Aus industry bodies team up to support creators of art music

Image Credit: Dennis Grauel

The Australian Cultural Fund (ACF) has partnered with Australian music industry collection society APRA AMCOS to boost its $100,000 Art Music Fund, which supports the commissioning of new music and helps artists bring their work to life.

Furthermore, the Australian Cultural Fund has announced that it will match all donations up to $12,000 made out to the Double The Score campaign, giving music lovers and industry professionals an extra incentive to donate.

Double the Score will run until 20 March 2017 with an aim of raising a further $100,000 towards the highly beneficial fund. Donations over $2 to the campaign are tax deductible.

“The Australian Cultural Fund has been facilitating tax deductible donations to the arts for more than 12 years, and music has consistently been one of the most popular artforms for both artists to create and arts supporters to donate to,” said Fiona Menzies, CEO Creative Partnerships, a non-profit organisation supported by the Australian Government which also manages the ACF.

Menzies added: “We’re pleased to be working with APRA AMCOS to encourage donations so that audiences here and around the world can see Australian works performed in diverse contexts, from concert halls to festivals, on radio and online.”

APRA AMCOS Head of Member Services Dean Ormston affirmed that APRA AMCOS is equally as committed to unearthing and developing the creative and artistic talent of Australian acts and sharing them with the world.

“APRA AMCOS is committed to developing opportunities for songwriters and composers, including the creation of new Australian work, and most importantly, performance opportunities for new works,” Ormston said. “The Art Music Fund was set up specifically to support these objectives.”

12 established and emerging artists were funded by Art Music Fund in last year. These included percussionist Matthias Schack-Arnott, who took out the Development Award at the Melbourne Prize for Music in 2016, and composer Liza Lim for her major new work Wayfaring in the Weather World for renowned Ensemble Klangforum Wien, based in Vienna.

Donations to the Double The Score campaign can be made here. Still in its infancy, the campaign has reached just over $1,000 with 9 supporters thus far.

More information about the Art Music Fund is available at APRA AMCOS’s website.