts infrastructure/sector (4/45), future (2/45), arts organisations (2/45), and environment (1/45), suggesting a broad conceptualisation including organisational, career, sectoral, artistic, and environmental sustainability. However, closer inspection reveals that envi­ ronment is used metaphorically here – referring to an environment where experimental and emerging arts practice can flourish (Australia Council, 2015), rather than to the natural environment. Aside from mandated reporting, therefore, OzCo’s use of the adjective sus­ tainable suggests a focus on the viability and wellbeing of Australia’s arts sector. The single use of the verb form sustain (Excerpt 14) reinforces this perspective in relation to a single organisation. The final step in my syntactic analysis of OzCo reports involved identifying all of the lexical items collocated with ‘sustainability’ keywords, whether in lists or connected to them by and. While this kind of collocation does not necessarily imply synonymy, it does indicate the types of meanings associated with ‘sustainability’ and thus gestures towards particular conceptualisations (Jeffries & Walker, 2019). As illustrated in Excerpt 15 below, for example, OzCo collocates ‘sustainability’ with vibrancy (x9); excellence (x4); innovation and resilience (x3). (15) Charged with the role of champion and investor, the Council promotes artistic vibrancy, innovation and sustainability. (Australia Council, 2017) Analysing OzCo reports semantically required both widening the scope of co-text considered and allowing multiple category labels to be assigned to each search term occurrence. As mapped in Table 8, this process generated an average of 11.7 conceptualisations per report. Two dominant conceptualisations emerge: sectoral and environmental sustainability. Sectoral sustainability is mentioned in every OzCo report, but appears most often (8/30) in 2015 – that is, the year in which Senator Brandis redistributed funding away from OzCO and S2M arts companies, but left MPA funding intact. It is not insignificant, therefore, that – as illustrated in Excerpt 16 below – OzCo highlights MPA companies’ responsibility for sectoral sustainability in that year’s report: (16) The MPA companies receive funding to develop and present excellent works, and foster a vibrant and sustainable performing arts sector. (Australia Council, 2015) 7 K. Power Poetics 89 (2021) 101580 Table 8 ‘Sustainability’ semantics in OzCo reports (2010 – 2018). 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 TOTAL % of total Artistic 1 0 1 2 2 3 3 2 4 18 17.1 Career 3 0 3 0 1 0 0 1 4 12 11.4 Environmental 2 3 3 3 2 3 3 3 4 26 24.8 Financial 0 0 2 0 1 1 1 0 0 5 4.8 Organisational 0 0 3 1 1 2 0 1 1 9 8.6 Sectoral 1 3 3 1 2 8 3 4 5 30 28.6 Socio-cultural 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Unspecified 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 5 4.8 TOTAL 8 6 15 7 9 17 12 12 19 105 100 Mentions of environmental sustainability are distributed more evenly across the timeframe studied, due mostly to mandated sustainability reporting. However, as Excerpt 17 below demonstrates, OzCo also publicly celebrates voluntary engagement by its staff in measures to promote environmental sustainability: (17) The Green Council is a network of staff interested in environmental management which supports the Australia Council’s activities to champion environmental sustainability. (Australia Council, 2012) Less frequent are mentions of artistic (18/105) and career sustainability (12/105), which is surprising given OzCo research at both ends of the timeframe studied (mentioned in Excerpts 18 and 19 below), which identified Australian artists’ careers as a matter of critical importance: (18) Our commissioned research into the level of incomes and the sustainable careers of Australian artists is less positive. (Australia Council, 2010) (19) While there is much to celebrate this year, there is an urgent need to address how we as a nation value our artists – and how we do this sustainably through appropriate support structures, protections and remuneration. (Australia Council, 2018) Organisational (9/105) and financial sustainability (5/105) appear still less frequently – and, each of these mentions refers to the arts sector in general, or to specific organisations, rather than to OzCo itself. 5.3. ‘Sustainability’ and Australia’s federally-subsidised performing arts companies As illustrated in Table 9, MPA and KO reports mention my search terms, on average, 3.3 and 2.2 times respectively per report. Nearly half of these mentions are nouns and more than one third are adjectives. Verb and adverbial forms are rarely used. This dis­ tribution suggests that, like OzCo, subsidised performing arts companies conceptualise ‘sustainability’ chiefly as an entity or quality, and seldom as a type of behaviour or way of behaving. Nearly one quarter of all sustainability (noun) mentions go unmodified (162/691), but in several such cases sustainability pre- modifies (Excerpt 21) or post-modifies (Excerpt 23) another noun phrase. These syntactic relationships link sustainability to head nouns depicting planning (goals, program), organisational structures (Council, team), financial support (infrastructure, reserves), communication (reporting, blog), behaviour (initiatives, practices), and esteem measures (Awards, Excellence). More often, sustainability (noun) is pre- and/or post-modified (408/691). As illustrated in Excerpt 24, pre-modification embeds specific meanings within ‘sustainability’ noun phrases, particularly: duration (long-term, ongoing); financial viability (financial, busi­ ness); and possession by a specific company (Bangarra’s, our). Other, less frequent meanings include temporal location (future), scalability (increased, greater), and non-financial conceptualisations of ‘sustainability’ (environmental, artistic). In cases such as Excerpt 25, prepositional phrases indicate what is (and/or needs to be) sustained, as well as both where ‘sustainability’ is located and in what manner it should be understood. In MPA reports, more than 80% (52/60) of these cases link ‘sustainability’ to individual companies – whether by name (of QSO), by reference to the company’s activities (in every area of our endeavour), or more generically (as a business). This pattern encodes future financial viability as MPA companies’ chief concern. KO reports also use post-modifying prepositional phrases to index the company, but at a lower rate (52/90). Other sustainability objects similarly indexed by KOs include local com­ munities, the performing arts sector and networks, individual careers, and artistic culture and practice. The adjective sustainable is used most often to modify nouns or noun phrases depicting the financial underpinning and/or business practices of the company that authored the report (Excerpt 27). Because most mentions of sustainable remain unmodified (471/570), the conceptualisations they encode are unclear. However, when pre-modified (MPAs=84/274; KOs=15/296), sustainable is most often preceded by financially (MPAs and KOs) and environmentally (MPAs only). Further, less frequent pre-modifiers signal scalability (more), duration (long-term), and possession (our). Every MPA and KO mention of sustain (verb) takes a direct object, making consistently clear who and/or what these companies view as being (or needing to be) sustained (Excerpt 28). Most often, this involves the companies themselves (66/186), but other objects include arts practice and programming (38/186), financial performance (18/186), relationships with audiences and funding bodies (13/186), and individual artists and their careers (8/186). However, because only around half of these verbs are paired with a 8 K. Power Poetics 89 (2021) 101580 Table 9 Sustainability syntax in MPA and KO reports (2010 – 2018). Grammatical realisation # of % of total Examples† occurrences occurrences Noun unmodified sustainability MPA=79 MPA=10.6 (20) The Company’s direction and activities are underpinned by its agreed (n=691) KO=83 KO=11.5 Values: […] Sustainability (Opera Australia, 2010) [pre-modifier +] MPA=62 MPA=8.4 (21) Develop a sustainability strategy (Queensland Theatre, 2011) sustainability + noun‡ KO=39 KO=5.4 (22) Malthouse Greenlight is our commitment to reducing energy wastage and improving the company’s sustainability practices. (Malthouse, 2013) noun phrase + preposition + MPA=16 MPA=2.2 (23) Director of sustainability (Queensland Ballet, 2018) unmodified sustainability‡ KO=4 KO=0.5 pre-modifier + sustainability MPA=124 MPA=16.8 (24) Growing income to enhance financial sustainability. (Bangarra, 2015) KO=130 KO=18.1 [pre-modifier +] MPA=64 MPA=8.7 (25) The generous contributions of our Production Centre Patrons and sustainability + post-modifier KO=90 KO=12.5 Supporters will ensure the future sustainability of this revered and renowned company. (The Australian Ballet, 2016) Adjective sustainable MPA=274 MPA=37.1 (26) Notwithstanding the considerable challenges we have experienced in (n=570) KO=296 KO=41.3 2013, we are confident our Strategic Plan continues to provide the basis for a long term sustainable business model for Opera Queensland. (Opera QLD, 2013) Verb sustain MPA=108 MPA=14.6 (27) I would like to acknowledge and thank our entire staff, both permanent (n=186) KO=78 KO=10.7 and casual, for their continued dedication to and love for the work we create, and to our audiences for continuing to demonstrate their love of theatre as an art form that can excite, sustain and nurture them. (State Theatre of SA, 2011) Adverb sustainably‡ MPA=12 MPA=1.6 (28) Operate sustainably to add to community well being. (Queensland (n=12) KO=0 KO=0 Theatre, 2012) TOTAL MPA=739 100 (n=1,459) KO=720 † All of these excerpts come from MPA reports, but KO reports contain similar examples. ‡ These grammatical realisations do not appear in OzCo reports. grammatical subject (99/186), it is not always clear whom arts companies consider responsible for taking ‘sustainability’ action. Those most often singled out are financial support/ers (38/99), arts companies (25/99), and artforms/performances (24/99). In short, MPA and KO uses of sustainable (adjective) portray themselves, their financial wellbeing, and the art forms they represent as (at least partially) dependent upon the actions of company members and external support(ers). A similar pattern is noticeable with the adverb sustainably (MPA reports only). As illustrated by Excerpt 28, most mentions (8/12) modify the verb to operate, again depicting com­ panies’ own activities as central to their conceptualisation of ‘sustainability.’ One final syntactic clue as to how MPAs and KOs conceptualise ‘sustainability’ is provided by its collocation and coordination with development (growth), artistic practice and outcomes (artistic vitality), financial wellbeing (strong reserves), management (good gover­ nance), and continuity (ongoing success). By means of these connections, ‘sustainability’ is aligned with various positively-evaluated outcomes related to both art and finances. My semantic analysis of MPA and KO annual reports generated similar findings. Using the category labels described in Table 3 above, I located 1,757 ‘sustainability’ conceptualisations: 986 in MPA reports (averaging 4.3 per report) and 771 in KO reports (2.4 per report), as outlined in Tables 10 and 11. Three dominant conceptualisations of ‘sustainability’ emerge: financial (36%), organisational (22%), and environmental (14.7%). With the exception of sectoral sustainability, all seven sustainability conceptualisations are mentioned at least once in each year studied, suggesting their ongoing relevance for Australia’s subsidised performing arts sector. Yet, this general finding masks important dif­ ferences between individual art forms and companies. First, as illustrated in Table 12 below, theatre companies (MPAs and KOs) outstrip all other art forms in the frequency with which they conceptualise ‘sustainability.’ Second, financial and/or organisational sustainability are among the top priorities for all art forms. However, artistic sustainability is opera’s main concern (MPAs only), while artistic and socio-cultural sustainability are dominant concerns for Community Arts and Cultural Development (KOs only). Third, Table 10 ‘Sustainability’ semantics in MPA reports (2010 – 2018). 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 TOTAL % of total Artistic 6 12 11 8 10 10 15 8 5 85 8.6 Career 4 5 4 4 6 5 9 6 4 47 4.7 Environmental 10 15 10 27 19 17 16 13 18 145 14.8 Financial 22 26 42 22 42 45 46 58 52 355 36.0 Organisational 15 13 18 12 21 27 38 40 33 217 22.0 Sectoral 1 0 0 0 4 1 1 2 4 13 1.3 Socio-cultural 4 10 8 3 6 5 5 6 3 50 5.1 Unspecified 9 8 9 7 10 9 6 5 11 74 7.5 TOTAL 71 89 102 83 118 119 136 138 130 986 100 9 K. Power Poetics 89 (2021) 101580 Table 11 ‘Sustainability’ semantics in KO reports (2010 – 2018). 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 TOTAL % of total Artistic 10 9 8 10 10 9 8 2 1 67 8.7 Career 3 3 2 1 2 7 8 8 11 45 5.8 Environmental 1 10 19 11 12 12 19 8 7 100 13.0 Financial 9 9 9 15 13 27 31 24 16 153 19.8 Organisational 5 16 15 18 22 32 31 31 27 197 25.6 Sectoral 3 1 0 2 0 1 6 6 3 22 2.9 Socio-cultural 18 7 6 9 6 9 5 5 1 68 8.8 Unspecified 9 7 7 4 12 15 23 23 19 119 15.4 TOTAL 58 62 66 70 77 112 131 107 85 771 100 Table 12 ‘Sustainability’ conceptualisation mentions by art form. Conceptualisations Average # of mentions per company CACD Circus Dance Multi- Music Opera Peak Body Theatre Other Artistic 3 0.5 2.6 2.5 1.5 9.3 2.3 10.5 1.5 Career 0 3 1.3 1.3 0.5 3 2.2 10.4 0 Environmental 0.5 1 2.6 7.3 0.1 0 0.2 15.7 1.3 Financial 3 5.5 10.6 10.8 6.7 8.3 2.3 15.4 1.3 Organisational 0.8 4.5 9.8 10.8 4.1 3.3 3.8 14 2.8 Sectoral 0.8 0 0.3 0 0 0.3 2.2 9.5 0.3 Socio-cultural 3 0 0.7 8.8 0.9 0.3 0.8 10.5 0.8 Unspecified 1.75 3.5 2.5 3.5 1.6 3.7 3.3 12 1.5 TOTAL 10.5 18 30.1 36 14.5 28.3 18.5 97 8.8 environmental sustainability is mentioned most often by theatre, but most of these mentions were produced by just a handful of companies: two companies account for more than three quarters (83%) of all MPA mentions (Queensland Theatre=62%; Sydney Theatre Company=21%). One dance and one theatre company account for half (51%) of all KO mentions (Lucy Guerin, Inc.=29%; The Blue Room Theatre=22%). 6. Discussion This study identifies how ‘sustainability’ is conceptualised within Australia’s performing arts sector. Combining syntactic and semantic analyses of annual reports produced between 2010 and 2018, it documents differences in ‘sustainability’ conceptualisations, both across this time period and between key stakeholders. In doing so, it documents for the first time conceptualisations of the keyword sustainability (and its cognate forms) within the performing arts – vis-à-vis both specialist and vernacular definitions and usages – thereby corroborating Jeffries and Walker’s (2019) observation that “individual words… may connote a whole complex of meaning subtly different from the everyday usage of the same word” (p. 53). This study also reveals that public reporting across Australia’s subsidised performing arts sector consistently focuses on ‘sustain­ ability’ of – rather than through or in – the arts. This focus is evident in the relative frequencies with which sustainability con­ ceptualisations are mentioned, not only across the dataset but also across the time period, art forms, and companies studied. For example, annual reports produced by Australia’s chief arts funding body (OzCo), as well as its leading subsidised performing arts companies (MPAs and KOs), most often address the financial and organisational viability of arts companies and the arts sector as a whole. Career and artistic sustainability appear as secondary interests. However, with the exception of mandated sustainability reporting on the part of OzCo and the focused attention of a few companies, environmental sustainability (sustainability in the arts) is seldom mentioned. Moreover, socio-cultural sustainability (sustainability through the arts) is mentioned even less often, and only by arts or­ ganisations (not OzCo). Five further, related findings emerge from this analysis. First, 2010–2018 saw an increase in the overall number of ‘sustainability’ mentions, in both funding and funded organisations’ annual reports. This suggests that concern for ‘sustainability’ may be growing within the sector. Of particular note, however are 2014 and 2015, when the impact of Minister Brandis’s cuts to arts funding – directed chiefly at S2M companies – is evident in the dataset. Between 2014 and 2015, mentions of financial sustainability increased by 115% in KO reports, but just 7% in MPA reports. Organisational sustainability mentions also rose more rapidly in KO (45%) than in MPA (28%) reports. At the same time, mentions of career sustainability rose by 250% in KO reports, while decreasing marginally in MPA reports; and mentions of sectoral sustainability increased marginally in KO reports, but decreased by 75% in MPA reports. The raw counts in each of these cases are small – and causality has not been established – but these findings suggest that the political reporting environment substantially influences arts companies’ conceptualisations of and reporting on ‘sustainability.’ Second, Australia’s performing arts companies mention ‘sustainability’ considerably less often than their federal funding body, seemingly because sustainability reporting is mandated for the latter but only voluntary for the former. Given that annual reports are “a carefully manipulated sales pitch” (Bonnell II, 1982, as cited in Preston, Wright, & Young, 1996, p. 114), it seems reasonable to expect that arts companies would use them to highlight their environmental contributions. Failure to do so should not be read 10 K. Power Poetics 89 (2021) 101580 Fig. 1. ‘Sustainability’ parts of speech as a percentage of total mentions. uncritically as a failure to implement ‘sustainability in the arts’ measures; clear evidence exists to the contrary (AMPAG, 2013). However, it does suggest that there is not yet sufficient advantage in the political (and/or corporate sponsorship) reporting envi­ ronment to warrant the additional burden that sustainability reporting would generate. Third, a commitment to the environment is evident in the use of ‘sustainability’ keywords within theatre reports. Theatre pro­ duction is “resource voracious in relation to both lighting and set construction” (Hassall & Rowan, 2019, p. 149), and concerns about its “prodigious” generation of waste have been voiced for decades (Fried & May, 1994, p. 28). Responding to these concerns, a handful of Australian theatre companies (MPAs and KOs) and one dance company (KO) have taken extensive measures both to lighten their environmental footprint and to promote an environmental message. By using ‘sustainability’ keywords to report on these measures, these companies have also publicly signalled their focus on ‘sustainability’ in and through the arts. What remains to be determined, however, is the extent to which projecting this kind of “earth-conscious image” might generate competitive market advantage for performing arts companies, as seen in other industries (Vos, 2009, p. 680). Fourth, despite sharing with other art forms a common interest in financial and organisational sustainability, theatre and opera seem to have other priorities. In particular, opera is the only art form to prioritise artistic sustainability over all other conceptualisations. This result is not surprising, given the significant and consistent reduction in opera audiences internationally and the perception that “opera is no longer … an art of our time” (Letts, 2016). Australia’s opera companies are all currently seeking new audiences through creative programming, in a concerted attempt to revitalise the art form and increase its relevance to contemporary Australian culture. Finally, this study demonstrates the complementarity of syntactic and semantic keyword analyses. Syntactic analysis reveals both similarities and subtle differences in arts sector stakeholders’ conceptualisations of ‘sustainability.’ As illustrated in Fig. 1 below, for example, both OzCo and MPA/KO companies favour nouns and adjectives when portraying ‘sustainability’; but the former uses proportionately more unmodified nouns and adjectives than do MPAs and KOs, which use more verbs and adverbs (MPAs only). These patterns suggest that, although all of these stakeholders conceptualise ‘sustainability’ chiefly as an entity or quality, Australia’s federal arts funding body more often depicts ‘sustainability’ as an ambiguous abstraction (as noted by Meyrick, Phiddian, & Barnett, 2018) or attribute, whereas subsidised performing arts companies more often construe ‘sustainability’ as involving both action and/or ways of acting. Syntactic analysis also suggests a “semantic association” (Hoey, 2005, p. 24) between ‘sustainability’ keywords and the positively-evaluated, future, long-term, financial and organisational viability of Australia’s performing arts sector. Semantic analysis confirms this finding, providing a broad brushstroke depiction of how ‘sustainability’ is conceptualised across the performing arts. As illustrated in Table 5 (Section 5.1 above), for example, the chief concerns of government (OzCo) are sectoral, environmental, artistic, and career sustainability. Conversely, subsidised performing arts companies (MPA, KO) tend to focus on financial and organisational sustainability. 7. Conclusion The arts have been a largely neglected site for sustainability researchers, and ‘sustainability’ presents new questions for arts 11 K. Power Poetics 89 (2021) 101580 research. While previous scholarship has explored the relationship between ‘sustainability’ and ‘the arts,’ this study is the first to advance a distinction between sustainability through, in, and of the arts. This study is also the first to identify the range of ‘sustain­ ability’ conceptualisations used within the arts, and to map those onto that through-in-of triptych. Aside from mandated reporting by government agencies, the most frequently used conceptualisations of ‘sustainability’ across Australia’s performing arts sector (financial, organisational, artistic, career, sectoral sustainability) indicate that ‘sustainability of the arts’ is that sector’s dominant concern. By contrast, sustainability in the arts (environmental sustainability) and through the arts (socio-cultural sustainability) are seldom mentioned. This imbalance suggests that the arts either are not seeking sustainability in and through the arts, or do not consider communicating those priorities advantageous within the current political reporting environment. This study has two key limitations. First, many of the reports analysed feature highly sophisticated visual design elements – including photographs of organisational premises and artistic performances. These elements potentially shed light on organisational “personality and philosophy” (Anderson & Imperia, 1992, p. 113), including each organisation’s conceptualisation(s) of ‘sustain­ ability’. Addressing these design elements falls outside the scope of the present paper, but affordance-driven multimodal analysis (Machin, 2016) would be ideal for such a task. Second, annual reports are just one of many communicative genres in the performing arts. Future research could fruitfully explore sustainability messaging and practices in arts marketing (print and social media), pro­ gramming, and performances. Nevertheless, this study has at least three practical implications. First, it provides a new theoretical framework within which sustainability discourse and actions can be analysed empirically, in the performing arts as well as other industries. The through-in-of triptych can help researchers locate and compare key focal points of sustainability efforts and reporting, and gauge their relative importance across different timeframes and contexts. This triptych might also be used to reveal neglected areas and, in doing so, to attract further research and advocacy to those areas. For example, coordinated ‘bottom-up’ efforts by arts sectors globally could help to establish culture (including but not limited to the performing arts) as sustainability’s fourth bottom line. Second, in documenting a “semantic association” (Hoey, 2005, p. 24) for ‘sustainability’ keywords that departs from both specialist and everyday usage, this study points to important differences in how sustainability specialists, the general public, and key stake­ holders within the performing arts interpret and make use of sustainability discourse. As such, it provides an object lesson in con­ ceptual and linguistic clarity, and offers conceptual and linguistic tools with which to address misunderstandings and/or miscommunications around sustainability. On the one hand, for example, OzCo could use its annual reporting more explicitly to highlight how the arts contribute to socio-cultural sustainability; it could also reduce its reliance on abstract nouns, which give arts organisations few clues as to its meaning (Meyrick, Phiddian, et al., 2018). On the other hand, subsidised arts companies could explore the possibility that more explicit public communication about sustainability through and in the arts might foster greater public interest and support. Both of these prospects are important, given the widespread misperception in Australia that the arts are “elitist and pretentious” (Morris, 2019) and the fact that arts companies have consistently struggled to communicate their value to successive federal governments (Croggon, 2016). Third, this study has implications for lexicographers. Dictionaries (including the OED) are living documents, designed and continually updated to reflect language use (Flood, 2020). Listing the “available and developing meanings” (R. Williams, 1983 , p. 15) of ‘sustainability’ as used within the arts would lend greater breadth, and thus accuracy, to current dictionary entries. It could also help to consolidate cultural sustainability in popular usage, thereby “contribut[ing] effectively to discussion and planning for what might be called a better future” (Durant, 2006) – that is, to establish public recognition of culture as sustainability’s fourth bottom line. At the time of writing, performing arts sectors around the world are in crisis after the COVID-19 pandemic caused all “public gatherings, performances and exhibitions [to be] cancelled in the interests of public health” (Australia Council for the Arts, 2020). In Australia, for example, one sector-initiated survey documented $280+ million in lost income during a single week in March 2020, with over 270,000 cancelled events affecting nearly 600,000 arts workers (Litson, 2020). Yet, unlike in other OECD countries, the Australian federal government voted against a fiscal response package for the arts (K. Williams, 2020). Federal government support was later promised, but the small amount of and extensive delays in actually spending this allocation (J. Martin, 2020) betray a disappointing disregard for the arts. Indeed, when an Arts Minister states publicly that the value of public support for the arts is still in question – and when arts advocates conscientiously recruit the government’s own rhetoric of economic value, to no avail – one is left wondering precisely what contexts and processes are needed for “discourses that enact a better world” (J. R. Martin, 2004, p. 197) to gain traction (Bartlett, 2013). Funding This research was supported by The University of Queensland. Declaration of Competing Interest None. Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge my research assistant, Julian Estefan Galvis, for his contribution to this study. 12 K. 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She is currently working on several projects concerning communication within, by, and about Australia’s performing arts sector. 14