The Cultural Fund provides support to organisations for projects that deliver opportunities for authors, journalists, artists and key industry stakeholders in the writing, publishing, education, and visual arts sectors.
Our aim is to support our members and stakeholders to create, award, present, publish, and promote work by Australian creators that connects with audiences. We will consider support for:
- Skills development and professional development opportunities for emerging creators and people working in publishing
- Publishers, literary magazines and journals
- Professional mentorships, residencies, internships
- Conferences, art book fairs, symposia
- Educational and cultural institutions
- Partnerships with major national writers’ festivals
- Awards and prizes for writers and visual artists
- Writing, publishing and visual arts industry associations
- Theatre companies to provide opportunities for playwrights
- Literary and literacy-building organisations
- Visual arts organisations
- Indigenous-led organisations to deliver projects to benefit Indigenous creators
- National teacher associations
- Projects to enhance our literary resources hub for teachers, Reading Australia
This is not a definitive list, so if you are unsure about whether your project is eligible we encourage you to contact the Cultural Fund for clarification.
We do not support the following projects:
- Projects which do not ultimately benefit writers or visual artists and the publishing/visual arts sectors
- Projects where creators are not paid a fee
- Community-run writing programs
- University-based artist-in-residency programs which do not connect with audiences outside the university
- Translations into other languages for overseas audiences
- Projects which do not connect with or reach larger audiences
- Writers to self-publish their work
- Film script development, film festivals, and projects aimed at the film industry (see Screen Australia)
- Research for purely academic audiences
- Projects primarily aimed at music or dance audiences
- Publishing and exhibition costs
- Website development or maintenance costs
- Development of apps
- Digitisation of back issues, previously published work, or catalogues of works
- Business or overhead costs
- Capital works
- General administrative costs
- Book launches or exhibition opening events
- Publishers/galleries to market books
- Production costs for theatre, film and other performances
Do you support theatre companies to present new work?
The Cultural Fund supports theatre companies to provide opportunities for playwrights, for example the payment of a commission fee to the playwright, provided the theatre company agrees to produce and present the work. We do not support operational costs and theatre companies should apply for support for playwrights’ commissioning fees only.
Does the Cultural Fund support performing arts projects?
The Cultural Fund supports our members, stakeholders and creators (visual artists, publishers and writers). As a member organisation, it is important that we continue to support the creation, presentation and dissemination of our members’ work.
The performing arts is not a priority for the Cultural Fund as it does not reflect our members’ work and is supported by other arts funding and government funding bodies.
Does the Cultural Fund support art galleries?
We do not provide support for exhibition openings or exhibition costs, nor for administration or overhead costs, however our funding may be directed towards artist and residency fees.
Does the Cultural Fund support the international publication of work?
The Cultural Fund does not support the costs of printing or producing books, or a publisher’s general overhead costs. With publishers, we are interested in supporting works of general cultural significance and not works aimed primarily at education or academic audiences. We also do not support individuals to self-publish their work in Australia or internationally.