SLAM Founders Receive Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award

The founders of live-music conservation force Save Live Australia's Music (SLAM), Helen Marcou and Quincy McLean, have been announced as this year's winners of the $20,000 Facilitators Prize at the annual Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards.

Alongside fellow prizewinners Lally Katz (individual winner, $50,000) and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra (group award, $80,000), Marcou and McLean — who also own Melbourne's Bakehouse Studios — were named as award recipients by Sidney Myer Fund chairman Carrillo Gantner yesterday.

"This year marks the 31st anniversary of the Awards, a very significant milestone in the history of the performing arts," Gantner said in a statement. "When I look back over the history of the Awards, I'm proud of what we have achieved — we have contributed directly to artists and their artistic practice. Not only do we provide an acknowledgment of excellence but, importantly, we reward it so that it can continue and flourish."

In addition to Gantner, this year's judging panel comprised Sarah Neal, Duncan Ord, Brett Sheehy AO, Hannah Skrzynski and Noel Staunton; in awarding Marcou and McLean the Facilitators Prize, they cited the pair's history as "musicians, agitators and living proof that genuine and lasting change can be brought about if strongly enough desired".

"Consider their astonishing efforts as the co-founders of the live-music activist group SLAM," they wrote. "Their tireless efforts in rallying public support — a record 20,000 protestors descended on Victoria's Parliament House — and lobbying government eventually saved one of Melbourne's cherished pub-music institutions, The Tote."

"Helen and Quincy have undertaken extraordinary work on behalf of our artistic community and they are deserving winners of the 2014 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award Facilitator Prize," the committee concluded.

The Awards were established in 1984 by Trustees of the Sidney Myer Fund in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Myer's death. The Awards have gifted more than $3 million (in 2015 dollars; $2.2 million nominally) to winners over the past three decades.