For some 11 years, from 1983-1994, he served as Senior Finance Officer of the
Australia Council, the Federal Government’s arts
funding body. [PIC] With the Australia Council, he was responsible
for overseeing funding arrangements for as many as 80 major arts
organisations with budgeted expenditures totalling some $100 million,
as follows -
- financial monitoring
- financial advice to Council’s boards, panels, committees and management.
- advisory, investigative and recovery work
- design and development of accountability systems
- collection and analysis of financial and statistical information
- design and development of funding, educational programs
He designed, edited and produced a key Australia Council publication, The Arts in the Australian Corporate Environment: A Practical Guide to the Legal Obligations of Officers of Arts Organisations.
While at the Council, Mark undertook extensive surveys of the Australian circus
industry (by then, in a somewhat depressed state); he compiled a
register of all known Australian circuses and circus acts; and he
was instrumental in the launch of the Circus Summit, held in Melbourne
in 1990, Australia’s first national conference of circus people.
From the Circus Summit flowed a number of achievements, most notably
the establishment of Australia’s first circus school, the
National
Institute of Circus Arts (‘NICA’), in Melbourne in 2000.
Mark served as a NICA boardmember under the inspring leadership
of the late Sir Rupert ‘Dick’ Hamer, formerly Premier of Victoria.
At the Australia Council, Mark also conceived and established Arts Management
Advisory Groups in Australia’s major cities. These Groups brought
together arts managers and other (non-arts) professional people
in regular discussion forums to improve the flow of knowledge, information
and experience between the arts and business sectors. The
Sydney
Arts Management Advisory Group has now been in continuous
existence for almost 15 years.
Lecturing
After leaving the Australia Council, Mark served as a lecturer in Department of Arts Management, at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Perth, a faculty of Edith Cowan University. Although this was to be his last full-time engagement with Australia’s arts industry, it did signal the commencement of a new phase in his career, that of lecturer in business-related subjects to Australia’s growing body of international students. Returning to Sydney, he first served as lecturer in accounting and management accounting at the International College of Tourism & Hotel Management, Manly (now the International College of Management).
He currently lectures and/or tutors at several internationally-focussed universities in Sydney (Macquarie, Central Queensland, Ballarat and Charles Sturt) in the general subject areas of acounting (financial, corporate, management, strategic cost, and theory), economics (micro, macro and business) and management (project, quality, change, strategic) and specialises in the teaching of international students at diploma, graduate and post-graduate levels. His clear, unaccented English is especially appreciated by students from non-English speaking backgrounds and is accustomed to communicating effectively with persons from diverse cultural and professional backgrounds.
