Three, six-year arts funding awarded

More than 30 Western Australian arts organisations are set to share in $29 million worth of state funding, with some organisations likely to secure grants for up to six years.

Culture and the Arts Minister John Day said 35 emerging and established arts organisations offering a range of activities in visual arts, dance, music and theatre would share in the funding, known as the Organisations Investment Program.

Department of Culture and the Arts director general Duncan Ord told Business News the exact breakdown of the funding was yet to be decided, but most contracts would be for three years.

He said there was also an opportunity for established and leading organisations, understood to include Artrage, the organisation behind Perth’s annual Fringe World Festival, to secure an additional three-year contract following a mid-year review of the first contract.

Mr Ord said organisations would be offered individual contracts that would be negotiated directly with the state over the coming weeks and the terms would be published in the DCA’s annual report.

New organisations set to receive recurrent funding for the first time are: contemporary dance group Co3, Lost & Found Opera, Indigenous performing arts group Marrugeku, Perth Centre for Photography, research laboratory for artists and scientists SymbioticA and The Last Great Hunt, a collective of seven local theatre makers.  

The Chamber of Arts and Culture WA welcomed the new funding program, saying it was particularly pleased to see the grants were for a diverse number of art forms.

Chamber of Arts and Culture WA chair Helen Cook said while funding showed the state Department of Culture and the Arts had given a great deal of thought to the ecology of the arts and cultural sector, challenges remained.

“It has tried to navigate its way around the tension of supporting the diversity of art practice versus the limited resources at its disposal.  The sad reality is that over a 10 year period the investment in Western Australian artists and organisations by the Department of Culture and the Arts has nearly halved as a percentage of the state government’s overall expenditure.  It now represents 0.14%.”