The cultural and creative industries is a confusing place to be right now in NSW. We have an Arts Minister who has been proactive in putting in place policy and strategies. We have dedicated funds going into previously overlooked parts of the sector like contemporary music. Exciting times! But for those of us who work in the small-to-medium arts sector, we have never felt so under threat. In the regions, our whole arts ecology feels like it is crumbling around us as our RADOs, regional galleries and significant regional organisations compete for a pool of funding that is inadequate. I know I sound melodramatic, but there are deep concerns that the decisions being made represent an existential crisis and we’re not all going to come out the other side.

As we wait for Create NSW’s 2-year funding round announcements in September, here is a short factual version of some of the outcomes so far from the 4-year round announced in May:

  • RADOs: In a network of 15 Regional Arts Development Organisations – all currently funded at $217K a year plus a few thousand extra for one of them to be able to service the Unincorporated Areas in the west of the state – three were unsuccessful in receiving funding, (3x$217K = $651K loss), three received an uplift of $60K each minus the Incorporated funds (total of $177K). That is a net loss to the regions of $474,000.
  • Significant Regional Organisations: RANSW has established a network of significant regional organisations producing original work to a high standard. Of the 14 that applied to Create NSW’s 4-year round of funding, 5 were unfunded. The regions have lost just over a million dollars in funding across 6 organisations. We don’t know how many of them may be picked up in the 2-year round but the indication is that there is nowhere near enough money in that round to pick many of them.
  • Regional Galleries: We don’t even know how much money may be lost in this category, but with only three out of the nineteen regional galleries that applied having received four-year funding, the network of regional galleries in NSW is in tatters.

My estimate is that regional NSW has lost about three and a half million dollars of current funding through these three areas. In the general scheme of government budgets, this is a small amount, but in terms of the small-to-medium arts sector in the regions, these losses are devastating. Given that the four-year round of funding was essentially made up of applicants who are currently funded by Create NSW, the outcome of a 52% success rate – usually a rate that we would consider to be good – indicates that 48% of those applicants have effectively been de-funded. We are concerned that there is insufficient funding in the pending 2-year round to pick up many of these. Rather, we think that the 2-year round will see even more organisations miss out. Given that the government’s budget allocation to the Arts and Cultural Funding Program is unchanged at $73 million per year, we are struggling to understand why the new Create NSW funding regime appears to be taking funds away from so many established and valuable arts organisations. Change is not a bad thing, but a change that is creating a financial crisis for scores of arts organisations can only be seen as damaging.

How can we all survive? Here at Regional Arts NSW we lost state government funding some years ago in a decision by a former arts minister. Despite having been recommended for funding by assessment panels in the previous two rounds of program funding, we have not had funds re-instated. We have jumped through hoops, addressed weaknesses and we have produced high quality work. We have diversified income. It is not easy to fill a large funding gap when it suddenly presents itself as it did to RANSW some years ago. We are now working on a Save Regional Arts NSW campaign.

If some of our arts organisations are forced to cease operating through lack of funds, how is that going to change our arts ecology in the regions? What will it do to the artists they support, the people they employ, the opportunities they create? What will it do to change the career pathways, the audience experiences?

At Regional Arts NSW we will continue to represent the voice of regional NSW and make the case for better support. When the NSW Arts Minister John Graham releases the new strategy for the arts and creative industries in regional NSW in a few months, we want to know that the value of regional practice is appreciated and properly supported. We don’t want to be counting the number of organisations closing their doors, unable to continue.

– Tracey Callinan, Regional Arts NSW CEO