The paradox of WA arts sponsorship

So what is the secret?

Western Australia is meant to be at the cultural fringe, dominated by mining and other sectors that lack the sophistication necessary to appreciate the arts.

Yet the state regularly wins plaudits for its business and arts partnerships.

This year was no exception, with four WA-based arrangements winning national awards.

This included the highest honour, the Australia Business Arts Foundation Partnership of the Year Award, won by a four-year deal to commission four new major performances between Wesfarmers Ltd and UWA Perth International Arts Festival.

Major category winners from WA were CBH Group Ltd and WA Symphony Orchestra, Alcoa of Australia Ltd and WA Museum, as well as Rio Tinto Iron Ore and the Shire of Roebourne.

Some suggest WA’s prominence at these national awards comes from practice, with the state’s own business and arts awards being around for well over a decade, having been given a big boost in the 1990s with major backing from arts loving magnate, Kerry Stokes.

AbaF state manager Henry Boston believes this is too simplistic to account for WA’s ongoing success.

“Certainly the existence of an established state awards program gave Western Australia the edge in the early days of the AbaF awards,” Mr Boston said.

“However, more recently it is the quality of the partnerships and the ability to offer proof of claim that has made the state so competitive.”

Mr Boston gives AbaF credit for some of that, as well as what he regards as the lateral thinking of organisations in WA.

Whatever the case, the arts community here has certainly coaxed some of the biggest corporate names into high-profile sponsorships.

Alcoa chief Wayne Osborn is chair of the WA AbaF chapter, underscoring the direct involvement of corporate heavyweights in the arts sector in WA, led over the past two decades by Mr Stokes and former Wesfarmers chief executive Michael Chaney.

Mr Chaney drove the Wesfarmers Arts division to become the premier arts sponsorship group in the state and was personally close to many of its decisions, which he viewed as important to the conglomerate’s impact in the community.

Under Mr Chaney’s watch, Wesfarmers formulated the $670,000 commitment to the Wesfarmers Commission Series, a four-year partnership between its specialist division, Wesfarmers Arts, and the Perth festival.

The deal was revealed at a dinner at Mr Chaney’s Claremont residence.

Big business’s focus on the arts has ramped up lately, with concerns Perth’s cultural heart has not been matching the needs of more sophisticated people being drawn to the state by the resources boom.

Arts organisation FORM has responded to that, putting itself at the forefront of new thinking to generate a cultural renaissance in the city. In turn, that has spawned further focused groups such as the Committee for Perth.

And the arts prominence was given a boost last week when Premier Alan Carpenter unveiled a $73 million package of initiatives he said was designed to transform dance, theatre, music and visual arts, as well as change the shape of WA’s cultural landscape.