Local arts projects to get on stage with state grants

PERFORMANCES in Queenscliff, Portarlington, Apollo Bay and Birregurra are among those supported in the latest round of the Touring Victoria and Small Regional Presenters programs.

Delivered by Regional Arts Victoria, the Small Regional Presenters program provides grants to community groups and not for profit organisations, helping them bring performing arts shows to their local communities.

Grants totalling almost $120,000 have been awarded to 11 recipients for theatre performances, concerts, art and education programs and literary events including:

$3,150 to the Queenscliff Literary Festival to present Hysterica, four original monologues telling the stories of Joy Hester, Alice Anderson, Elizabeth Gould and Dawn Faizey-Webster

$15,000 to the National Celtic Folk Festival in Portarlington for the presentation of The Bellarine Sessions – five concerts staged in unique settings across small coastal towns and the surrounds of the Bellarine Peninsula

$15,000 to the WinterWild festival (auspiced by the Apollo Bay Chamber of Commerce) for a new work by artistic collective APHIDS, which will direct and present a co-created performance responding to Apollo Bay’s environmental and cultural settings, and

$2,205 to the Birregurra Community Arts Group to present Junklandia, a production about two brothers from a faraway planet embarking on a mission to teach earthlings the “Junklandian” ways of creative recycling and be resourceful with rubbish.

Touring Victoria provides grants to arts and cultural organisations, performers and creatives to help them to take professional productions, performances, exhibitions and programs to regional and outer-metropolitan Victoria.

This year’s program has awarded grants of more than $765,000 to eight tours including The Australian Ballet for performances in Mildura and Bendigo, singer-songwriter Kutcha Edwards’s tour of 26 locations and a Melbourne Symphony Orchestra tour of nine centres including Wangaratta, Warragul, Shepparton, Ballarat, Bendigo and Mildura.

The MSO’s initiative takes in concerts, free pre-concert lectures, schools and community workshops and rehearsals with community choirs.

Also receiving funding are tours of The Alphabet of Awesome Science and Barbaroi, contemporary art exhibitions by National Exhibitions Touring Support Victoria, all-female circus-comedy show Don’t Mess with the Dummies, and Finucane & Smith’s Travelling Dance Hall – the Whole of Community Celebration, along with a 25-destination tour by the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra.

Minister for Creative Industries Danny Pearson announced the successful recipients last week.