Budget Arts allocation

The arts have received some much-needed help in this year's Federal Budget, with extra funding allocated to the creative and cultural sector.

The Coalition Government has invested almost $300 million to support the successful reopening after the pandemic. One of the largest measures is an extra $125.6 million for the Restart Investment and Sustain Expand (RISE) grants. This scheme was introduced last year with an initial amount of $125 million, and is designed to provide competitive seed funding for new productions, festivals and events. A number of arts organisations have already benefitted from RISE, from small (such as Dance North ($350,000) and Blakdance (more than $600,000) to large (such as the Michael Cassell Group, which received nearly a million dollars toward staging Hamilton in Australia).

Arts organisations have to apply to receive the grants.

There has been no change in the funding to the Australia Council, but Playing Australia, which is administered by the Council, has received an additional $3.6 million in non-recurrent funding (as well as indexation). 

The Budget also provides for a further $11.4 million to support the recovery of regional arts events in 2021-22.