The state of play: protocols as children's cultural policy

Opportunities for children to experience the arts are burgeoning around the world, and many nations have put into place cultural policies that foster these opportunities. In Australia, an existing children's cultural policy has been over-shadowed by the 2009 Protocols for Artists Working with Children: a political response to a public controversy around a photography exhibition featuring naked girls. This article argues that these protocols function as de facto policy, conflating children's rights with a moral agenda around children's potential to be exploited by artists. The article identifies the rationales behind children's cultural policies around the world and argues that children's cultural rights form the foundation of most policy discourse. It examines cultural policy for Australian children and the development of the Protocols in response to moral panic about child sexual abuse. That this occurred was due to the almost complete absence of children, and the arts practitioners who work with them, in informing the protocols. The article interrogates the implications of this absence by comparison with the example of Danish cultural policy-making for children. Finally, it argues that children and artists who work with them need to be better represented in Australian policy and politics.