More than half a million dollars of expected funding is about to be stripped from western suburbs arts organisations, leading to widespread job cuts and the axeing of popular programs.
Inner-west artists and organisations are reeling from a federal government move to rip more than $100 million from the Australian Council for the Arts in the 2015-16 budget, shifting the funds into a new National Programme for Excellence in the Arts at the discretion of Arts Minister George Brandis.
Footscray Community Arts Centre (FCAC) faces a $320,000 black hole, the BigWest Festival stands to lose $150,000 and Western Edge Youth Arts $80,000 after the Australia Council for the Arts abandoned its current round of grants.
Other likely victims include 100 Story Building, Snuff Puppets and The Substation, along with hundreds of independent artists living and creating in the inner west.
FCAC chief executive Jade Lillie said even deeper cuts were likely to follow as other arts funding often hinged on matching the Australian Council’s.
“It starts to impact on the ecology of the arts sector,” she said. “No part of the sector exists without the other.”
Affected FCAC programs could include the West Writers Group, Emerging Cultural Leaders Program and Creatively Ageing.
Ms Lillie said it was unprecedented to have a funding process already well under way end so abruptly, wasting thousands of hours of effort already put into applications.
She said she hoped the federal government would reverse its decision, a view echoed by Seddon musician and Australian Art Orchestra artistic director Peter Knight.
He said the move was deeply damaging to Australia’s arts sector and the cultural fabric of areas like Melbourne’s inner west.
“It’s easy to forget the roles artists play in the community,” he said.
“The independent and small-to- medium sector is by far the biggest employer of people in the arts. There was absolutely no notice given and no logic to the decision.”
Eight arts and cultural organisations under the Arts West umbrella released a statement outlining “significant concerns” about the serious threat to arms-length cultural funding.
“For the Arts West network, these proposed funding changes directly impact on the viability of over 4500 arts, cultural and engagement activities … including festivals, workshops, performances, programmes, cultural and artistic exchanges and leadership opportunities – activities that provide arts and cultural services to over 200,000 people annually.”
Federal MP for Gellibrand Tim Watts told Parliament the future of such organisations was now at the whim of Senator Brandis. “Young and emerging artists, like many of the artists in Melbourne’s west, are bearing the brunt of these changes,” he said.
