The Arts and Culture Grants Program supports professional artists and arts organisations to develop and make work, and to engage with audiences. Investment in the sector assists in building partnerships and creative collaborations which enhance South Australia’s longstanding reputation as a place for arts and culture.

The February 2022 round of the Arts and Culture Grants Program offered grants across six Development and Projects categories. Grants were also offered through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) Grants category. Across the Arts and Culture Grants Program 48 grants were awarded with a total value of over $710000.

Author Karen Wyld funded to develop a first draft ofShimmer and Dust.  Photo by Domenic Guerrera

Author Karen Wyld has been funded $11400 through the Projects - Independent Artists and Groups to develop the first draft of a new manuscript, Shimmer and Dust. Karen is a descendent of the Martu people in the Pilbara region of WA, and through her writing, explores themes such as colonisation, displacement, Stolen Generations, homecoming, resistance, and human rights. As the inaugural recipient of the Writers SA First Nations Writers Fellowship, Karen will undertake a residency at Varuna in the Blue Mountains, where she will concentrate on the manuscript.

In the Development – Market Development category, KneeHigh Puppeteers Inc T/A Open Space Contemporary Arts (OSCA) received $15 000 for OSCA Market Development. The grant will support the professional expansion of OSCA’s digital presence.

Iwiri Aboriginal Corporation (Iwiri) has been funded $40 000 through the Projects - Community category for Tjitjiku Inma (Child’s song), a collaboration between Iwiri and the 2023 Adelaide Festival. The project will celebrate Pitjantjatjara language through song, culminating in a mass and intergenerational choral event in Elder Park to open the 2023 Adelaide Festival.

Visual artist, Sundari Carmody, received $15 000 in the Projects – Independent Artists and Groups category for Turns Protracted and Slow to be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Sundari will produce new sculptural works for the MCA, as part of Primavera 2022.

In the ATSI Grants – Projects category Tanya Singer received $24 860 for the project Changing Climate, Changing Country, a direct commission by the National Gallery of Victoria and Fremantle Arts Centre for exhibition in 2023.

The February round of the Arts and Culture Grant program is for funded activity commencing from 18 April 2022.

The next round of the Arts and Culture Grants Program closes 5:00pm on 4 July 2022.