Reinterpreting the funding culture

Arts and cultural organisations are pursuing innovation and collaboration to help manage the tougher financial conditions in WA. 

The strong economic conditions that prevailed throughout most of the past decade brought unprecedented opportunities for the arts sector.

But things are changing.

There’s an expectation in the sector that it will be tougher to attract private sector funding support, meaning a greater reliance on federal funding. And this situation could put Western Australia at a disadvantage – given the historical inequities inherent in the disbursement of funds.

In terms of the sector’s achievements, however, the news is much brighter for some of WA’s best-known cultural organisations.

This year, Black Swan State Theatre Company celebrates 25 years of performance, the WA Opera celebrates 49 years and Perth International Arts Festival 63 years.

Also in 2016, Barking Gecko Theatre Company won a national Helpmann award for its production of Bambert’s Book of Lost Stories, and similarly WA’s FORM received national recognition for its recent community mural project, PUBLIC.

And the WA Symphony Orchestra made international firsts for Australia on its recent tour to two countries.

Despite these achievements by WA-based arts and cultural organisations, the state’s proportion of federal funding consistently misses the mark.

The federal funding body, the Australia Council for the Arts, allocated $12.9 million to WA for 2015-16 out of a total funding pool of $164 million, which ranks WA sixth across the country’s states and territories with less than $5 per capita.

In contrast, NSW received for $8 per capita, followed by Victoria at $7 per capita.

Last month, WA representation on the board received a much needed boost and increased from one member to three (out of 12), with the appointment of former Rio Tinto chief executive and past Black Swan board member Sam Walsh, and regional arts advocate Kate Fielding. 

WA Symphony Orchestra chief executive Craig Whitehead said WA appeared to punch above its weight at every measure.

“As a proportion per capita, WA is not getting its fair share and our sector is doing wonderful work with less funding,” Mr Whitehead told Business News. 

Mr Whitehead said WASO was the only orchestra in the country to have 10 successive surpluses, and in 2015 it had the highest corporate sponsorship of any orchestra in the country, including the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.  

“If you compare WASO to the Queensland (Symphony Orchestra) box office, we have double the box office, and double the audience of (the) Adelaide (Symphony Orchestra),” he said.

“It’s a case of ‘out of sight out of mind’, so as a sector we need to look at how we can improve that.

“We need to build our voice and presence stronger and make sure they (federal government) are aware of the high quality that’s actually coming out of WA.”

Culture Counts, an evaluation application that has already been used by several WA organisations, could provide the solution to measuring and benchmarking organisations based on the quality of what they produce. 

Art funding

The funding disparity also extends to Aboriginal art, despite the volume produced in WA.

The state accounts for 30 per cent of the nation’s Aboriginal art centres and produces 40 per cent of Australia’s Aboriginal art. Yet it receives just 19 per cent of the federal government’s art centre funding, the same amount allocated to Queensland, which only accounts for 15 per cent of the nation’s Aboriginal art centres.

Aboriginal Art Centre Hub of WA chief executive Christine Scoggin said that, due to the WA environment, the costs of travelling to regional locations were high. As a result, she said these additional costs were often overlooked when grant applications were made.

“Eastern state centres are closer to big cities,” Ms Scoggin said.

“You make an application to a funding body and you put on the real cost of what it costs to do business in WA, and they respond with, ‘it’s too expensive’.”

Ms Scoggin said one way of overcoming this and to raise more funds was to promote the unique nature of the work produced in WA.

“Our state government focus is directed towards tourism and we have a great WA product we can sell to people,” she said.

“We need to be able to link (art) to that tourism network better.”

The executive director of not-for-profit group FORM, Lynda Dorrington, said despite the challenging federal funding environment, more could have been done to link WA’s cultural sector to tourism during the past decade.

“Victoria has exploited the attraction of their cultural sector for the past 20 years,” Ms Dorrington told Business News. 

“We talk of economic diversification and yet so little has been invested in the creative industries.

“Tourism is supposed to be a growth sector, but for it to really blossom there needs to be greater investment in cultural tourism.”

On a state level, between 2001-02 and 2015-16 the percentage of total government expenditure allocated to the WA Department for Culture and the Arts (DCA) fell 43 per cent – from 1.17 per cent to just 0.67 per cent.

Chamber of Arts and Culture WA director Henry Boston said with the exception of the ‘Ignite’ package implemented by the Carpenter government in 2008, there had been no significant increase in funding through the DCA.

According to the DCA, the creative workforce represents 3.76 per cent of WA’s total workforce (compared with 5.29 per cent nationally), suggesting there is room for development.  

In late October, the state government launched Strategic Directions 2016-2031 for arts, cultural and creative businesses, its first long-term vision for the sector that aims to foster new opportunities.

The strategy has set goals for the sector across 15 years and flags the potential of arts tourism and Aboriginal culture, as well as the potential increase in jobs within the sector.

“This is the beginning of a journey – a plan is only as good as the resources you put behind it,” Mr Boston said.  

“Implicit is the investment that needs to take place from the public purse and an assumption there will be investment from the private sector.”

Private support

The BNiQ Search Engine lists 45 WA arts and cultural organisations with total revenue of $204 million.

Of total revenue, 50 per cent comes from government funding, 29 per cent from operating revenue and 16 per cent from private sector donations. 

Perth International Arts Festival director Philip Rolfe said Lotterywest ($7.6 million investment last financial report) was the festival’s largest funding source and without that support the organisation’s ability to operate as a 12-month operation would be compromised. 

“We also rely on the value of our corporate sponsors Chevron, Rio Tinto and Wesfarmers, as well as the university (UWA) and a growing number of philanthropic donors,” he said.

“Without that bedrock support it would be difficult to continue each year.”

Mr Rolfe said sponsorship support and government grants accounted for 60 per cent of PIAF’s income, with box office contributing the rest. 

“The arts and culture sector is particularly collaborative,” he said.

“Arts companies are like shells, in a way, it’s the artists that matter and the artists move around from different contexts and different companies.

“It’s not a world where you’re attempting to kill off the other cultural organisations at all; there’s a fair degree of competition, but you want everyone to be healthy. We are not commercial in that sense.”

Collaboration

West Australian Ballet executive director Jessica Machin said it was a challenging time in the sponsorship arena.

“It’s a retracting environment – there are people in the corporate world losing their jobs, companies downsizing and sponsors have to decide which partner to stay with,” Ms Machin told Business News.   

“But we are a resilient bunch; we have to think about how we might work differently with each other, if there are other ways of doing things and sharing resources.”

Ms Machin said the company had plans to partner with the Queensland ballet to co-build a production, as a way to build a new work but share the costs.

Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts also welcomed collaboration and director Amy Barrett-Lennard said this year it had partnered with Art Space in Sydney, the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane and Melbourne's Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in order to help bring more exhibitions to Perth.

“Collaboration is becoming absolutely vital for many organisations nationally in order to be able to present an annual program,” Ms Barrett-Lennard said.  

“We can pool resources so people can produce a bigger catalogue and share freight costs… all these things that make exhibitions and performances happen.”

On a local level, this year PICA partnered with Awesome Arts Australia for the recent puppet performance of New Owner by The Last Great Hunt.  It also extended this partnership to DADAA (Disability in the Arts Disadvantages in the Arts), where a separate show was put on for the visually impaired with a detailed audio description of the performance provided via headphones.

Next year Ms Barrett-Lennard said PICA would also partner with the Aboriginal Art Centre Hub WA to present an exhibition that celebrates, what will be in 2017, the 50^th anniversary of the 1967 referendum, which saw the removal of two clauses from the constitution that were discriminatory against Aboriginal people. 

WA Opera general manager Carolyn Chard said the company had recognised value in economies of scale through shared costs and expertise; it had partnered with the New Zealand Opera and Victoria Opera to commission a new work called Star Navigator.

Black Swan State Theatre Company is another example of a WA arts organisation that values creative collaboration and this year took its partnership with the National Theatre of China to a new level, with the production of Caucasian Chalk Circle.

Executive director Natalie Jenkins said building relationships with other performance companies would continue in the 2017 season, featuring a co-produced work with the Queensland theatre company. 

“Because WA is isolated, we can be overshadowed and overlooked in terms of resources and people being aware of what we actually do,” Ms Jenkins said.

“But often out of adversity innovations and efficiencies arise.”