Tears for peers: the hidden costs of arts funding

Across Australia, hundreds of arts organisations are currently awaiting the outcome of expressions of interest for four-year funding from Australia Council for the Arts. In Warrang/Sydney meeting-rooms, teams of subcontracted industry advisors are being assembled in their respective artforms to advise Council on which applications are eligible to go through to second and final stage of their decision-making process.

Nearly four years ago, I was among them—one of eight peer assessors on one of nine panels convened to make decisions on more than $30 million of multi-year funding (for which we knew only 55-60% of applicants were expected to get good news).

Thankfully, the likelihood of funding success is not quite as bleak this time, due to the recent launch of Australia’s new national cultural policy, Revive, and its promise to return Council funds cut by former Liberal Arts Minister George Brandis in 2015.

The world has changed in other ways since then, however, requiring a detailed and thoughtful review of the hidden costs of arts funding programs and not just the money they provide.

Like many for-purpose sectors staffed by its biggest fans, our sector has always relied on the passion and willingness of hard-working practitioners to sacrifice our wellbeing to obey the maxim that ‘the show must go on’. Like many under-resourced industries supported by public funds, we’ve also been taught by neo-liberal politics to be grateful for our ‘handouts’ while evidence of the significant returns on investment of the sector has been consistently ignored.

‘Post’-pandemic, our sector is both exhausted and animated by a new sense of perspective that leaves many unwilling to put up with these former practices or the way things ‘have always been done’. This includes a new interrogation of the unseen labour of arts funding processes: the expectations on applicants and the pressure on advisors and peers.

Read the full article on Overland.

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