Alex Kelly Attention: Committee Secretary Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee
[email protected] Regarding: a. the impact of the 2014 and 2015 Commonwealth Budget decisions on the Arts; b. the suitability and appropriateness of the establishment of a National Programme for Excellence in the Arts, to be administered by the Ministry for the Arts July 15th 2015 To Whom It May Concern: I am a practicing artist and arts worker who has lived in Central Australia for the past 12 years. I work as a documentary filmmaker and a producer of community arts and cultural development projects. I was the 2009 Australia for the Arts Kirk Robson Award winner and was granted a Churchill Fellowship to explore my practice internationally in 2012. Please find my full biography attached at the end of this submission. I am deeply concerned about the announcement that $104.8M will be removed over four years from the Australia Council's funding. I am alarmed to hear that these funds will instead be used to establish a new 'National Program for Excellence in the Arts'. From 2005-2010 I was Creative Producer of the Big hART’s Ngapartji Ngapartji project. This was a $2.8M project, a small portion of which was granted through the Community Partnerships division of the Australia Council for the Arts. Ngapartji Ngapartji was a project that punched well above its weight. In our six years of operation we worked with over 250 Pitjantjatjara young people, produced over 75 short films, an award winning feature documentary for ABCTV, two touring theatre productions – which were seen by over 29,000 people at 10 festivals around the country and in London and Rotterdam – as well as delivering a crime prevention project for the Attorney General’s department and playing a leading role in the development of the National Indigenous Languages Policy.