This coming week we send hope and best wishes to fellow arts organisations around Australia as many put the finishing touches on Four Year Funding applications to the Australia Council for the Arts.
Upsettingly, Slingsby did not make it through the initial EOI process for this funding, although we remain incredibly proud of our extensive achievements over the past three years and motivated by our vision for the future. Our company has an undeniably bright future in Adelaide, across Australia and around the world. The path ahead for us is challenging and we will need to gather allies and partners to build on our success. But, our art is so valued around this fractious world that we simply must and will, joyously, determinedly, play on.
So, a reminder in these final moments as you prepare to submit your application; your value does not lie in the judgement of a panel of peers in a small room on one day. Your true value lives and breathes in the artists you support, the audiences you share your art with and the lives you change for the better.
A crisis in federal Australian Arts Funding is upon us, and soon we must all unite to face this, but as we confront and combat this, trust daily in your art making. We need it.
Chookas friends.