MEDIA RELEASE:
TWELVE ARTS PROJECTS SUPPORTED IN LATEST ROUND OF THE REGIONAL ARTS FUND QUEENSLAND GRANTS
11 November 2024
With thanks to significant funding from the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund Project Grants, twelve new arts projects will take place in regional and remote Queensland over the next twelve months. Flying Arts Alliance Inc. and Regional Arts Australia are pleased to announce the successful recipients of Regional Arts Fund Project Grants in Queensland totalling $250,931.41.
Australian Government Minister for the Arts, Tony Burke, congratulated the recipients and their contributions to Australia’s arts scene.
“The Regional Arts Fund helps to get projects off the ground and boosts employment opportunities for artists and arts workers in regional and remote areas of Australia.
“Regional Australia has a thriving and diverse arts ecosystem and this funding will help support artists and arts workers navigate it to maintain sustainable careers and reach their creative potential”
Projects include the inaugural tour of the award-winning Queensland musical, “A Girl’s Guide to World War.” The Regional Arts Fund will provide funding to help regional theatre company, Musical Theatre Australia, take their work to regional centres across Queensland as a part of their larger Queensland tour. The homegrown Queensland musical, “A Girl’s Guide to World War,” will celebrate the unsung achievements of Australian women during World War One and will engage audiences with high-quality musical theatre and community engagement experiences. The project has gained support from Touring Queensland, the Regional Arts Development Fund, the Gambling Community Benefit Fund, as well as regional venues.
Successful recipients will deliver strong arts projects in diverse locations across Queensland, including, Bundaberg, Cairns, Esk, Gladstone, Glenwood, Goondiwindi, Gympie, Imbil, Mackay, Maleny, Maryborough, Rockhampton, Rossville, St George, Tin Can Bay, Toowoomba, and Wujal Wujal.
Projects cover a wide variety of artforms including Community Arts, Cultural Heritage, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts. Funded projects range from arts projects, through to vital professional development for artists and arts workers, and community capacity building projects. The projects will present exciting opportunities for local artists and community members to engage with the arts and widen their creative skillset.
Flying Arts Alliance’s Chair, the Hon. Anthe Philippides, is excited by the diversity and sense of unity being fostered across a variety of communities, as seen in this round’s applications:
“Flying Arts Alliance would like to thank regional Queensland’s amazing artists, arts workers and art organisations for demonstrating an unwavering passion and dedication to homegrown arts and culture. We are thrilled to see that the approved projects will create lasting benefits across regional and remote Queensland, and beyond.”
“The high quality of applications received is evidence of how the fabric of arts and culture in regional Queensland continues to grow and evolve, steering the whole of Queensland toward a vibrant future. We want to thank everyone who applied for funding in this round, and we look forward to seeing some very exciting projects roll out across regional and remote Queensland.”
The Regional Arts Fund is an Australian Government program that supports sustainable cultural development in regional and remote communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia and administered in Queensland by Flying Arts Alliance.
For more information on the Regional Arts Fund in Queensland, including upcoming round dates and how to apply, please go to flyingarts.org.au/raf or phone 07 3216 1322.
Full descriptions of projects and recipients below.
| Regional Arts Fund Project Grants – Round 2 2024 Recipients | ||||
| Applicant | Project Title | Project Description | Funded Amount | Applicant Location |
| Musical Theatre Australia | A Girl’s Guide to World War – Regional Tour | Musical Theatre Australia (MTA), a regional theatre company based on the Sunshine Coast, will embark on its inaugural tour of the award-winning Queensland musical “A Girl’s Guide to World War” in 2025. This tour will bring high-quality musical theatre to both metropolitan and regional audiences across Queensland, with a specific focus on engaging regional communities. Musical Theatre Australia will deliver a consistent and engaging experience while celebrating the unsung achievements of Australian women during World War One. Through this project, they will enhance community engagement, promote inclusivity, and provide access to quality theatre for diverse audiences, including the LGBTQIA+ community, women’s groups, veterans, and healthcare workers. | $15,663.20 | Maleny, QLD, 4552 |
| Tia Carrigan | Resting Place of the Birds – Goondiwindi Town Council Memorial Pool Mural Project | Resting Place for the Birds is a public art project by Tia Carrigan which will combine a 215 square metre painted mural with incorporated technology and a custom-built website. The mural will celebrate the vibrant ecology of the border town of Goondiwindi, painted across 5 walls of the Goondiwindi Town Council Memorial Pool. This project will take three weeks to install and was initiated through impromptu conversation between the artist and Goondiwindi community members. To complement the mural, a custom-built website will be linked via QR codes on the mural, taking viewers to a comprehensive overview of the project, including progress photography, audio of conversations that occurred with community members during install, downloadable art activity sheets and educational resources for children, and documentation of community engagement. | $28,894.80 | Pomona, QLD, 4568 |
| The Genus Inc. | ART POST ARI 2025 18 Week Exhibition Program | This project is an eighteen-week ART POST program of six three-week long exhibitions from 3 February – 9 June 2025. Through an EOI process, six artists will be invited to exhibit a body of work for three weeks each in the beautiful and culturally significant building formally known as the Old Post Office which has been transformed into a vibrant contemporary art gallery, ART POST. Selected artists are allocated one ARI member as a point of contact to develop and realise their exhibition vision through discussion and meetings ensuring professional and successful outcomes for each exhibition. The program will enable collaborations which encourage the exchange of ideas, stories and community engagement. Further activities will include artist talks, workshops, Art at Night sessions and exhibition opening events. | $30,000.00 | Gympie, QLD, 4570 |
| Clint Harvey | Moveable Type Studio 2025 Tour | The Moveable Type Studio is a fully equipped letterpress printmaking studio housed in a shipping container that can be transported to regional communities where it can be quickly set-up to present practical hands-on activities on-site. Alongside two visual artists, the mobile letterpress printmaking studio will visit the communities of Mackay, Rockhampton and Toowoomba to present a series of professional printing and graphic design workshops, masterclasses, demonstrations and presentations. The Moveable Type Studio team will be working with the curatorial and public programs staff at each venue to develop a suitable program of activities tailored to each community’s requirements and needs. This project will create synergies between existing cultural facilities, locally based arts and cultural events and communities of artists and practitioners in three of Queensland’s regional cities. | $21,000.00 | Toorbul, QLD, 4510 |
| Women in Harmony Inc | Regional Community Choirs Into The Future: A Practical Resource | This project will deliver a flexible, portable and adaptable learning tool to address the proven need for training of community choir conductors and accompanists in rural and regional areas of all sizes and levels of remoteness. Two self-managed modular courses will be delivered online through a partnership with East Creek Community Centre and will be available from anywhere. One course will be for conductors and the other will be for accompanists, but both courses will include a mentoring component using face-to-face and/or online technology. The beta version of the course will be tested using a “hub and spoke” model by choirs in the Toowoomba region and at least one other regional centre in varying parts of the state. Once the course is established, it will be financially self-sustaining through a reasonable access fee for participating choirs and individuals. | $30,000.00 | Toowoomba City, QLD, 4350 |
| Gympie Regional Council | Gympie Region Studio Trails 2025 | The Gympie Region Studio Trails project will showcase and promote the diversity of talented artists in the region, develop the capacity and entrepreneurial skills of local artists, and provide opportunities to sell and show work. Visual artists, artisans and cultural workers will be given the opportunity to work as part of a collaborative network to share their passion across the region and beyond. The project will also raise the profile of local artists and broaden their engagement with the community as well as create cultural tourism for the region by extending the reach of Gympie’s artists and providing economic flow on effects. The Gympie Studio Trails project will create uniquely accessible high-quality arts and cultural experiences in the Gympie region while strengthening the local arts and cultural sector. | $8,450.00 | Gympie, QLD, 4570 |
| Shoba Sadler | Creative Development of a new culturally diverse regional work, The Accidental Bride | ‘The Accidental Bride’ is a romantic comedy for performance with Bollywood stylings, written by a Malaysian-Indian Australian living in Far North Queensland, Shoba Sadler. This new work will undergo a 5-day creative development with professional Indian heritage director, four professional Indian heritage actors and experienced dramaturge. The work explores themes of cultural significance of marriages for people of Indian origin, contemporary Indian-Australian perspectives on dating, love matches and preservation of traditions. The project also features a series of eight 3-hour acting workshops within the Indian community, from which members of those workshops will then join the professional team and participate as the chorus. A public showcase of the work will invite key members of the Indian and general public, inviting feedback and discussing the potential of a professional production in 2026. | $29,951.00 | Jaffa, QLD, 4855 |
| Izak Devlin | What We Ought to Be | This project will continue the development of original theatre production ‘What We Ought to Be’ created by regional playwright Izak Devlin in partnership with the Toowoomba Empire Theatre’s emerging artist Homegrown program. The project will be fielded entirely by local creatives and will provide employment opportunities for many who are establishing professional creative careers beyond community productions. ‘What We Ought to Be’ will raise the profiles of a dedicated team of regional, emerging creative crew and cast. Embraced by the community, the script covers themes of expression, beauty, what we owe to ourselves, and how we see our own identity. | $13,426.00 | Highfields, QLD, 4352 |
| Wujal Wujal Justice Group Indigenous Inc. | Traditional Dance Revival and Preservation Project | This project proposes a participatory creative program between Wujal Wujal Elders and young people in the community, that endeavours to preserve culture and traditional story and build new skills and pathways for youth cultural leadership. Through the use of archived footage of traditional dances from the 1970’s, this project will focus on recreating these old traditional dances whilst building new dance skills for Kuku Yalanji Elders and youth. Sacred Creations Dance Troupe will work with Kuku Yalanji Elders to recreate and choreograph these traditional dances that have not been performed for over 50 years. The setting will be at an ‘On Country’ camp, the camp will include sharing of traditional practices of hunting and fishing as well as storytelling and cooking. | $30,000.00 | Wujal Wujal, QLD, 4895 |
| Curious Arts Inc. | Fractured Fairy Tales | Curious Arts Inc. will partner with RAVA Productions to develop and present the children’s theatre production ‘Fractured Fairy Tales’ to audiences in Toowoomba and St George. The production is designed for primary school aged children, aged 5 to 10 years, and features an innovative and tourable audio-visual, sound and lighting set design. Alongside the performances will be a series of drama workshops delivered in Toowoomba and St George. This project will generate employment and networking opportunities for regionally based artists and creatives and bring high quality theatre to young audiences in Southern Queensland. | $30,000.00 | Toowoomba City, QLD, 4350 |
| Mackay Art Society | Always Learning – Pop Up Exhibitions | The Mackay Art Society will deliver a program of high-quality workshops, facilitated by mid-career to internationally recognised artists from regional areas. The audience of these workshops will be the broader region’s emerging and mid-career artists. These artists will in turn act as tutors for beginner and emerging artists, passing on the skills and knowledge gained. The resulting artworks from the workshops and tutored sessions will become a Pop-Up Exhibition of artwork for public viewing at events throughout the Festival of Arts program and other public events. The Mackay Art Society will then provide assistance and art materials to the public at these events to create their own works reflecting the types of artworks portrayed by the original workshop artist. | $5,478.41 | Andergrove, QLD, 4740 |
| Elke Vogels | Professional Mentoring and tools for career development | This project will empower emerging songwriter Elke Vogels by providing essential resources and support to advance her artistic journey. This initiative focuses on skill development in crucial areas such as vocal care, business and the creation of a professional Electronic Press Kit (EPK). The EPK will include a video showreel, promotional photos, and a distinctive logo to enhance Elke’s brand. Specialised vocal coaching will improve vocal control and longevity, providing techniques for maintaining vocal health during live performances. A private, invitation-only show will be organised to film a set of original music for the EPK and to introduce the artist to key industry professionals. Mentorship from Sunshine Coast booking agent David Dean will help Elke build her business and secure live performance opportunities, aiming to expand her audience reach and secure paid work as an original artist. | $8,068.00 | Gympie, QLD, 4570 |
For media enquiries, please contact:
Paul Thompson
Operations Manager
Flying Arts Alliance operations@nullflyingarts.org.au
The Regional Arts Fund (RAF) is an Australian Government program designed to benefit regional and remote arts practitioners, arts workers, audiences and communities. The fund is provided through Regional Arts Australia and is administered in Queensland by Flying Arts Alliance.
Flying Arts Alliance acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands and seas on which we work, live and create. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
Flying Arts Alliance is honoured to acknowledge the Governor of Queensland, Her Excellency, the Honourable Dr Jeannette Young PSM as our Patron. We also acknowledge Mr Tim Fairfax AC and Mrs Gina Fairfax as our Cultural Patrons.
Flying Arts is a not-for-profit organisation inspiring the appreciation, practice and professional development of the visual and creative arts as a lifetime interest or career throughout regional and remote Queensland.
Flying Arts is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland. Flying Arts is supported by the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation and receives funds from Creative Australia through the Australian Cultural Fund. Flying Arts is supported by corporate partners and benefactors.
Flying Arts is the administrator in Queensland of the Regional Arts Fund, an Australian Government program managed through Regional Arts Australia.