Grants to encourage emerging creatives

THIS year’s Ballarat Arts Foundation grants are now open for applications.

The grants aim to support emerging artists who are based in, or connected to Ballarat by giving them help for a creative project in their chosen field.

Recipient of the 2016 Benjamin Northey Award for Performing Arts, composer Louis Stevens, said the grant helped him learn and network.

“It was hugely beneficial because I was able to, at a relatively early age, start learning about the media music technology landscape at a time when it was just beginning to ramp up,” he said.

“This later came to be very advantageous in my career.”

Stevens also had the chance to meet Northey, a Ballarat-born and raised conductor, during some rehearsals with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. “It was an extremely inspiring moment for me as a young musician,” said Stevens.

“The award provided me with a really beneficial network of industry professionals who were at the top of their game.”

Since the foundation began in 2000, almost 500 artists with connections to Ballarat have received support via grants and mentoring.

All the grants are funded directly from donations and business partners.

Applications can be completed on the Ballarat Arts Foundation website and close Sunday 30 June.