Arts partners awarded

Six partnerships between Western Australian businesses and arts organisations have been recognised at this year’s WA Australia Business Arts Foundation awards, announced this week.

Wesfarmers Ltd and the UWA Perth International Arts Festival won an award for their four-year partnership, which has produced newly commissioned works from the West Australian Ballet, West Australian Opera, Black Swan Theatre and West Australian Symphony Orchestra.

AbaF’s community award went to Rio Tinto WA Future Fund and the State Library of WA, for their universal early literacy program catering for children up to three years of age.

The program has been rolled out in regional areas from Kununurra to Albany, and has reached about 45,000 families.

Rio Tinto Iron Ore won a second award for its long-term partnership with the Shire of Roebourne, which has supported the Cossack Art Award for 15 years.

WASO won the giving award for its patrons program, which raised $204,400 from donors this year, while the small-to-medium enterprise award went to AdultShop.com Ltd and ARTRAGE Inc for their erotic art prize exhibition.

Former Alinta Ltd communications and information technology specialist, Stuart Ball, won a partnership award with Country Arts WA for an IT upgrade project, which reduced the arts organisation’s annual IT maintenance costs by 40 per cent.

AbaF WA manager Henry Boston said the awards recognised best practice in business-arts partnerships.

Mr Boston said the high standard of applications this year reflected an improvement in the quality of partnerships.

“There is a trend taking place in organisations, in terms of the engagement of both parties in a partnership to leverage that partnership and keep it alive,” he said. “The old paradigm, of turning up once a year, has gone.”

Mr Boston said there was also a trend towards greater diversity in partnerships, with organisations now identifying a better fit between their values and brand.

“Certainly, the successful ones are doing this. There’s a growing sophistication in the engagement of both sectors,” Mr Boston said.

The WA winners will now enter the national AbaF awards, to be announced in Sydney in October.