Daily Tele Jealous They Did Not Get An Arts Grant?

1 June 2015 | 4:29 pm | Hannah Story

And who invited all these non-white non-men?

Reputable, totally unbiased, definitely-not-friends-with-Arts-Minister-George-Brandis newspaper The Daily Tele have come out today with a piece titled, ‘Woman Given $20,000 Grant To Make People Yawn For Art Gallery… And Other Crazy Taxpayer-Funded Projects’. Apart from its total misunderstanding of both the Australia Council’s purpose and funding model, the article is thick with a tone of resentment. Did the ailing newspaper itself apply for an arts grant? And was their application rejected?

According to theMusic.com.au’s sources, who totally exist, unlike many struggling artists' careers thanks to Brandis’ redistribution of arts funding, The Daily Telegraph applied for an Arts Project grant during the September round last year. The grant outlined that the newspaper aimed to use $150,000, the maximum funding amount available, to create a large-scale performance art project, enacted in newsagents across New South Wales. The performance art project was ostensibly just a daily edition of the Tele, complete with investigative journalism, a costly endeavour and one the Daily Tele may not have the resources to pursue, and columns from respected commentators like Andrew Bolt, plus 40 pages of sports news, to fill out the rest.

The Australia Council saw through this cunning plan, as it did not meet core selection criteria, as the project did not have a clearly defined arts component, or involve or benefit practicing artists or arts workers.

It is believed that the Daily Tele are under the impression that the $20,000 awarded to Michaela Davies to “make people yawn”, i.e. illuminate the structures in the arts world that enable the replication of the same dull-as-a-doorknob completely unchallenging, uninsightful arts works we’ve been running with for hundreds of years, would have been better used in the hands of our Lord, Rupe Murdoch. Come on guys, she’s made a room where people literally yawn: does that remind you of a night at the opera at all?

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“It gives people permission to be bored when looking at art,” said Davies. And a good thing too – because having to pretend to pay attention to the same old distinguished portraits of noblemen is exhausting.

Other points outlined in the article include: more money goes to Sydney than Melbourne, wah; more money goes to city-slickers rather than regional communities, which although not fair may reflect a lack of applications from regional artists, as well as artists’ tendency to flock to capital cities where collaboration is made easier (how’s the NBN going, by the by?); and an unsatisfactory definition of “arts bludger”. We think it was: ‘anyone who legally receives funding for their arts project/artistic practice, because why don’t they have jobs, except they do have jobs, because artists have to eat too, and grant money cannot be used to supplement income’.

The takeaway from the article was simply ‘artists are using YOUR money to make things!’, which is shocking, because that would mean tax money being used for something other than sports and defence. (Oh and in the arts world: opera and ballet, who do not have wealthy patrons at all [they do, and also government money, lots of it], and are really struggling guys, because audience numbers are dwindling, because art has become a more democratic form, and its definitions have blurred, so young art forms and works and artists art can engage more directly with the particular experiences of a varied groups of people: it’s not just for rich, white men any more!)