Arts & Public Life Breakfast ‘Confessions of a Gatekeeper’

Brett Sheehy, Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Arts Festival 2009–10

As Australia’s most experienced festival director, Brett Sheehy is in a unique position to discuss the challenges, joys and responsibilities of being a cultural gatekeeper By what criteria is art judged?  What levels of discrimination and rigour are required to present art in a festival context?  How are the boundaries drawn around ‘high’ and ‘low’ art if indeed such boundaries still exist? How does a festival director manage the uneasy position of being judge and jury to something as subjective as art?  Is there such a thing as good and bad art?