Media Release
Regional Arts Victoria’s vital Regional Strategic Partnerships program will continue into 2025 with funding of $193,600 awarded through the Regional Arts Fund (RAF) Strategic Partnerships 2024-2025 grant.
The RAF Strategic Partnerships program enables the employment of Regional Managers to provide support for creative development across five areas of regional Victoria, via a network of long-term relationships with state and local government agencies, philanthropic organisations, and the local community.
Minister for the Arts, Tony Burke said “Our strong regional arts sector is a thriving network of stories, and we want as many people as possible to be able to experience and participate in it.
These grants will provide greater work and development opportunities for regional Australia, fostering sustainable growth in our creative economy and enabling regional artists and arts workers to share, interact and learn.”
Through the work of Regional Managers, Regional Arts Victoria will focus on creative strategies connecting at the local level and supporting visible, sustainable, locally relevant ‘nodes of capacity’. These ‘nodes’ are people or organisations who strengthen a knowledge network and can support or influence others via their own capacity.
Regional Arts Victoria’s CEO Jo Porter explains, “Our Regional Managers sustain hyper-local, local, and regional layers of creative relationships. They provide a vital connection in the development of cultural policy, strengthening a collective strategy across and within local government and are invaluable in building stronger regional creative communities.”
The funding will be directed towards partnerships in the northwest, Gippsland and southwest while maintaining support in the north and central areas. Benefits gained from the South West Creative Industries Strategy and Making Change Creative Industries Strategy in the Barwon region will guide the establishment of formal strategies for working with creatives in Gippsland and central areas.
The RAF Strategic Partnerships funding will also assist RAV to establish a new model for working with Victoria’s regionally-based First Nations artists.
About Regional Arts Victoria:
Regional Arts Victoria backs artists and communities across regional Victoria to make, participate in, and experience creative work.
Regional Arts Victoria is an independent, not-for-profit, membership-based organisation working in long-term partnerships with every level of government, fostering contemporary and innovative regional cultural practice. We advise and impact on decision-making across multiple portfolios and levels of government.
Regional Arts Victoria is the peak body for regional artists and arts organisations, and the leading organisation for regional creative practice in Victoria.
The Regional Arts Fund is an Australian Government program that supports sustainable cultural development in regional and remote communities in Australia.
END
Media Contact:
Kate Gerritsen | Director, Communications and Engagement | [email protected]
Posted: 2 August 2024