Last week's Australia Council shortlisting of organisational funding applications was always going to be bad news. Even for organisations who've made it through to the next round.
The National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA), of which I am executive director, is one of those organisations. We made the decision not to make a media statement, but when we were inundated with queries from members and colleagues, we knew we had to say something at this difficult time, so we posted a couple of sentences of solidarity on social media.
Because unlike the majority of applicants to the Australia Council's Four-Year Funding for Organisations, NAVA is not a presenting organisation. We don't make new work, we're not curators, and we're not a gallery or a venue. We're a national peak body, a sector service organisation with thousands of individual and organisational members, and tens of thousands in our social media community. We support artists to sustain careers, we develop the sector that exists to develop and present their work, and we make sure that the arts voice is heard on national issues that impact on policy affecting artists.
We might be through to the next round, but our chances of success aren't great when the peers who make those funding decisions are weighing our work against the work of the nation's most impressive artists and arts organisations. After all, we too want those artists to succeed. And as we look around the country and start to get a sense of which of our fellow organisations weren't shortlisted, it's not good news for sector development across all of Australia.
The work of Australian Plays is critical to the future of the performing arts sector, but they have missed out on being shortlisted; also critical is Playwriting Australia, who are currently under review. Ausdance National's record of achievement is extraordinary, but they have recently announced their closure. Overland is one of Australia's leading critical voices, and they too have missed out.
Many others have let their communities know whether they've been successful in getting past the EOI stage, and many more are keeping the outcome quiet, given the impacts on artists, audiences and staff. And while in a competitive funding process nobody is truly 'defunded', what's lost is a comprehensive understanding of what the Australian arts sector needs most right now.
At stake here is who takes responsibility for sector development in the arts as both a cultural