Ministers

Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts

The Hon. Peter Garrett MP
Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts

Festivals Australia grant recipients announced

Joint Media Release
16 June 2009

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Arts Minister Peter Garrett today announced more than $350,000 of funding for festivals through the 28th round of Festivals Australia grants.

Regional and remote communities will benefit from the opportunities to access high quality and creative cultural activities provided by the wide range of festivals receiving funding.

“Nearly 30 regional and community festivals have been funded through this round,” Mr Garrett said.

“I am particularly pleased to announce that of the festivals receiving funding, eight projects with a strong Indigenous component have been successful, including an Indigenous Food and Arts Festival in Beenleigh, Queensland’.

“This round of grants focuses on new projects that build on the quality and diversity of Australia’s existing festivals. The festivals profile a great range of arts and cultural activities including public art installations, dance and theatre workshops and puppeteering,” Mr Garrett said.

Highlights of the funded projects include:

The closing dare for applications for Round 29 of the Festivals Australia funding is 15 July 2009. For more information visit www.arts.gov.au/festivals_australia 

Festivals Australia Round 28 - successful applicants

New South Wales

Arts Council of Dorrigo Inc
For A Living Memory of Dorrigo: “Tallowwoods and Tollywongs” at Dorrigo Folk and Bluegrass Festival (DORRIGO, NSW)

The “Living Memory Project’ is an arts-driven cultural activity aiming to engage community participants in song, music and spoken word and narration that illuatrates aspects of the local history. A series of workshops will be held involving local writers, musicians and storytellers as well as local youth, seniors and primary producers to develop existing and new material based on stories and oral histories on community perception. The result of the project will take the form of an ‘audio documentary’ incorporating interviews, local sound scapes, songs, poetry and narration.

Funding: $9,450

Camden Haven Music Festival Inc
For Lantern Parade on Camden Haven River at 15th Camden Haven Music Festival (KENDALL, NSW)

The project is designed to celebrate the 15th year of the festival with an exciting and innovative Lantern Parade on the Camden Haven River. Lanterns will be made in community workshops and will be mounted on barges and boats andfloated down the river. The Lantern theme will be “Noah's Ark” and focus on animal shaped lanterns, delivering a "soft sell" message about the preservation of species, the conservation of water, and environmental responsibilities.

Funding: $15,000

Mungindi Music Festival Committee
For The Power of Music at Mungindi Music Festival (MUNGINDI, NSW)

A music and dance theatre production will be staged as the main feature concert of the festival. The production is an original musical written in collaboration with a local artist. The music will be provided by the “Catastrophic Winds of Sydney” accompanied by the local choir and woodwind ensemble. Local amateur performers will be cast as the dancers, singers and actors.

Funding: $19,600

NORTHERN TERRITORY

Katherine Town Council
For Watermark Community Performance at Katherine Festival (KATHERINE, NT)

A performance by local actors of the play ‘Watermark‘ - a vibrant and comical play based on local experiences of the 1998 Australia Day Katherine Floods. The activity will engage the participation of the local Indigenous communties of the Kalano, Rockhole and Binjari, as well as the regional schools.

Funding: $12,000

Binjari Community Aboriginal Corportation
For Creating Performance through Music at Binjari Festival (KATHERINE, NT)

A range of music and performance workshops will be held for community members to help re-engage in community life. The workshops will include training in presussions, traditional dance, culture based rythms, japanese drumming patterns, performance skills, vocal performance, songwriting, rhythm guitar, and technical skills in sound equipment.

Funding: $9,940

Lingalonga Festival
For Jungle Beat at Lingalonga Festival (BATCHELOR, NT)

The Festival will host circus and drumming workshops tocreate an art project that teaches new skills, culminating in a final performance on Festival Day. Workshops will be held throughout local schools and will be filmed and kept as a community school asset. Members of the community will be involved as participants in workshops and in volunteer support roles. A theme that represents a sense of place, culture and identity will be discussed and woven into the performance.

Funding: $11,300

Alice Desert Festival
For The Magic Garden at Alice Desert Festival (ALICE SPRINGS, NT)

The Magic Garden –is a community arts project that encourages youth to think about the fragile flora and fauna of the Desert environment. Four arts professionals will work with Alice Springs youth to take microscopic flora and fauna from the local environment and develop macro/large scale moveable installations (puppets and sculptures) to be used as a part of the Alice Desert Festival’s parade and Hub Space activities.

Funding: $12,000

Barkly Regional Arts
For KneeHigh in the Barkly at Desert Harmony Festival (TENNANT CREEK, NT)

A workshop outreach program will be delivered to ten community schools within the Barkly region on performance and puppet making. This project will engage the services of KneeHigh puppeteers to assist the community in Tennant Creek and surrounding communities in the Barkly Region to work towards making giant puppets and paper mache floats for a street parade and a fire sculpture for the festival performance.

Funding: $12,000

Injalak Arts and Crafts Association Inc
For Stone Country Festival - Public Art Installation at Stone Country Festival - 100 year anniversay of Gunbalanya (GUNBALANYA, NT)

A collaborative project involving a range of artists including fibre artists, sculptors, community adolescents, community youth workers and Injalak staff. Installations will be created from natural materials such as timbers, pandanus, bush string and bark utilising natural dyes and ochres resulting in a series of art installations positioned throughout the Gunbalanya business precinct. The installations will be displayed for the duration of the Stone Country Festival.

Funding: $12,000

QUEENSLAND

Tableland Folk Festival Association Inc
For Gypsy Fire at Yungaburra Folk Festival (ATHERTON, QLD)

The project involves employing professional musicians and dancers to present a new cultural activity of Flamenco and gypsy music at the festival. Professional musicians and dance artists will conduct dance and guitar workshops. Students from Cairns will participate in the workshops and perform at the festival.

Funding: $9,000

Townsville Greek and Cultural Festivals Incorporated
For Our Generation - Hellenic Culture in the North at Xstrata Greek Fest Townsville (TOWNSVILLE, QLD)

To celebrate 100 years of Hellenes in North Queensland, Greek Fest will create an exhibition of photos taken by people from the region that will portray the lives of Greeks and Cypriots in North Queensland today. A series of workshops run by a professional photographer, to guide participants, will be open to the wider community and give each participant the opportunity to learn about the Hellenic culture and the contribution the Hellenes have made to North Queensland.

Funding: $11,680

Kombumerri Aboriginal Corp. Culture T/as Yugambeh Museum Language & Heritage Research Centre
For Yugambeh Language in Song at Yugambeh Corroboree-Indigenous Food & Arts Festival (BEENLEIGH, QLD)

The Yugambeh Language in Song project will be the first time that traditional & post-contact songs from the Yugambeh language region will be presented to a public audience. It will be done through a large choir contingent, through song & play workshops for young children, and through a number of musicians singing ballads, coached by a local community song-writer.

Funding: $11,100

Shire of Tara Development Association Inc
For ‘Where the Ocean Meets the Outback’ at Tara Festival of Culture (TARA, QLD)

&lsWhere the Ocean Meets the Outback’ project will reflect the cultural diversity and traditional values of the Mornington Island community and outback rural communities. The project aims to offer an insight into Australia's vast Indigenous heritage. This will be achieved through a series of workshops for students leading up to the festival that teach traditional dance, cultural art and language skills.

Funding: $8,170

Townsville Intercultural Centre Ltd.
For Earth Vision-Different Histories, Shared Future at Cultural Fest 2009 (TOWNSVILLE, QLD)

A collaborative community arts project involving professional artists, musicians, dancers and environmental scientists working together with community representatives and youth from all cultural backgrounds to present an innovative, contemporary art installation and theatrical dance production. The interactive installation will be the central feature of the Ocean Village, with a theatrical performance taking place at intervals throughout the 5-day festival.

Funding: $12,000

Mackay Regional Council
For Synchronicity at Mackay Festival of Arts (MACKAY, QLD)

A two part public art film project that createsconnections between the private and public lives of individuals, their community and the physical landscape they live in. Part one will involve the creation of a film which traces the journey of four local people (over a 24 hour period). Part two will develop further an interactive film with local businesses. The films will be projected onto four large screens/sections of buildings walls high above street level. Both films will tour to Sarina and Mirani after having a premier screening in MacKay.

Funding: $20,000

Isaac Regional Council
For The Clermont Chinese Acknowledgement Community Project at Clermont’s Gold and Coal Festival (CLERMONT, QLD)

This performance piece will begin the festival’s opening celebrations. The project will involve two community arts practitioners working with the Clermont community to produce a performance that acknowledges the Chinese immigrants who lost their lives in the Clermont region during the Anti-Chinese Movement in the Clermont goldfields in the 1880s.

Funding: $16,096

Malaruch Aboriginal Corporation Ltd.
For Weipa Fest Highlight Artists at Weipa Fest Land and Sea, You and Me (WEIPA, QLD)

Launching the inaugural Weipa Fest with performances by internationally acclaimed didgeridoo musician MrWilliam Barton followed by visiting dance company Mabo Moves’ full length production of Koiki-which celebrates the life and achievements of Eddie Mabo. A community workshop (dance and didge) will also be presented at the festival during the day program, to promote the evening concert, and to provide opportunity for the community to interact with the artists and gain new skills/experiences of both traditional and contemporary Indigenous arts.

Funding: $15,050

SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Penola Festival Association
For Let's Go Digital at PenolaCoonawarra Arts Festival (PENOLA, SA)

Workshops will be conducted for participants to shoot their own individual ‘video paintings’, taking footage of the local area and recording this through improvisation with a soundtrack, to DVD. The workshops will be aimed at young artists and filmmakers who wish to develop more creative skills with their footage. The workshops will be offered to students from the ages of 11 onward and will run over two days with a grand finalé opening the Saturday night main performance of which VJ artists will mix their soundtracks to break dance routines and project the ‘video paintings’ onto heritage buildings.

Funding: $16,000

TASMANIA

Devonport City Council
For Big Band Extravaganza at Devonport Jazz Festival (DEVONPORT,TAS)

The project involves workshops with professional mainland/intrastate musicians providing tuition in different aspects of Big Band performance, for members of a least 8 regional brass, concert and big bands. The function of the workshops are to provide a fun and educational means to explore, in greater depth, the big Band and jazz musical genre. The outcome of the workshops will be a five hour long Big Band Extravaganza in the form of a community dance/picnic at the local showground sheds where the combined band and each regional band will perform 30 minutes of tribute to the Great American songbook and include a performance by RAAF band Force10.

Funding: $7,252

VICTORIA

Winter Weekends Team
For Winter Weekend in Port Fairy - Community Art Project at Winter Weekends in Port Fairy (PORT FAIRY, VIC)

This cultural arts project is the planned forerunner to a proposed larger sculptural installation for Port Fairy in 2010. Through workshops the project will develop simple designs for large bluestone seats that celebrate the Port Fairy themes around Art & Music, History & Heritage, Food & Wine, and Books & Literature.

Funding: $10,500

Arapiles Community Theatre
For LanTunda at Nati Frinj Festival (NATIMUK, VIC)

‘LanTunda’ will elicit the powerful connections between personal stories and the power of light. A community Rotunda will stage the skills of local puppet master-MsMaryFrench, each story will be presented using light and darkness, shadows and silhouettes. The stories will be told using shadow puppets built & operated by the community. Members of the wider community will also workshop stories and performance ideas. Collectively presented, the stories will capture “who we are, what brightens our lives and what we sometimes fail to share with others”.

Funding: $12,000

City of Wodonga
For Curious Creatures Interactive Arts Hall at Wodonga Children's Fair (WODONGA, VIC)

Curious Creatures Interactive Arts Hall will be an exciting place where children and parents alike can explore their creative side. Activities will include: puppet making; painting a rainforest scene; fridge magnet design/making; hat making; sculpture creation; and helping to construct and create group projects such as a large prehistoric dinosaur. These activities will be facilitated by a professional artist who will encourage, teach and nurture the artistic capabilities of the participants.

Funding: $8,500

Arts Mildura Inc
For Music Under the Stars at Mildura Wentworth Arts Festival –Music Under the Stars (MILDURA, VIC)

‘Music under the Stars’ has grown from a choir on the back of a truck into a major music concert. This Project will add a new element providing an interactive arts experience. Workshops will be held prior to the event culminating in a variety of performances on the night projected onto a big screen. These include an Indigenous welcoming ceremony, a dance performance in the sand dunes, sound installations, films made in workshops, roving photographers and opportunity for local musicians to support the headlining act.

Funding: $12,000

Wimmera Uniting Care
For FYI (For Your Information) at Awakenings Festival (HORSHAM,VIC)

A group devised theatre based project which will engage people with disabilities living in the local region in a skills development program and performance. This will be led by an artistic team of 3 and the performance presented will be the centre piece of the 2009 festival. The concept of 'Forum Theatre' - issue based content relevant to the target community, underpins the project.

Funding: $15,636

Surf Coast Shire
For AQUA at High Tide Festival (TORQUAY, VIC)

AQUA will be an outdoor Circus/Physical theatre production incorporating the Percussion, Fire Performance and Language of Esperanto. The production will explore the surreal nature of a dreamscape through a modern approach to circus skills and will showcase the talent of local youth by providing them with the opportunity to participate in a performance art event. This project will engage the youth population as they develop their performance abilities, using circus and physical theatre skills, fire performance and specially made props to create a series of surreal images that all take place on the ever shifting balance at the water’s edge.

Funding: $19,880

Portland Tourist Association
For Five Whales Project at Portland Bay Festival (PORTLAND,VIC)

From November to May Blue Whales can be seen off Portland’s coast. The Five Whales project will be a celebration of the visitation of these magnificent animals to the region. Artists will work with the community to build five temporary life-size whales out of materials that are local to the area. Five professional artists will work with teams that represent a diverse cross-section of the community. Each team will create one full size blue whale of a different art medium - inflatable plastic, old fishing gear (craypots, nets), sand & soil, cloth & cane and aluminium materials. When installed in and around the festival site, each whale will let fly with a mighty spray of water at unpredictable intervals to acknowledge the blue whale blow.

Funding: $20,000

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Geraldton Greenough Sunshine Festival Inc
For Acoustic Guitars Galore at Geraldton Greenough Sunshine Festival (GERALDTON, WA)

A celebration of acoustic guitars based on the success of the2008 Acoustic Guitar Competion and including workshops and 'have ago guitars' in public spaces and jam sessions in the streets.

Funding: $11,900

City of Fremantle
For The Bal Moderne Project at Fremantle Festival (FREMANTLE, WA)

The Bal Moderne Projectculminates in a mass participatory on-the-street dance. The dance event occurrs on Fremantle’s main thoroughfare. A Choreography/ Dance team will teach the dance steps to participants at community workshops. The Project combines a diverse collective of participants with contemporary dance to create a one-off experience of community through dance.

Funding: $10,800

Theatre Kimberley Inc
For Metamorphis at Worn Art - Act Belong Commit (BROOME,WA)

The 2009 project is a culmination of a five year plan that has seen skill development with the local young, performers and visual artists to a standard that is world class. The aim is to combine the skills learned in previous years into one complete, major, contemporary dance and aerial performance that will support a costume display on stage at the main Worn Art event. Participants will have the opportunity to work with key Western Australian professionals, share ideas, learn from each other and create something entirely new.

Funding: $20,900

The Hon Peter Garrett AM

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