January 18, 2017
The South Burnett’s Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) will be scaled back under new guidelines announced on Wednesday.
There will now only be two RADF grant rounds each financial year – not three, as was formerly the case.
The pool of RADF funding will also be reduced to $15,486 this financial year, and some formerly eligible activities will no longer be funded.
RADF is a partnership between Arts Queensland and 59 councils.
It is designed to support professional artists and arts practitioners in regional Queensland, and has been in existence since 1991.
In 2016-17, the South Burnett Regional Council applied to Arts Queensland for $9000 in funding.
Mayor Keith Campbell told southburnett.com.au the Council had reduced the amount it had applied for this year because it had been unable to attract enough quality applications in previous years to exhaust the fund.
In 2014 the RADF program was revised by Arts Queensland to allow local councils and communities to have more say in how to structure and deliver the program to best suit their own needs.
The change meant that RADF funding may now operate differently from one council to the next.
At Wednesday’s South Burnett Regional Council meeting, Councillors voted to adopt a new set of guidelines for how the RADF program will operate in the region in future.
The new guidelines have scaled back the types of activities the South Burnett’s RADF will support to just two:
- Technical and professional skills development, and
- Local delivery and participation in the arts
Successful grant applicants can apply for up to 50 per cent of their project’s costs, but will be responsible for funding the balance out of their own pockets.
The first round of this year’s RADF funding closed in mid-September and distributed $7530.
The second round, which will have $7956 available, will open on Monday, March 27 and close Friday, April 21.
