New grants program to provide funding for ACT arts events

Have a great event idea? A painting workshop? Poetry show? Or maybe a live concert? Grants of $5000 are now available for local artists to put on events at Canberra venues.

The Good Company grants program enables artists to present arts events in businesses across the ACT from January to April 2022.

Good Company will give grants to a selection of 12 artists during four funding rounds. The program results from a partnership between artsACT and independent arts organisation You Are Here, which is dedicated to supporting artists.

You Are Here managing producer Ketura Budd wants this project to encourage collaborations between artists and businesses, and bring an exciting suite of events to Canberra in early 2022.

“It’s been a tough time for both artists and businesses here in Canberra,” they say.

“Good Company is the perfect chance for artists to reinvigorate spaces that have experienced a slowdown during spring due to COVID-19. We are really thrilled to support artists in getting audiences excited about supporting local businesses, particularly after this most recent lockdown.”

The program aims to bring people safely back into the community, and encourage them to visit new businesses or return to old favourites.

Ketura says the events have the potential to reshape the way we view businesses that are currently struggling.

“Bringing people together for an arts event is the perfect way to activate a space because it creates a new narrative in people’s minds,” they say. “They have a positive association; a memory about the space that informs how they interact with it in the future.”

Partnering between the venues and the artists is key to the arts events’ success.

“After this period of lockdown isolation, I think it will be so nice for artists, business owners and the community to reach out to each other and make new connections, or strengthen old connections that might have been on hiatus for a while,” says Ketura.

“I can’t wait to see how artists will respond to the invitation to make events relevant to the business they partner with. A creative constraint often breeds radical ideas and even the tiny handful of questions and initial proposals that artists have chatted to us about [so far] have made me so giddily optimistic about the amazing applications we’re going to get.”

The Good Company grants come at a time when funding and supporting the creation of art and the people who make it has never been more important.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted just how precarious a position most artists are in,” says Ketura. “I don’t believe in romanticising starving artists, I believe in feeding them.”

For businesses interested in hosting an artists’ event, Ketura recommends they contact You Are Here.

“We will be looking for businesses to partner with long after this grants program finishes,” they say.

Good Company is a rolling grants program with four rounds of applications being offered. Grant funds can cover costs including venue hire, artist fees, equipment hire and marketing costs.

Artists working in any form are welcome to apply.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, artists who identify as having a disability, being culturally and linguistically diverse, who are LGBTIQA+, or who are aged under 25 are encouraged to apply.

Round 2 applications are now open for events taking place in February 2022.

For more information and to apply for a Good Company grant, visit You Are Here, or email Ketura Budd at producers@youareherecanberra.com.au.