Outback Music Festival Group, promoters of the Birdsville Big Red Bash and Broken Hill Mundi Mundi Bash, billed as the “world’s most remote music festivals”, also received $860,000 to help stage both events, while promoter Loudness received $824,000 for its Wine Machine food and music festival set in wine regions across six states.
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Federal Arts Minister Paul Fletcher said the funding’s objective was to ensure that as states and territories open up following the vaccine rollout, “arts companies, promoters and festivals are ready to go”.
“This is an important stage in the resurgence of Australia’s arts and entertainment sector, with this targeted RISE funding providing an opportunity for venues to reopen to audiences; curtains to rise; and performers to come back on stage to a welcoming roar of applause,” Fletcher added.
The government’s handling of its RISE arts rescue funding has come under scrutiny, largely due to its significant contributions to large-scale, commercial events – and fears that the government is playing favourites over what art forms and events are supported and what’s left to struggle.
Among the policy’s major funding recipients over the past year have been music festival Bluesfest ($2,400,000), outdoor art exhibition Sculpture by the Sea ($2,000,000) and children’s theatre Bluey’s Big Play ($1,871,338).
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Significant funding has also included $1.4 million for a Shaun the Sheep circus show, and a double-dip for Ryan “The Brickman” McNaught of Nine’s Lego Masters fame who received over $1.4 million combined for his LEGO exhibition Jurassic World and a national tour of his favourite Lego sculptures.
In a recent report in this masthead, one critic suggested RISE was “a Trojan horse for moving federal funding into a much more commercial mindset”, while others lamented RISE’s intrusion on the traditional funding role of the Australia Council.
Minister Fletcher, however, rejected such criticism and defended the funding’s “very conscious focus on accessibility” and economic activity.
“RISE has absolutely been about the arts and creative activity, but it’s also been about economic impact … it’s an arts program but with a twist, and the twist is No.1 about supporting our national economic response to COVID,” he told this masthead.
Guns N’ Roses, The Secret Garden, Lord of the Rings win big in funding
Source: Philippines Alive
