The Arts Party

3 days ago

Melbourne Fringe Festival is not giving up the fight... online, fabulously weird and wonderful, as always! 🙌🏻Melbourne Fringe Festival, 2006. My show featured questionable songs, multiple tech malfunctions, and audience responses ranging from baffled to delighted. Josh Thomas was in the crowd; he went on to worldwide fame. Heath McIvor was in the crowd; he went on to form a man/puppet duo with me and a few months later we were doing our first Sammy J & Randy shows in that very room at the The Butterfly Club in South Melbourne.

Fringe Festivals exist to try new things, push yourself, offend people, work out what you're good at and what you're bad at, and try to get better at the latter. You find audiences and you lose audiences and you emerge deciding that the life of an artist is either worth pursuing, or worth abandoning. But you have a blast in the process.

This year Melbourne Fringe has shown a fringe-like disregard for reality, flipped an artistic bird at lockdown and announced an entire program called "The Art of the Impossible". It's not a normal Fringe, but then, it never is.

So, with all the might of an awkward man dressed in an ill-fitting suit waving a wind sock around for no reason, I encourage you to head to their website and check out the beautiful shows on offer - from the comfort of your home, and wherever you may be. It won't just make you laugh, cry, or dance - it'll also support all the artists who have pushed through the disappointment of this year and chosen to create something in the face of nothing.

Check it out here! Bless you Fringe, and bless you Melbourne.

melbournefringe.com.au ... See MoreSee Less

The Arts Party

5 days ago

Why is gambling being prioritised over music?

Why hasn’t the money dedicated to helping the Arts industry been released yet?

Excellent post from Splendour in the Grass 🙌🏻We are thrilled to have scooped two trophies at the Australian Event Awards on Wednesday night, Best Tourism Event and Event Producer of the Year for Splendour’s Co-founder and Co-CEO of Secret Sounds Group, Jessica Ducrou.

In recognising Splendour in the Grass Co-founder and Co-CEO of Secret Sounds Group Jessica Ducrou the judges commented “An incredibly impressive individual, Jessica has done a remarkable job at creating events with a multitude of critical and influential stakeholders invested.”

“While I am absolutely thrilled to have received this recognition for the Splendour in the Grass team and also personally, it comes at a time when the live music industry is unable to operate and is in dire straits" said Jessica Ducrou.

“While state governments have relaxed restrictions to allow 40,000 people to gather at Sydney’s ANZ Stadium for football finals and 11,000 at Royal Randwick for the races in the interest of economic recovery, there has been no such assistance for our Australian music festivals, which employed 9,176 FTE workers and injected over $2.7B into the Australian economy in 2019. An 86% loss (economic and jobs) is projected for 2020.**

“Not $1 of the federal funding for arts and entertainment businesses has reached the industry as yet and it wont until January 2021.

“The live music and events industry needs assistance now!

“We need the government to support the industry with a Business Interruption Fund, Event Cancellation Fund or Insurance, led by the industry and underwritten by Government, as has been provided to the film industry.

“We need the continuation of JobKeeper support for employees in our industry until live entertainment returns to normal operation and without the constraints of major restrictions.

“We need a moratorium on GST on live event tickets, following the precedent set in the UK.

“We need a significant expansion of the RISE grant funding program, with a particular focus on assisting commercial, non-subsidised live entertainment operators to deliver live events in COVID-safe formats.

“We need a level playing field. Allowances and relaxations afforded to the racing and sporting industries should also apply to the live entertainment industry.”

We cannot wait to deliver you our sold out 20th anniversary edition in July 2021. ... See MoreSee Less

The Arts Party

2 weeks ago

You too?Happy Friday! Exciting news that WA & NT are able to hold live music events and festivals, but for the rest of Australia... we did a temp check and confirmed that we’re still missing music festivals!

For the most up to date information about restrictions in your state, check out the COVID-19 RESOURCES page on our website.
www.australianfestivalassociation.com/covid-19 ... See MoreSee Less

The Arts Party

2 weeks ago

Nice work #niklaselmehedDiscover the person behind the striking illustrations of the 2020 Nobel Laureates: Artist Niklas Elmehed.

Here Niklas is painting the portraits of our two new Chemistry Laureates, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna. ... See MoreSee Less

The Arts Party

3 weeks ago

Congratulations to Louise Glück, her work is extraordinary!"You have to live your life if you’re going to do original work. Your work will come out of an authentic life, and if you suppress all of your most passionate impulses in the service of an art that has not yet declared itself, you’re making a terrible mistake.

When I was young I led the life I thought writers were supposed to lead, in which you repudiate the world, ostentatiously consecrating all of your energies to the task of making art. I just sat in Provincetown at a desk and it was ghastly - the more I sat there not writing the more I thought that I just hadn’t given up the world enough. After two years of that, I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to be a writer. So I took a teaching job in Vermont, though I had spent my life till that point thinking that real poets don’t teach. But I took this job, and the minute I started teaching - the minute I had obligations in the world - I started to write again."

- Louise Glück, awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Literature.

Read more in this Q&A with the poet: www.pw.org/content/internal_tapestries ... See MoreSee Less